Philips Hue Lights to Get New Brightness Balancer Feature and Additional Automation Controls

Lighting company Signify has announced a new feature coming to the Philips Hue app that aims to give users better control over brightness in their home, as well as a Hue bridge automation update that brings more nuance to motion sensor triggers.

philips hue gradient light strip
Philips Hue lights will soon include a brightness balancer that lets users customize the relative brightness of individual lights in an Entertainment area, instead of controlling the lights as a group.

Signify says the new feature was developed following requests from Philips Hue's users who wanted to more control over their lights while watching a movie, listening to music or gaming.

Using the brightness balancer, users can "make lights that have higher lumens dim lower than lights with lower lumens," according to Signify, allowing users to choose what is in the spotlight when syncing lights to movies, games, or music.

In addition, a forthcoming update to the Philips Hue bridge will allow users to have more control over lighting automation triggered by motion sensors.

Currently, Philips Hue motion sensors support two time slots for automating lighting conditions – daytime and night – so users can for example set up a bright light to come on in the daytime and a low-level light at night.

With the upcoming Hue bridge update, users will be able to customize lighting conditions using a total of 10 time slots, allowing for various settings throughout the day. The Natural light scene can also be selected as part one of these time slots, to mimic the sun throughout the day.

Signify says both the brightness balancer feature for the Hue app and the Hue bridge automation enhancements are scheduled to launch later this summer.

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Top Rated Comments

k1121j Avatar
29 months ago
Now if only the bridge supported more then 50 devices.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
FelixDerKater Avatar
29 months ago
Glad to hear they aren’t killing off the brand.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Radeon85 Avatar
29 months ago

it is quite unfortunate that the LED bulbs produce light that is so unpleasant: what they call warm white is as cold as winter in the Game of Thrones, and they have an dreadful CRI (colour rendering index) compared to halogen and incandescent bulbs which score perfect 100%. How does dimmer control assist me, if the basic light it produces is so ugly, at all dimmer/hue settings?
I personally have no issues with the hue bulbs colour accuracy, and when I pick warm white it's very far from a cold white, it's a very warm yellow hue not that far off halogen. It's about time halogen and incandescent died out permanently, they use a ridiculous amount of power usage and a ridiculous amount of unnecessary heat.

The white ambiance bulbs can go from very cold to very warm, same for the colour ones so getting the temperature you want isn't that hard.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
ChrisA Avatar
29 months ago

have you noticed any delay in controlling the non Hue lights ie dimming changing colors. I had looked in to lights that are homekit with out the need for a hub and the part i cant seem to live with is 1. delay from power on ohat they can be controlled 2. delay in control, 3. choppy color control
Looking for lights that don't use a hub is a mistake. They ALL use a hub. Some use your WiFi router, some have their own branded hub (like Hue) and thread-based lights use either an Apple Homepod or newer Apple TV as a hub. You will not find lights that are completely peer-to-peer.

The last thing you want is 200 WiFi devices on your home WiFi network. Thread works well as does Zigbee that Hue uses. WiFi is slower and does not scale so well. But you can make WiFi lights and switches work if you are willing to install "bombproof" mesh 2 GHz WiFi using multiple routers with wired or 5 (or 6) GHz backhaul.

Thread works a lot like zigbee but has some better technical features but the Hue system is more mature and is VERY reliable. Hue's only downside is the cost. It is the most expensive by far. That aid, I'm noticing reduced prices for Hue on Amazon.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Htsi Avatar
29 months ago
Wish dynamic scenes come to HomeKit, love them and have to use the dimmer switch or app presently.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Victor Mortimer Avatar
29 months ago

I must be the only one who uses the Hue app only to pull bulbs and accessories into HomeKit.
Given how awful the HK UI is for lights, yeah, you probably are.

The Hue app is far from perfect, but it's so much better than HK.
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)