lighting plays such a significant factorin all of our lives that it shouldn't be a surprise that one of the first smarthome appliance sections was lighting. now the company that has been behind themost popular brand of smart lights has been philips, with their philips huesmart lights. now i originally got my philips hue lights because i wanted tosolve the problem of crawling into bed, getting ready to go to sleep, and thenrealizing oh crap, i left the light bulb on i have to getout of bed go turn that off and then get back in bed. now well this isn't like agiant problem to solve, it is still very annoying when you are curled up in bedready to go to sleep and then you
realize oh i have to get up againbecause i forgot to do something. and the philips hue bulbs solve that forme being able to control that from my smart phone i could just turn them offwhile i'm in bed and boom! i can go right to sleep it was just a really greatexperience as soon as i set them up and yeah, i'm never going back. now anotherreason i decided to go with the philips hue lights was i really liked the ideaof being able to wake up to the colors of a sunrise, and go to bed to the colorsof a sunset and with the multicolored bulbs that came in my starter pack withthe philips hue bridge as well these, bulbs allowed me to do that. and it turnsout that yes it is much more natural
waking up to the colors of a sunriseover a 45 minute fade, just like our ancestors did for millennia, then wakingup to an annoying sound of an alarm clock that you just absolutely hate andwant to destroy. the colors of the sunset are typically more red and orange and itreally offsets the backlight color of my phone which you know typically is bluefor most people's smartphones. now a lot of phones have features just like apple'sa night shift that came out in ios 9.3 that helps to but just having yoursurrounding environment with all those reds and those orange colors, really helpskind of settle you in and just get ready for bed. also, i love having my lights ona timer at night, they go out at the same
time every single night so it helps memake sure that i get to bed at a reasonable hour.so i've been using the philips hue app now for quite a while and you know it'sfine, its not the greatest app in the world, theoriginal app philips hue had was great then they came out with this new versionof the app that wasn't as good it was missing some features from the old appand over time and has finally come up to parity with the old app. and it does havesome nice features in there like the feature i use the most are the scenesfeature where you can set different scenes with different lights atdifferent brightness levels or colors
you can even use these lights to beromantic and mix things up a little. they're really great for that as welland it's great to surprise the loved one going into a bedroom that is hot pink.now the app also has a feature that uses geofencing, so it knows as you comecloser to your residence it will go ahead and turn your lights off for you.however, i found this feature to be a huge drain on my iphone's battery, so ijust decided to disable it. now out of all of the nifty features that thephilips hue lighting system has my favorite, and absolute most usefulfeature of all, has been the support for smart assistants. it just takes theconvenience of using these lights to a
whole nother level and just makes philipsyou lights in general a absolute joy to use. philips hue lights work with all ofthe major players as far as smart assistant platforms are concerned and ifyou have an iphone currently, you can use siri to control your lights anddetermine if siri is adequate enough for your situation or if it's going tobecome necessary for you to get a smart speaker device like a google home oramazon alexa device. it is so much more convenient and so much more natural touse your voice to control your lights then have to dig into your pocket and flipout your phone go through a couple menus and then turn on or turn off your lights.as far as reliability is concerned with
the philips hue lights i've only everhad one defective bulb that just didn't work but i shipped it back to thecompany and they gave me a new one it was still under warranty that was fine. the only other issue i've had with my phillips hue lights is one of my coloredbulbs no longer shows a dark blue color, it just shows a purple color when tryingto turn it to dark blue. i would say that the reliability of the earlier philipshue colored bulbs which are all the ones i have i don't have the latergeneration ones, the reliability on those can be just kinda shoddy, but from whati've heard of the later generations of bulbs if you buy those, you're gonna befine.
so if you thought about getting in onthe whole smart home thing, but are really unsure about where do i start...getting in on the philips hue smart lighting system would be a really greatfirst buy for anyone's smart home. now if you looked up philips' website and areunsure about which bulb to get or where the heck to even start with philips hue,what i'd recommend doing is getting one of the starter packs that philips sells.they're just a really great way to get started in the philips hue ecosystem,especially if you don't really know what you want. if you want bulbs that changedifferent colors they have a starter kit for that, or if you just want plain whitebulbs that you just want to control with
your voice or with your smart phone, theyhave a starter kit for that as well. now another philips product i would alsorecommend getting with your purchase of your philips hue lights would be aswitch called the hue tap. now what the hue tap is, is it's a switch that workswith your philips hue light bulbs, it has four buttons on it that you can assignto turn on or turn off different lights, and the best part is it uses nobatteries. it actually uses kinetic energy when you press a button on theswitch that sends a signal to your philips hue bridge to turn off or turnon your lights. overall i've been very happy with myphilips hue smart lights.
they make turning off all my lights andturning them on again just way more easy and i love being able to control themwith my voice. i also really can't imagine not waking up to the colors of asunrise every morning because i've been doing it for so long now and i love thefact that i can crawl into bed and turn off a light without having to check myphone and just use my voice. it's just been a really great experience. i thinkif you decide to go for the phillips hue smart lighting system you won't bedisappointed. you'll probably, genuinely fall in lovewith these lights, i know that's certainly been the casefor me. for 6 months later, i'm josh teder