Hasta La Gadget!

The Philips Hue lighting system is pretty darn awesome save for one minor detail: its finicky and feature-poor stock control app. Third-party, souped-up control apps, can fix that though. Here are the ones you need to really kick your home lighting into high gear.

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The Philips Hue smart lighting system is, by virtually all accounts, very awesome. I mean, who wouldn’t want access to all 6 million colors of the LED rainbow at their fingertips? But damn, if the stock Hue app doesn’t leave a lot to be desired. Luckily, as the Hue’s popularity grows, so too do the number of independent programmers out there designing better and more functional controls for the system.

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Philips promised more focused lighting options for the holidays as part of its hue wireless bulb range, and the company has delivered, revealing not only two new bulb types, but a tie-in with Disney that integrates special Mickey-themed lamps with interactive story books. The hue BR30 is headed to the US first, targeting the popular […]

I really love having Philips Hue lights in my house. If I could, I’d do the whole house, but for now, I’ve only got my media room/arcade/mancave and my foyer done up with the colorful remote-controlled LED bulbs. However, one thing that has always been a bit lacking with Hue is the standard control app. It’s pretty limiting – it doesn’t do light animations or even acknowledge the concept of different rooms in your house. A little app has recently surfaced which adds both of these capabilities to Hue bulbs.

Goldee is a third-party app which has been made possible by Philips release of an SDK and API for Hue. The application’s primary purpose is to add dynamic looks to Hue which go beyond the static scenes enabled by other applications.

To use Goldee, simply add your bulbs and rooms to the app the first time you start up, then tap on the room and the scene you want to run. With the app’s built-in scenes, you can gradually watch the colors in your room shift to set one of ten moods. Each scene has been composed by a professional lighting designer and it shows.

My personal favorites are the pinky/orange hues of Night in Paris and the blue and green tones Aurora Glow. When you first fire up the app, you get the first eight scenes for free.

Sharing Goldee on social media opens up the ninth scene, while providing a review gets you the tenth. This is a clever take on downloadable content – instead of charging money for these unlockables.

As you can see from the video below, Goldee’s color sequences change very gradually – this isn’t a disco app. Goldee provides soothing and relaxing scenes which you can live with while you sit in a room and read a book, listen to music or throw a dinner party.

Goldee also offers a wake mode which can wake you up to its Sunrise scene, though without any Hue bulbs in my bedroom, I didn’t test this feature. You can apply scenes to multiple rooms simultaneously, a pretty slick trick that no other Hue control app does as far as I know. While the initial 10 scenes are all pretty good looking if you’ve got enough bulbs, Goldee promises a library of additional scenes you can run in the not-too-distant future.

A couple of quick notes about Goldee you should be aware of: 1) the app needs to be running – and in the foreground – to work; 2) there’s no way at this time to make your own custom scenes. I’m hoping that these are addressed in future releases – especially now that iOS7 allows true background applications.

You can download Goldee from the iTunes App Store for free.

If you’ve ever stepped foot in an intensive care unit, you’ll know that they can be pretty grim environments. That’s all changing, though, thanks to LED lighting systems that can actually be used to improve patient care.

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