Best Phillips Hue App?

September 5, 2021 11:27 AM

I recently purchased Phillips Hue Bulbs (as well as a Bridge). Bring on the sunrise! What will make my smart home smartest?

I now own two Hue bulbs. I'd ideally like them to fade on/off and between colors (e.g., a sunrise or sunset). The official Hue app can turn a set color on or off, but only at a preset time and I'm not always in bed at the same time. My dream would be for tie in with Google Calendar, where a recurring event would prompt a sequence. Barring that, I'd be okay pressing a button or a widget to start a sequence.

There are lots of third party apps that can control the Hue platform. Do you use one of these? Does it work for your needs?

Other tech considerations: I have an iPhone (with Siri/HomeKit/Shortcuts) and an Echo (with Alexa). I am happy to tinker and use IFTTT, but full coding is beyond me.

posted by Mr Yak to Technology (5 answers total)

I can't speak to the colour aspect, but I have a couple of white Hue bulbs hooked up to the Sleep Cycle app on my iPhone, which can fade them out as you fall asleep and fade them in again as you wake up in the morning. I really appreciate always opening my eyes in the morning to a well-lit room.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 1:43 PM on September 5, 2021

IFFT can trigger hue scenes, I would suspect you can also set up triggers to respond to email cues, so it would almost certainly possible to use it in tandem with event reminders from a calendar.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 2:24 PM on September 5, 2021

As an example of the kind of thing I use it for, i use it to monitor my SMS messages for "check your phone" to toggle a red light on if I'm working away with my phone on silent or charging. It's pretty powerful! You do gave to pay to make custom scripts these days though.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 2:26 PM on September 5, 2021

I use f.lux on my Windows PC to dim the brightness/blueness of the monitor as it gets darker. F.lux also talks to my Hue bulb in my office and changes the bulb color/brightness to match the f.lux computer monitor settings.
posted by rsclark at 4:21 PM on September 5, 2021

Thank you for the suggestions! I'll investigate using a sleep-based app to tie in. In the meanwhile, I'm still looking for ways to make a scene dynamic, where I can program colors shifting from one to another.

For those looking in the future, I found a very lightweight application for MacOS that lets you control Hue lights from your toolbar: "Hue In The Menu" in the Apple App Store.
posted by Mr Yak at 10:39 PM on September 7, 2021