Philips Hue has created the first deep integration of lighting and music, providing consumers around the globe with an immersive light and music experience like no other.

Thanks to Philips Hue + Spotify, the Philips Hue system is enriched with a new algorithm that analyses the metadata of each song in real time to make the lights flash, dim, brighten, and colour change right along with the beat, mood, genre and tempo of any music on Spotify.

Philips Hue and Spotify have teamed up to go far beyond what other integrations can do and enabled the experience through the Philips Hue app itself.

With Philips Hue + Spotify, the Hue app analyses the metadata for each Spotify song in real time, resulting in a light script that on top of incorporating the beat of the song, now also reflects its mood, genre, tempo, segments, loudness, pitch and more.

Whether you’re relaxing on the couch for a cosy night in, having friends over for a get-together, or doing your chores along to a custom playlist, you’ll experience music like never before.

Thanks to the new Sync tab in the Philips Hue app, the experience can even be easily personalised. Users can start and stop sync, change the brightness and intensity of the lights, or choose a palette to change the colours of the lights.

“As a world leader in smart lighting, we are constantly looking for new ways to keep offering our Philips Hue users the most advanced smart lighting experience. Entertainment, of which audio is an important ingredient, is a key focus for Philips Hue. By innovating with Spotify as a leading industry partner, we are proud to offer our users an immersive integration of music and light in a way never done before,” said Jasper Vervoort, Business Leader Philips Hue at Signify.

The Philips Hue and Spotify integration is free to use with the Philips Hue App – you only need a Hue Bridge and colour-capable Philips Hue lights to enjoy the experience, such as White and colour ambiance smart bulbs, a Hue Go, or the new ambiance gradient lightstrip. As the integration is embedded in the Philips Hue app, it does not require a microphone to react to the music.

This ensures that the lights can react to the music without any interfering background noise and provides you full flexibility in using your phone for other purposes at the same time. The integration works with any Spotify-compatible audio device, such as a speaker, smartphone, or computer.

To experience this immersive light and sound integration at home, link your Philips Hue and Spotify accounts in the Philips Hue app, and then play a song from any device that’s logged in to your Spotify account.

“At Spotify, we’re always working to create the best listening experience for every moment, via any device, throughout your day,” said Sten Garmark, VP of Consumer Experience at Spotify. “We’re looking forward to introducing our innovative integration with Philips Hue, where smart lighting will add another dimension to enhancing your next listening session.”

The Philips Hue + Spotify integration will start rolling out globally as an early access program to Philips Hue App 4 users from September 1, 2021 onwards.

Once the feature is available for your account, which can take up to 7 days, you will notice a What’s New update with the Spotify card. Enable Early access and follow the instructions to be one of the firsts to try out the new experience.

After October 2021, the feature will be a permanent part of the Hue App 4.

The post Philips Hue + Spotify Join Up appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Signify is extending the Philips Hue outdoor collection with a new range of smart wall lights, pathway lights and low-voltage fixtures to bring any outdoor space to life with mood settings for any occasion.

The new range has 16 million colours and 50,000 shades of warm-to-cool white light for effortless personalisation.

The highlight of the range includes uplights and downlights that create strong and unique directional light effects and are new to the Philips Hue family.

The Hue Outdoor extension range also offers low-voltage lighting solutions, providing outdoor lighting that requires minimal installation effort and high energy savings.

Commenting on the new release, Duane Shore, Channel Marketing Manager for the Pacific, said, “The Hue Outdoor range allows you to discover the magic of using colour to completely transform your garden or entertainment spaces. With the cooler months approaching, this new range can transform your outdoor areas into a warm space for entertaining or relaxing.”

All new products connect to the existing Hue ecosystem, meaning renovators, DIYers or smart lighting enthusiasts can now enjoy the endless possibilities on offer of bringing your outdoors to life with light.

The new Philips Hue Outdoor range allows you to experience the comfort of your outdoor lights turning on automatically as you arrive home, and off as you leave. By simply setting your Hue app to the Home or Away mode, the outdoor lighting system will adjust to your movements. The geolocation feature on the app can also be used so that your lights turn on or off based on your proximity to your home, giving you peace of mind and an added sense of safety.

By using the pre-set light recipes built into the Philips Hue mobile app, users can select to have their lights mimic their presence at home adding another level of safety, as a deterrent to thieves during the longer nights of the winter months.

Your smart outdoor lights become even smarter when you connect your Philips Hue Outdoor lighting system to a smart home assistant. With this feature, you can transform any outdoor space to suit the ambiance and mood all with the ease and convenience of managing your lights all with your voice. Once linked to your smart home assistant, the Hue Outdoor lighting will listen to your voice commands and react in real time.

The Philips Hue system works with all the popular home voice assistant systems including Google Assistant, Amazon’s Alexa, Samsung SmartThings and Apple’s Siri among others.

With the Philips Hue lighting schedule feature, you’ll never again worry whether you’ve left your lights on. The Hue app allows you to set scheduled timers for your lighting system based on your daily routines and requirements. Now, you can enjoy longer evenings outside or have the lights turn on automatically as your loved ones arrive home.

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Get in to your game and light up your mood with Philips Hue Play.

The newest addition to Philip’s Hue smart LED lights range are two large cylindrical light bars that can either be placed flat on a desk, table or floor, or propped up with the provided stands – or even attached to the back of your screen or TV via the supplied sticky pads.

However you mount them, the idea of having a set of Hue Play smart lights is for them to be out of sight, except for their glow of course.

Philips Hue Play’s rely on having the Hue Bridge. This is a separate piece of hardware that connects either wirelessly or cabled to your modem.

Initially you will need to cable it in and then get the Philips Hue App (iOS / Android) to get it all setup and running.

Mostly it’s a simple setup, the App will locate the Bridge once it is connected to your router then you use the App to control what connects to your Bridge.

Frustration can set in though when the Bridge cannot find your Hue Lights.

Auto scan is a bit flaky and it rarely finds anything. So in order to connect your Hue Play smart lights you will need to do a manual search.

Provided on the manual of the smart lights is the serial numbers of both units. Adding these in to the manual search the App via the Bridge will locate them.

I had a few issues though, where one light was found immediately and the secondary one was not being detected at all. It turned out to be a distance issue. So my advice is to perform your initial setup with your modem, the Hue Bridge and Hue Play smart lights all together in one area.

At home I have a few Alexa Echos and Spots. Alexa controls all of my smart home devices and adding Philips Hue in to the fold was surprisingly easy.

While the Hue App has customizable options and different lighting and mood scenes for you to play with, it just became a lot straight forward when doing it through Alexa.

Downloading and installing the Hue Sync App (iOS / Android) is where your Hue Play’s really get going.

With this initiative you can sync it up (HDMI and a sync box required) to your home theatre and have the lights change colour, mode, flash and more to music, movies and of course gaming.

There is also a wealth of third party apps that can really bring forth the functionality and features of the Hue Plays than the actual official App does.

Philips Hue can be integrated in to Apple Home / Siri and Google with Google Assistant.

Whether you decide to use a smart home A.I. or just make do with the Hue App you’ll be able to make the Hue Plays all your own and set schedules, make your own lighting combinations and create scenes for every form of entertainment.

The brightness level and hues are all absolutely configurable to your liking. However, I do think that the ease of use of the Hue smart lights connectivity still needs some work. I imagine new comers to the realm of smart lights would find themselves a bit lost and completely frustrated when something needs troubleshooting.

The initial setup has the intention of being user friendly, but it can be super complicated – especially when something doesn’t work as it should.

The App and the UI of the Hue Bridge still needs a bit of work in my view to make it the simplest process for novices. But once you’re connected, you’re done and shouldn’t need to go through the setup again (unless you add more smart lights).

The Philips Hue Play smart lights are right at home, in your home theatre setup and a must have in any video gaming dungeon.

They are out of sight, but not out of mind as they transform your play area in to an illuminated world of entertainment.

The post Philips Hue Play Smart-lights Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.