Philips Hue turned my lights into movement sensors. It is magical, however imperfect

Other than its varied processor, reminiscence, and gadget capability enhancements, the brand new Philips Hue Bridge Professional comes with a killer function: the power to show your current Hue lights into movement sensors. I’ve been testing this performance for the previous few weeks, and sure, it really works. Getting it to work the best way I need it to, nonetheless, has been a problem. 

First, slightly background. Unveiled in September and on sale now, the Philips Hue Bridge Professional packs a sooner, quad-core 1.7 GHz Cortex A-35 CPU and a gigabyte of DDR4 SDRAM, which permit the hub to deal with greater than 150 Hue units, or roughly thrice as many as the usual Hue Bridge. 

The brand new Hue Bridge Professional may hook up with your property community through Wi-Fi, which means it doesn’t have to be tethered to your router by an ethernet cable. (I’ve been testing the Bridge Professional on Wi-Fi mode and haven’t had any connectivity points).

These processing and networking enhancements make for a powerful improve on their very own, however the Hue Bridge Professional ($98.99) additionally boasts one other cool function: MotionAware, which screens motion-induced disruptions to the Zigbee indicators Hue lights use for communication, successfully turning your good lights into movement sensors. Provided that an indoor Hue movement sensor prices $50, the Hue Bridge Professional’s capacity to make your Hue lights motion-aware virtually pays for itself.

MotionAware does have limitations. For starters, there should be not less than three MotionAware-capable Hue lights in a given movement zone for the function to work (it’s also possible to add a fourth gentle when you like). Additionally, not all Hue lights assist MotionAware performance; Hue says 95 % of its lights will do the MotionAware trick, however my moveable Hue Go desk lamps didn’t make the lower, nor did my third-party Zigbee bulbs. 

Other than the technical limitations, there are some MotionAware options that aren’t free. Specifically, if you need your MotionAware movement zones to set off safety alerts, you’ll want to enroll in a Safe MotionAware plan for $1 a month, or $10 a 12 months. (A 30-day free trial is accessible.) In the event you merely need MotionAware to show your lights on and off, that performance is free, and that’s what I’ve been testing.

Organising a MotionAware movement zone is an easy course of. Ranging from the Hue app’s Settings menu, you faucet on Movement areas, then faucet the “+” button; you’ll then see which of your rooms and zones within the Hue app have sufficient Movement Conscious-ready lights for a movement zone.  

In my case, I may add movement zones in my kitchen, major bed room, and workplace; the eating room wouldn’t work due to the 4 Hue lights in there, two of them are the non-MotionAware appropriate Hue Go moveable desk lamps, whereas different areas didn’t have sufficient Hue lights to create a zone. I elected to create a single movement zone within the kitchen, probably the most extremely trafficked space in our house. 

Subsequent, you select which lights so as to add to the zone; Hue recommends choosing lights which can be between three and 23 toes aside, and at various heights. You’ll additionally need to select lights that border the overall space the place you need movement to be detected. When you choose the Hue lights to incorporate within the movement zone, the Hue app will ask you to depart the realm so it might probably calibrate the lights within the zone; the method takes roughly 20 seconds. 

Lastly, you choose which lights your MotionAware-enabled movement zone will management (you may choose lights in the identical room because the movement zone, or in a unique room), and then you definately resolve what occurs when your new movement zone detects movement—or, on the flip facet, when it doesn’t detect movement. (Once more, I solely examined MotionAware’s capacity to regulate lights, not its safety features.) 

The Hue app provides you varied time slots that mean you can customise the habits of a movement zone. You begin with three time slots, set roughly to morning, night, and nighttime; you may add extra slots as wanted, in addition to alter when the slots start and finish, however you may’t designate a unique set of time slots for particular person days of the week or for the weekend. 

For every time slot, you then select what occurs when movement is detected, and what occurs after a set interval (wherever between a minute to 60 minutes) of no movement being detected.  

Selecting what occurs when movement is detected is pretty easy; you may select any gentle scene (both a preset Hue scene or one you’ve custom-made), or select “Final on state” or “Do nothing.” For what occurs after no movement is detected, the alternatives are way more restricted: simply “Off,” “Do nothing,” or “Return to earlier state.” 

Other than these settings, every time slot affords a “Don’t disturb” choice that may forestall your movement zone from altering the habits of lights which can be already on. There’s additionally an general “Daylight settings” choice that may maintain your movement zones from triggering your lights throughout sunlight hours. 

As for the precise efficiency of Hue’s MotionAware know-how, I discovered it to work roughly as marketed. My kitchen lights reliably detected movement at any time when I or my relations walked into the realm, and sensed that exercise had ceased as soon as we left the room. 

There have been a number of events when the lights would flip off after we’d been sitting on the kitchen desk for too lengthy (a typical foible for movement sensors basically), however upping the MotionAware sensitivity setting lower down on these situations. Boosting the sensitivity up too excessive will put your movement zone on a hair set off, after all. 

Ben Patterson/Foundry

However whereas I used to be happy with the essential MotionAware efficiency, I used to be much less proud of the design of Hue’s movement zone settings, which I discovered needlessly difficult and nitpicky.  

My major criticism is the lack to have a movement zone set off a light-weight scene when your MotionAware lights cease detecting movement—particularly, I like my under-cabinet Hue gentle strip to remain on in the course of the day even when my overhead Hue lights are off.  

Theoretically, this may very well be achieved with the “Return to earlier state” choice, however choosing that setting led to unpredictable outcomes, relying on what the “earlier state” really was. Possibly it was simply my failure to understand the “earlier state” idea, however I finally gave up and settled for the “Off” choice. 

Then there’s the matter of disabling movement detection for sure time slots—for instance, I don’t need my kitchen lights robotically turning off whereas we’re consuming breakfast within the morning.

Once more, choosing the “Do nothing” for each the “When movement is detected” and “After” settings ought to successfully movement management of your lights for a given time slot, however I nonetheless bumped into situations the place the lights would unexpectedly dim or flip off in the course of the breakfast time slot.  

I don’t assume there’s something damaged on the Hue app or with my MotionAware-enabled movement zone zone; as a substitute, it’s in all probability a case of consumer error (mine). However the truth that I’m having hassle getting my motion-controlled Hue lights to do what I need them to do—and I think about myself to be a fairly savvy Hue consumer—signifies that Hue’s movement settings interface wants a rethink. 

I’ve two major options: first, permit customers to choose lighting scenes to be triggered when movement is now not detected, and second, allow us to deactivate a movement zone time slot with a easy faucet, quite than having to dip right into a time slot and alter a number of settings. I’d additionally like separate time slots for the weekend, however let’s begin with the primary two modifications. 

To be clear, I believe MotionAware is a terrific new function for the Hue Bridge Professional, and as I’ve stated, it may very well be a giant cash saver for individuals who need a number of Hue movement zones of their houses. And sure, the movement sensing does work. However when you ask me, how it really works may use some tweaking.

This story is a part of TechHive’s in-depth protection of the perfect good lights.