Smart lights can not only brighten and dim your home lighting from your smartphone, but they can also be used to create the ideal ambiance. You can create everything from a warm cozy atmosphere to a more striking lighting effect great for parties by changing the tone of white or the color the bulb illuminates.
Through a partnership with Spotify, Philips Hue wants you to take it a step further by allowing your smart lights to flash, dim, brighten, and change color to match the beat, mood, genre, and tempo. Hue lights could only flash in time to the beat until now, and only with the help of third-party apps like Huegasm.
At the same time, Philips announced a slew of new smart bulbs, lamps, and ceiling pendants, including a White Ambience version of its Filament range of bulbs, which can be adjusted from cool to warm tones. Something that these stylish, retro-styled bulbs have never been able to do before.
More than just beat matching
Smart lights are one of the more affordable smart home devices, and because you simply replace your existing bulbs with smart versions, they are also one of the simplest to install. As a result, it’s no surprise that market research firm Statista predicts the smart lighting market will be worth $105.2 billion by 2023, up from a meager $8.68 billion in 2018.
According to Philips, an algorithm analyzes each song’s metadata in real-time to create a lighting script that matches the track, including the genre and mood created by the music. This is an improvement over a similar feature offered by LIFX smart bulbs. Known as Visualiser, the feature can adjust the color and brightness of the bulb in time to the beat of the song but, unlike the new Philips Hue feature, does not take into account the genre or mood of the music.
The feature doesn’t require Spotify Premium to be enabled; it will work with the free version as well, as long as a Hue Bridge – a hub that connects to the router in the home where the lights are installed – is used with the lights.
Philips Hue also offers some customization over the feature too – so you can choose the color palette if you’d prefer, and even set a limit on the brightness and intensity of the lights when they’re creating these effects in time to the music.
