Which app do you use to control your Philips Hue bulbs?

[Adsibob]

I had assumed that the only way to configure and control Philips hue bulbs would be with an app made by Philips. I’m very much new to this (having only just received my bulbs and not even bought the hub yet) and have just learned that there are a whole host of competing apps for doing this. iConnectHue looks the most sophisticated and Huemote looks nice and simple, so maybe I will start with Huemote. Anybody got any experience of either? Why would you deviate from whatever Philips have designed?

[Dreadnaught]

As you may well know, if you have an iPhone or other Apple devices then you can control everything exclusively using Apple HomeKit and its app if you wish.

 

You use the Philips Hue app to "flip the switch" to do so and then don't need to use the Hue app any more. You can use Siri for voice controls or add widgets to your Home Screen to control the various devices. You can also automate your devices from the Apple Home App (e.g. all lights off when you leave home).

 

By the way, the Apple Home app is in-line for a full re-design when, in the autumn, iOS 16 emerges from beta and is released to the general public. Form the beta, it looks much improved.

 

I think the main reason to leave the Hue app behind is privacy (data sharing with an outside server) and better user interface.

[Adsibob]

4 hours ago, Dreadnaught said:

As you may well know, if you have an iPhone or other Apple devices then you can control everything exclusively using Apple HomeKit and its app if you wish.

 

You use the Philips Hue app to "flip the switch" to do so and then don't need to use the Hue app any more. You can use Siri for voice controls or add widgets to your Home Screen to control the various devices. You can also automate your devices from the Apple Home App (e.g. all lights off when you leave home).

 

By the way, the Apple Home app is in-line for a full re-design when, in the autumn, iOS 16 emerges from beta and is released to the general public. Form the beta, it looks much improved.

 

I think the main reason to leave the Hue app behind is privacy (data sharing with an outside server) and better user interface.

I am an iphone user and have an imac, but I don't have Apple HomeKit. Is that additional hardware that i need to buy?

Surprised to see loads of Tado devices on apple's homekit site. Do they have additional functionality when used with homekit? E.g. can apple take all the temperature data from the various tado devices and plot it on interesting graphs or activate switches based on temperature?

[Dreadnaught]

20 minutes ago, Adsibob said:

Is that additional hardware that i need to buy?

 

You would need an Apple TV box (under your TV) or a HomePod mini one to control your HomeKit network.

 

There is a new home automation standard being launched in October called "Matter", which is supported by all the big names: Apple, Google, Amazon, Samsung, Ikea, Philips Hue, Dyson, Miele, Panasonic, Toshiba, and so on… 

 

Apple already supports "Matter" (including in the HomePod mini and Apple TV) so you are future-proofed.

 

With "Matter" home automation devices will become interchangeable between platforms. You can control a "Matter" bulb from Apple HomeKit or Google Assistant for example. It should make the buying and setting-up of home automation devices smoother. ("Matter" offers many other techy-style advantages, which I won't bore you with unless you are interested.)

 

I am building a new dwelling and I recently sold all my Philips Hue and other home automation gear. I will buy a new "Matter"-based set when my house is nearly finished. (interestingly I got all my money back when I sold the old lot. Quite a surprise! The items held their value well.)

 

25 minutes ago, Adsibob said:

Surprised to see loads of Tado devices on apple's homekit site. Do they have additional functionality when used with homekit? E.g. can apple take all the temperature data from the various tado devices and plot it on interesting graphs or activate switches based on temperature?

 

No, no additional functionality. Indeed the manufacturer's own apps sometimes offer a few bits of extra functionality that is not available through the Apple Home app.

 

Plotting of graphs is very limited at the moment in the Apple Home app. That is the sort of function for which you would use the manufacturer's own app. And even there is it likely only to be a simple basic graph.

 

Generally speaking, if you want (which I doubt you do) to log data points and be able to, for example, export a .csv data file of readings then you would need to run software on a raspberry-pi or use an online service for the purpose. Those functionalities have not really reached domestic home automation setups, and that is unlikely to change any time soon. Domestic home automation is realitcgialy aimed at convenience and ease-of-use for simple tasks like turning on the lights or locking the front door. (And until now many such systems have not been easy to use, or reliable, but that should improve with "Matter"). And such systems are not really aimed at techies who want to monitor CO₂ and humidity levels. 

 

 

 

 

[Adsibob]

40 minutes ago, Dreadnaught said:

Matter" offers many other techy-style advantages, which I won't bore you with unless you are interested.)

Yes, I’m interested please.

 

40 minutes ago, Dreadnaught said:

And even there is it likely only to be a simple basic graph.

Tado has very good graphs for each thermostat, showing temperature and humidity vs time of day, and allowing you to also add the times when heating or hot water was on to see the correlation. It is very useful in demonstrating, for example, that the decrement delay of my roof design is insufficient (doh) but it’s main drawback is that you cannot aggregate data sets from various thermostats to analyse whole floors of a house together, for example, or to output that data to something smart that could act upon it. I have about 12 Tado thermostats, so that’s a lot of data.

 

40 minutes ago, Dreadnaught said:

There is a new home automation standard being launched in October called "Matter",

I have invested in some Philips hue bulbs and a hue external motion sensor. Haven’t bought the hub yet, which I need to make the sensor work. If you were in my position would you return the sensor, sell the lights online and wait for October to buy into a new system? I guess you’ve already answered that. Curious to know what tangible benefits Matter will bring.

Edited June 16, 2022 by Adsibob

[Dreadnaught]

27 minutes ago, Adsibob said:

Yes, I’m interested please.

 

As I am a layman, I see the technical benefits as:

• Rock solid privacy and security.
• IP-based network communication. This is BIG! This means it is much easier for developers to integrate their devices with the wider internet and offers many other benefits.
• There is an open source implementation of "Matter", supported by Apple & Google on Github. See here. You can add code to it if you like  
• Inclusion in Matter of the new "Thread" communication standard, which allows, for example, for sensors that run for 5-years on a single battery, and self-healing networking, and very low latency, and so on and so on. This is BIG! "Thread" is like Zigbee on steroids.
• Note that "Matter's" use of "Thread" is in addition to also using Wi-Fi for data-hungry devices, such as CCTV cameras. A "Matter" "packet of information" will seamlessly traverse both the Wi-FI and Thread networks in your home to find the right destination.
• There will be a hugely wider range of devices available from a wider range of manufacturers, all inter-operating. No more walled-gardens.

At present the categories of devices encompassed by "Matter" for the "1.0" launch includes light bulbs, smart plugs, blinds, and thermostats. But security cameras, video doorbells, robot vacuums and washing machines, etc., will need to await a later upgrade, such as "1.1" or "1.2".

 

46 minutes ago, Adsibob said:

If you were in my position would you return the sensor, sell the lights online and wait for October to buy into a new system?

 

I would. But there are others on this site who would say otherwise, quite legitimately. I am bullish about the speed of the roll out. Others are more skeptical. Time will tell.

 

If you hold on to your current devices you will probably be able to integrate them with "Matter". Many manufacturers, including Philips Hue, have already announced upgrades to their hubs to support "Matter" (although IKEA announced a whole new hub and not a software upgrade). However for me, integrating non-Matter-devices in to a "Matter" network is a half-way house. "Matter" is intended to do away with such bridges. So if you can sell up and fully embrace "Matter" when it arrives, while accepting any lumps and bumps with its launch, that's the way to go.

 

Note that with a "Thread" network under "Matter", the more Thread-devices on a network the stronger that network will be. Bridged non-thread devices don't count.

 

If you keep any devices for a few years longer and bridge them to "Matter" and then upgrade them a few years later when "Matter" has fully taken over, those devices will have lost their residual value by then.

[MikeSharp01]

42 minutes ago, Dreadnaught said:

 

If you keep any devices for a few years longer and bridge them to "Matter" and then upgrade them a few years later when "Matter" has fully taken over, those devices will have lost their residual value by then.

I get the feeling that is all about data harvesting and subsequent narrow AI based products and services from big Tech. "If you arent paying for the product then you are the product." Might be a valuable watch word here. 

[Dreadnaught]

3 minutes ago, MikeSharp01 said:

"If you arent paying for the product then you are the product."

 

I share your concern. Your phrase is certainly true in some parts of the internet. Apple is much stronger on privacy. One of the reasons I buy Apple products. See here.

 

With regard to "Matter", see here.

 

I suspect that when using "Matter" privacy will still depend on whether your in the Apple ecosystem vs the ad-based ecosystems of Google (e.g. NEST) and, to a growing extent, Amazon (e.g. Ring), let alone Meta/Facebook/Whatsapp, etc.

[MikeSharp01]

Privacy, in the sense you maybe thinking of it, and as described in the policies of these companies, may not be the central point. In the modern dataverse there are loads of opportunities to join anonymised data together at the top - data science is getting very, very good at this. So the point is not to use your data directly, only the harvester can do that and only then in line with their policy {and of course local laws}, however once your data is anonymised there is complete freedom to exploit it and sell it on / share with partners. These third parties can do almost as much as the harvester, accept in as much as they don't have the personalised data for you - they will for many others, to add value to this data set by joining it with other sets they may have or have access to.

 

When I am discussing this with students we often look at the weather, the weather for most parts of the world is publicly available so if you have a dataset that contains air temperatures (OAT) over a period, you do not need to know when the period was, you could have a good go at finding out where the sensor was, and when the readings were taken. All you need is to search through all the weather patterns across the world which with the right API is a quick enough job. You will probably find a whole host of matches, so you now need to filter those down to see if we can get closer to the front door and you have loads of opportunities there - not the least of which is the real personalised data you hold on your 'customers'. EG If you were the harvester of your data you have the additional opportunity to verify your classification algorithm of everybody else's shared anonymised data, because you know where the front door is for your organisations customer data.  Once you have done that you can use the anonymised data from other harvesters to create value from the data in whatever way you can find. You may even be able to tell me how poorly calibrated by OAT sensor is!

 

Now imaging being able to infer, perhaps not perfectly, the relative wealth / average age / etc of households by looking at the IAT/OAT delta in the data or directly at the energy consumption. Oh hang on perhaps only the electricity suppliers have that data - so could they  join their data with others data to add value. Of course they can - Google it, oh hang on that won't help, you will get the answer their algorithm thinks is best, whatever best is, for you.

 

HOWEVER - just because you are paranoid it does not mean they are not out to get you!

[Adsibob]

Re-looking at this thread, I see that it f digressed slightly into a discussion of matter, which was partly my fault. Could I invite non-matter related responses to the original question please?

[SteamyTea]

On 16/06/2022 at 13:24, Dreadnaught said:

Plotting of graphs is very limited at the moment in the Apple Home app. That is the sort of function for which you would use the manufacturer's own app. And even there is it likely only to be a simple basic graph.

This is the problem with charting, different people want different things.

As you say, export the data and then plot it yourself, makes life much easier.

[Kelvin]

Just to correct one point. To get Homekit to work you just need a smart device that’s Homekit compatible and an Apple device such as a phone to control it. You don’t need to buy additional hardware as suggested above unless you want to access it remotely or use automation then you need an Apple TV etc You used to be able to use an iPad as a Homekit hub but the current version of Homekit no longer supports iPad as a hub. 
 

If all you want to do is control the Hue lights and associated accessories and some automation then the Philips App is good enough and will do everything you’ll need. If you have other ‘smart’ devices in the house then another platform that can control all the devices becomes useful such as Homekit. Apple Homekit covers a lot of bases including cameras so worth trying it out albeit the number of devices supported is a bit limited compared to other platforms. This is partly what Matter is trying to address. 
 

Therefore, I wouldn’t mess about with a third party Hue app. Just use the Hue app to start with and then Apple Homekit to integrate other devices. Samsung Smartthings is pretty good as a smart hub. 

Edited December 27, 2022 by Kelvin