Philips Hue and HomeKit, perfect allies

Get started with Philips Hue home lighting with this starter kit that includes everything you need: bulbs, Hue bridge and wireless switch. we show you how Hue works and how it works perfectly with HomeKit.

Hue Starter Kit

Philips offers a wide variety of starter kits for your Hue lighting, with all kinds of bulbs, with and without switches. We have chosen this kit of white and colored bulbs with bridge and wireless switch, one of the most complete in its catalog. It is much cheaper to buy one of these starter kits than to buy each of the products separately.so if you need several products, you will surely find a kit that contains them and you will get a better price.

The Hue Bridge

Before you start with HomeKit with Philips Hue, you should know that there is one necessary element: the Hue bridge. In HomeKit we have an accessory center (Apple TV or HomePod) to which the HomeKit devices that we add to our home automation system are connected. However, Philips doesn’t work like that, it has its own bridge. The accessories bind to the bridge using the Zigbee protocol, and the bridge will connect to our accessory hub to add to HomeKit.

This has its advantages. The first is that we just need to add the bridge to HomeKit. After that, any device we add to the bridge from the Philips Hue app will automatically appear in our Home app. Another advantage is that the devices join the Philips Hue bridge, not our router, so we don’t overload our home network, something to bear in mind when we already have many home automation accessories. Each bridge allows the connection of 50 luminaires and 12 accessories extras (switches, dimmers, etc.). And another is that when using the Zigbee protocol, a wireless connection is used more stable, with greater coverage and faster than Bluetooth.

It also has its downsides like having to buy the Hue bridge which is an extra expense, or the bridge has to be must connect via ethernet to our router, there is no possibility of a wireless connection. The bridge can be placed on a wall or on any flat surface, it is small and very discreet, so placing it near our router will not be a major problem.

Bombillas Hue White and Color E27

When we talk about lighting, Philips Hue occupies a very important position in this field. It has endless accessories, some with extraordinary designs, and all of enormous quality. These white and colored bulbs are some of the best you will find on the market. Its 1100 lumens of maximum output are guaranteed to light up any roomto which must be added the regulation of the brightness, the white light which goes from 2000K to 6500K and the 16 million colors.

They have Bluetooth connectivity to be used without needing the bridge, but in this case you can only use them through your iPhone when you are near them. With the bridge they connect using the Zigbee connection and now you can use them from anywhereeven from outside the house. Another big advantage of Hue bulbs: when the light goes off and on again, they don’t stay on.

wireless switch

An indispensable element when living with people who deny home automation, or young children who still do not know how to control it, or simply for comfort. Having a physical button to control your lighting is sometimes very practicalEven I, who am more than used to using my HomePod or Apple Watch for home automation, appreciate the switch now and then. And Philips has made an absolutely fantastic change.

Why is it fantastic? Why PIt can be installed on a classic switch using the same screws.or on any surface that suits us thanks to its adhesives, since it has four configurable buttons, and because we can remove the button panel from the frame and take it anywhere.

It has four preconfigured physical buttons but that we can modify from the Hue app, and if we don’t want to use the Hue functions, by adding it to HomeKit we can configure these buttons with the Apple system and use them even with non-Philips accessories. Its CR2450 button battery will allow us up to 3 years of use without having to recharge it.

Philips Hue app

Essential to be able to configure the Hue system. Any accessories you wish to add will need to be done through the Hue app (link) and they will automatically appear in your home as long as you add the bridge to the Apple Home Automation Network. The procedure is very simple, and also in the starter kit everything is related to the presentation, so it is even easier.

The first thing is to add the Hue Bridge, from there we can add lights, switches and other accessories. When you have added the Hue Bridge, you can add it to the home by scanning the QR code on the base by going to Tint Settings > Voice Assistants. The system is also perfectly compatible with home automation systems from Amazon and Google, although here we focus on the one that interests us: HomeKit.

Lights can also be controlled from the Hue app. The options are numerous, but the interface is not very direct and you have to navigate through several menus to be able to perform certain actions. However, it is worth spending time on it. explore the options it offers us because you will not find them in the Casa application, much more limited but also much more direct. Automations, moods, animations like candle or fireplace effects… There’s a lot to look at.

Remote Control Setup

The process of setting up the wireless remote or switch deserves a special mention. When adding it to the Hue app, its configuration options will appear. The top button is the on/off switch, whose behavior we can modify so that when activated, it either retrieves the last state or always directly runs a specific environment. We can also set a function to turn off all Hue lights if we hold it down. Then we have two buttons for brightness regulation, and the last button with the Hue logo can be configured to run environments, which we can set depending on the time of day or which change with each press.

These functions will only work with Hue lights that we have linked to the remote. It can be a light or the ones we want, but always Hue. The Hue app does not integrate with other HomeKit devices in your home. But there is a solution to this, since the remote also appears in the Casa app and we can configure it. The thing to keep in mind is that if we configure a button in Home, it stops working in Hue. How can we take advantage of it?

My wireless switch setup has two buttons set to Home, the top one to turn on all the lights in the living room and the bottom one to turn off all the lights running the Goodnight mood. I left the two middle buttons with the Hue options change the brightness of the lamp, since HomeKit does not allow me to perform these actions with a button. This way I get the best options for my lighting setup from both systems.

Editor’s review

The Philips Hue lighting system gives us endless options with all kinds of bulbs, outdoor lights, entertainment systems, and more. This starter kit is the perfect example to show the full potential of your system. While requiring an additional bridge might be a downside, the reality is that the Hue Bridge makes things much easier in combination with the Hue app, and also allows you to add many devices, so it’s more likely that ‘with a single bridge, you have all the lighting in the house. High quality lights, integration with HomeKit, immediate response and a very stable connection are the main virtues of Philips Hue. You can find this starter kit for $190 on Amazon (link).

The inconvenients

• bridge connected by ethernet