Hasta La Gadget!

In what seems to be the beginning of a real-life Wall-E situation, Philips has introduced an even easier way to control your home’s Hue smart lighting system. Because, you know, fishing your smartphone out of your pocket when you want to switch the lights will probably exhaust you to the point of hospitalization. Lazy factor aside, the Philips Hue Tap is actually a clever little gadget. It… Read More

Kickstarter success and Australian hardware startup LIFX is finally shipping its Wi-Fi connected smart lightbulbs this Friday. That’s a little later than originally promised in its Kickstarter campaign. LIFX had promised to deliver by March, so they’re officially quite late to the party, but they’ve also managed to secure some major retail partners for a consumer launch late this year and early next.

LIFX bulbs will go on sale at Best Buy online January 19, 2014 in the U.S., and some global retail partners including John Lews in the UK, DickSmith in Australia, Digitech in the EU, MediaMarket in Scandinavia and Virgin Megastores in the Gulf Region, are launching it even earlier in December of this year. That’s all above and beyond the existing $10 million in pre-sales LIFX has done via Kickstarter and its own site, and the $4.6 million it has raised from private investors.

Co-founder and Director Andrew Birt says that they acknowledge that they’re behind schedule, but that the smart bulb race “hasn’t been won yet,” referring to the head start legacy lighting industry giant Philips has with its Hue series. Philips introduced two new types of Hue bulbs and starter kits earlier this week, effectively tripling its product lineup in a single blow. LIFX will offer screw, bayonet and downlight models from the get-go, however, and unlike the Philips Hue, they don’t require a base to connect to Wi-Fi to talk to each other and to your iOS or Android device.

The LIFX team has been working hard to fix production issues and start sending devices out to pre-order customers, Birt says, but they’ve also been working in the background on other efforts while that’s been going on.

A brand new app called Goldee launches today, offering Phlips Hue users a new way to use their connected lighting system. The app provides dynamic “light scenes” which use artist-sourced photos as their palette, changing tones gradually to provide dynamic shifts in color, including gradual on/off sequences for waking up in the morning or going to sleep at night.

There are 10 different scenes included in the app at launch, each which a brief description and credits (citing the scene’s creator, the photographer of the source image and the location where it was taken). Tapping on any starts the dynamic lighting, with each bulb attached to your Philips Hue system taking part. You can specific if you have multiple rooms in a single home with Hue bulbs, too, and run a different scene for each. The first light scene also has an alarm feature, and the last one has a sleep timer for going to bed.

The app works well, but there are some caveats – you have to have the app running in the foreground to get the dynamic effect to work, and the screensaver built-in to keep your display from using too much juice is a little finicky when it comes to returning your display to full brightness once you activate the screen again. But on the whole, it’s a unique experience, and one that Hue owners are likely to appreciate.

“The Goldee team started innovating home lighting even before Philips hue was introduced,” Goldee CEO Tomas Baran explained in an interview. “We figured out right away that Philips hue is a very good tool to build upon [with lighting]. However, the Goldee App is only our first step towards changing how we perceive and interact with light.”

Baran says that there are plans in place to do “something much bigger,” which he expects to reveal more about later this year. He calls light “a new form of art,” hence sourcing its scenes from people with experience in that field, and notes that light is never static in nature. I asked whether this might be a bit narrow in terms of focus for a whole company, but Baran says Goldee is betting we’re just seeing the beginning of change in this space.

“Every new thing is risky in the beginning, but if we wait until it becomes popular it will already be too late,” he said. “We believe a revolution has started in the lighting sector with smart LEDs. We have no doubt this will be the future. We used to watch black-and-white TVs, nowadays we cannot imagine a display without colors. Obviously, it will take time, but we see the same thing happening with light. “

The app is free, and so far the only content that’s locked within the app can be made available via either rating the app or sharing via Twitter and Facebook. There is a “library” section that promises to add additional light scenes in future, and some of those may arrive as paid upgrades. For now, Goldee is a well-executed curiosity, but it’ll be interesting to see if smart lights really do herald the kinds of changes Baran envisions.

Philips Hue is a fun but expensive way to turn your at-home lighting into an interactive experience to pass your idle hours, but so far it’s been mostly controlled via smartphone. Chances are, you spend a good portion of your day at your computer, and it’s likely easier to control things from there. Enter Hue Menu, a new Mac menu bar app that gives you direct control over your Philips Hue light bulbs.

Philips opened up Hue’s API to third-party developers after recognizing there was a strong appetite already in the community for add-on software and programs. Hue Menu takes advantage of the company’s new efforts to reach out to the community by putting controls for brightness, on/off state of individual lights, color and more right where it’s readily available whenever you use your Mac. You can do things like change color based on Mac’s built-in color picker, add color presets, and even sample colors directly from photos stored on your Mac.

Upcoming features planned by Hue Menu developer Charles Aroutiounian include alarms and timer-based lighting settings, as well as geofencing and more. Like with the IFTTT hacks and other neat tricks built around Hue, this will likely have limited appeal, but it’s still a cool way your Mac can make life a bit more interesting if you’re a Hue/connected home fan.

You might remember that last year we were dazzled by Philips’ Wi-Fi controlled LED bulbs that you can set to any imaginable color with a smartphone. Warm, cool, whatever lighting you want, using only an app. Rad, man. Now, Philips is introducing two new lighting options into its Hue product line so you can fine-tune your living room’s stoner chic ambiance even further.

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