Home LED lighting

Philips Hue will venture outdoors this summer

Over the last couple of years, the Philips Hue indoor smart home lighting system has become very popular. So Philips recently announced that coming this summer they’re taking on the great outdoors with a new line of exterior lights. The Philips Hue outdoor range smart lighting system takes all the great indoor lighting system controls and brings them to the exterior of your home.

What will be available and when?

All of the new outdoor friendly products will work with existing Hue systems and the Hue app. The new lineup will include spotlights, pathway lights, and wall mounted luminaires. Prices start at $279.99 for the Philips Hue Lily spotlight system and $129.99 for the Calla pathway lights. Both feature color ambiance bulbs, allowing you to choose from 16 million different colors available via the Philips Hue app. The Philips Hue white range which includes the Lucca, Tuar, Turaco, and Ludere, will start at $49.99. And according to their news release, the new products will be available in the United States in July.

Phillips is hosting a press conference about its outdoor lights on Monday, March 19th and we should know more then.

The post Philips Hue will venture outdoors this summer appeared first on The Gadgeteer.

Filed in categories: News

Tagged:

Philips Hue will venture outdoors this summer originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on March 14, 2018 at 10:00 am.

Note: If you are subscribed to this feed through FeedBurner, please switch to our native feed URL http://the-gadgeteer.com/feed/ in order to ensure continuous delivery.

Light up your landscape with solar-powered lights that look like flaming torches

You’ve got your indoor bulbs that look like a gas flame and a Bluetooth speaker that looks like a flaming torch, now you’re ready for outdoor lighting that also looks like flaming torches!  You’ll get a set of two Solar Garden Lights from Dikaou, plus accessories to set the lights up for wall mounting, using them as a table lamp, or for staking them into the ground for landscape lighting.

They are made of high-duty ABS plastic, and they have LED lights that mimic a flame.  You won’t have to worry about batteries because the torches are solar-powered.  The lamps will turn on automatically at night, or you can power them off when you don’t need them.  And with an IP65 rating, you know they’ll stand up to rain.

Get a set of 2 Dikaou Color Garden Lights for $69.99 at Amazon.

Filed in categories: News

Tagged:

Light up your landscape with solar-powered lights that look like flaming torches originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on March 6, 2018 at 12:00 pm.

Note: If you are subscribed to this feed through FeedBurner, please switch to our native feed URL http://the-gadgeteer.com/feed/ in order to ensure continuous delivery.

Introduce connected lighting to your home with this low-cost Philips Hue starter kit

For Christmas 2013, I received a Philips Hue starter kit with three color-changing LED bulbs and a bridge to connect them to my home’s WiFi network.  I was thrilled by the thought of having lots of light “recipes” to change the color and mood of my living room.  But I found that I really didn’t use the color changing ability of the Hue bulbs.  I always set them to white and used the Hue app to turn my lights on and off.  Over the years, I’ve replaced almost every bulb in my house with Hue bulbs, and every one that I’ve added has been the less expensive white-only bulbs once they became available.  That starter kit with 3 bulbs I got was about $200 at the time.  The new Philips Hue White Smart Bulb Starter Kit has four bulbs and a bridge for under $90.

The White Smart Bulb Starter Kit has four A19 bulbs (fit standard sockets) and the second-gen bridge that’s compatible with Amazon Alexa, Apple Homekit, and Google Assistant.  You can create lighting scenes and schedules with the Hue app or with IFTTT, and you can use the app to control your lights real-time from anywhere with an internet connection.

Once you have the Hue bridge, you can expand your system with up to fifty bulbs (I’m up to 40 bulbs) and 12 accessories like the Hue Tap on/off controllers and motion sensors (I’m up to 7 of the Taps).  Soon your entire house can have automated lighting.

The Philips Hue White Smart Bulb Starter Kit with four bulbs and a bridge is $87.99 at Amazon.

Now you can put a SnapPower GuideLight anywhere

SnapPower GuideLights are easy to install outlet wallplates that add an automatic LED night light that turns on when it gets dark and turns off during the day. I reviewed the SnapPower GuideLight back in 2014 and continue to use them in several rooms of my home. Well, every room except in the bathroom and kitchen because until now, there SnapPower didn’t offer GuideLights for GFCI (ground fault circuit interrupter) outlets. But now they do!

The GuideLight 2 PLUS and GuideLight 2 PLUS for GFCI are SnapPower’s newest products in the GuideLight outlet cover line. The new easy to install wallplates feature a soft diffused light bar, a low-profile ergonomic on/off switch, and brightness settings.

The GuideLight 2 PLUS and GuideLight 2 PLUS for GFCI are priced from $16 to $19 and can be found at SnapPower’s online retail store. For more info visit www.snappower.com. They should also show up on their Amazon store soon with their other products.

Philips adds a motion sensor to the Hue lighting system

There are many ways to control your Hue WiFi-connected lighting system – smart Hue Switches, apps for mobile devices or computers, Alexa voice commands, IFTTT – but those are limited in various ways.  Perhaps there are some areas, like a dark hallway or stairs, where you would like a hands-free way of turning on the lights.  Philips has introduced a battery-powered motion sensor, so you don’t need a nearby power outlet to use it.  You will need a Hue Bridge to connect it to your system, and you’ll program it using the Hue app.  Once connected, it turns on the programmed lights when it senses motion and turns them back off after a period of no motion.  It comes with its first set of AAA alkaline batteries and a magnet or screws for mounting.  The Philips Hue Motion Sensor is available at Best Buy for $39.99.

Filed in categories: News

Tagged: ,

Philips adds a motion sensor to the Hue lighting system originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on November 20, 2017 at 1:31 pm.

Note: If you are subscribed to this feed through FeedBurner, please switch to our native feed URL http://the-gadgeteer.com/feed/ in order to ensure continuous delivery.