IKEA has added new products to their smart lighting range trådfri. The products include the much anticipated colour bulbs as well as LED power supply’s, also called LED drivers.

At the time of writing colour bulbs are only available as part of a dimming kit, containing a bulb, dimmer and battery for the dimmer. The UK retail price for a 600 lm E27 is £35. We have asked IKEA if they plan on releasing the bulbs separately and will update you if we receive a response.

Photo we took in IKEA Tottenahm, UK store.

The LED drivers are available in 10W or 30W.

All lights in the trådfri range communicate via ZigBee, making them compatible with other smart light systems like Philips Hue.

The range also works with Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and Apple HomeKit.

The products are available in UK stores now. They are not yet available online.

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Back in January 2018 Philips announced the planned released of the lasted update to their Philips Hue smart phone app for both iOS and Android, Philips Hue App 3.0

The release stated the update would come in Q2 2018 so anytime now!

According to Philips the app is totally redesigned taking into consideration comments feedback and ideas from its users.

The new app will improve daily use, and ensure seamless setup and integration of Hue accessories and new Philips Hue Entertainment partnership integrations. The interface will also enable consumers to instantly access their last used scenes, and to simply group lights and select their desired color temperature or color.

Philips did provide a sneak peak video:

Historically some 3rd party apps have overtaken Philips app in terms of functionality, for example Hue Disco and iConnectHue. So much so Philips even link to the apps in their own official app under ‘Apps we like’ interesting to see if this continues.

We are pretty excited to see what they have done and can’t wait to give it a go. What feature would you like most to see in the update app?

The post Philips Hue app 3.0! appeared first on Smart Home Geeks.

Philips lighting, world leader in smart lighting, this week announced their new name – Signify!

Philips commented in their press release the name was chosen because:

“Light becomes an intelligent language, which connects and conveys meaning”

They will however continue to use the brand name Philips on their smart home products, for example Philips Hue. Eric Rondolat, CEO of Philips Lighting said:

“We’re excited to announce our new company name as another step in our transformation journey. Our new company name is a clear expression of our strategic vision and a fabulous opportunity to introduce a new corporate look and feel that is uniquely our own and will serve to further unite our 32,000 employees. At the same time, we remain proud to continue to use the Philips brand on our products.”

Slightly confusing however it all leads back to the fact Philips lighting is a separate listed company to Philips, also listed but as Royal Philips. Philips lighting had an agreement with Royal Philips to change it’s name less than 18 months after Royal Philips did not have a controlling share. They stopped having this in November 2017.

One other clear point is this opens up Philips to release items that are not just lighting – excited to see what the future holds!

The post Philips lighting rebrands as Signify appeared first on Smart Home Geeks.

IKEA is already making impressive moves with Smart Home tech with its Trådfri Smart Lighting Solution as well as its furniture integrated Qi charging.

Today IKEA announced an official partnership, we did not see coming, with SONOS to bring sound to the entire home.

IKEA’s head of Smart Home Björn Block commented:

“At IKEA we strive to make solutions for life at home by integrating technology into our home furnishing offer that are easy to use and affordable, thereby making smart home technology accessible to the many people. Together with Sonos we want to democratize music and sound in the home, and we want to create products designed for how people listen together at home. By teaming up with Sonos we want to combine IKEA home furnishing knowledge with Sonos’ expertise within great home sound.”

In true SONOS style this does not give us too much information.  What we can assume is they will sell SONOS products and potentially design furniture that works with SONOS.

SONOS always patent their products and nothing new has been registered so we assume no new actual SONOS products will be developed we assume the development will be with IKEA.

For example, shelves that SONOS can attach too, in a similar way to how they have integrated Qi chargers into lamps.

An interesting development would be an official integration between Trådfri and SONOS allowing light and sound to work together without any 3^rd party tech required.

Whatever is released this is pretty exciting and scary for Philips Hue and Flexson, the biggest seller of SONOS accessories.

We have asked IKEA for a comment and will update you.

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This is a We Own It review of Foobot!

What does Foobot do?!

Foobot is a home air quality monitor, it also connects to your smart home tech to control it, adjust your room and alert you of any problems.

It monitors in real time:

• Fine particles
• Volatile compounds
• Carbon Dioxide – eq
• Humidity
• Temperature

This then gives you an overall air quality score in the app as well as tips on how to improve each reading and the overall score.

Foobot itself is designed well and looks great, care has also been taken with the packaging – think Apple meets Innocent Smoothies, with text like:

“This Foobot likes you already” and “Don’t look at my bottom” printed on it.

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Foobot Indoor Air Quality Monitor

Check the Price on Amazon UK Check the Price on Amazon US

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How easy is it to setup?

Initial setup is quick and easy!

We set it up in our bedroom in under 5 minutes. This is done in a pretty unique way rotating the Foobot upside down until the Foobot changes colour.

You then follow the normal smart home tech process of connecting to its own ‘WiFi network’ and enter your WiFi password.

However after initial setup it does take 6 days to ‘settle’ into your room and start giving you notifications about the air quality.

Foobot is controlled by the app, it also has an Apple watch app – a nice touch and often missing from smart home tech.

What’s the connectivity?

Foobot works with an impressive range of smart home tech!

• Nest – an official ‘works with nest’ integration
• Amazon Echo
• LuxGeo
• Ecobe

This adds extra features like being able to ask Alexa what the room quality is like in a room. This is good for quickly checking before bed how the room is.

It also works with IFTTT allowing you to create rules and alerts.

For example we set up an IFTTT rule to change our room light red if the Carbon Dioxide levels were not in a good range.

How much does Foobot cost?

£254 from Amazon, although at the time of writing it’s on special at  £179!

What’s it like living with it?

Interesting – things we never thought about like how does spraying deodorant and hair spray impact air quality. The answer is it changes it a lot, something you can rectify by opening a window or turning on a fan.

We are also getting into a habit of checking air quality before sleep and making adjustments to ensure its good quality before bedtime. It could easily be psychosomatic but it does seem to be having a positive impact! We will update after 4 weeks of use.

The only annoying issue is on our iPhone X the week view in the app cannot easily be pressed as the buttons are now where you tap to go home, due to the new iPhone X UI design.

What are our final thoughts?

After only using it for a few weeks this is a very handy bit of smart home tech. Making us think about what we breathe in and what the air quality is actually like in the room we sleep in. Foobot marketing makes a very good point “you spend 9% of your time indoors” yet have never thought about what the air INSIDE is like.

Having it connected to Hue via IFTTT and giving us visual clues is very interesting, as is being able to quickly ask Alexa. If we had a baby this would be an addition to the baby’s room without question.

This is a great addition to any smart home,

The post Foobot review appeared first on Smart Home Geeks.

UPDATE: 10/3/2108

We purchased a selection of Trådfri bulbs from Ikea.com in the UK, these all came with the new firmware installed. Hopefully this means the firmware is now fully rolled out so jump to step 2 on the below guide. Also note Alexa fully works once added to the network!

We originally brought you the exclusive comment from IKEA about Trådfri eventually supporting ZigBee  interoperability and therefore allowing you to add IKEA lights to your Hue network. Here is the original article.

For those of you wondering what on earth this means, it basically means they both operate using the same standard meaning they ‘must’ work together.

Now the software update has been released here is a detailed guide showing you exactly how to add IKEA Smart bulbs to your Philips Hue network!

You can buy Philips Hue bulbs from Amazon,currently for under £25 for a pair.

Philips Hue White Wireless Lighting B22 10W Smart LED Bulb Twin Pack iOS Android [Energy Class A+]

Unfortunately there is no way to check the bulb firmware from the packaging.

The bulbs we tested were from central London on 20/9/17 and still had the old firmware. This means they require an update so you need a controller and hub.

If your reading this a few months later you might be ok to try just a bulb and jump to part 2.

Don’t forget to check our our Philips Hue review!

Let us know in the comments how you get on and don’t forget to like us on Facebook for the latest guides, reviews and news.

Part 1 – Updating firmware

1. Follow the IKEA instructions setting up your hub, controller and bulb. You do need both the hub and controller to update, sadly just the hub wont do it.
2. Open the Trådfri app and check to see the firmware, now press update. the text will change to ‘Update pending’.
3. Our firmware update took over an hour to install. Once complete the lights blink.
4. Go back into the app and confirm the bulb firmware shows as 1.2.217
5. Make sure the light is on and remove it from the app.
   
6. Turn off the bridge – we found it can cause issues with the Hue Bridge, most likely due to using the same channel by default.

Part 2 – Adding to Hue network

1. Turn the light that has the IKEA bulb in on and off 6 times quickly, this resets its settings but maintains the firmware.
2. Turn off all other Hue lights, to prevent ZigBee interference, and if possible move the IKEA bulb near the Philips Hue hub, ideally 30 CM or less.When we did ours we put the bulb in a portable lamp so we could put next to the hub before moving the bulb later once added to the network.
3. Open the Hue app and search for the a bulb, in the same way you normally would.
   
4. The bulb will appear as ‘colour temperature light 1’
5. You can now name it add it to any room or group as you would a Philips Hue Bulb. We named our bulb ‘IKEA TRAFADIL’ so you could clearly see it in the group.

If you could not find your bulb via the App you can try a 3rd party application called Lamp Finder, we didn’t need to use it but it is an option.

Part 3 – How to pair your IKEA Remote to Phillips Hue Lights.

However when you you pair them to the remote it removes them from the Philips Hue Hub. This means the app and Home Kit, Alexa can no longer talk to it. Also it is slightly tricky to add them back to the Philips hub.

You can however put up to 10 lights to one remote.

We spent a lot of time trying to pair the remote to the Philips Hue hub but didn’t find a solution despite getting them to communicate!

1. Turn off other hue lights
2. Hold the remote next to the bulb
3. Hold down the small multipurpose button on the underside of the controller, the same one used to pair with IKEA smart lighting.
4. Keep it held down for a maximum of 10 seconds or till the light stops flashing, for example if can be 5 seconds till it stops.
5. The light will now be controllable by the IKEA Remote.

Reminder: You can buy Philips Hue bulbs from Amazon,currently for under £25 for a pair.

The post How to add IKEA Trådfri to Philips Hue appeared first on Smart Home Geeks.

We brought you the news IKEA has moved into home automation lighting with its Trådfri system.
(Read article here http://www.smarthomegeeks.co.uk/news/ikea-moves-into-automation-tech/ )

As we mentioned in the article IKEA’s Trådfri uses ZigBee to communicate. To be precise they work with ZigBee’s standard called ‘ZigBee Light Link’ or ZLL for short. 

( If you fancy a geeky read here is the specification for it:
http://www.zigbee.org/zigbee-for-developers/applicationstandards/zigbee-light-link/ )

The very interesting part is this is the same standard that Philip’s Hue uses. 

You can purchase Philips Hue products from Amazon UK.

Philips Hue White Starter Kit

This has excited lots of Philip’s Hue fans as this should allow interoperability, ZigBees term for working together, between Hue and Trådfri. This would opens up an entire new ecosystem to existing Philips Hue owners.  For example adding IKEA’s furniture compatible Trådfri lights to an existing Hue setup. Not to mention the possibility of adding cheaper lights to an existing Hue setup.

Philips confirmed they will allow it via a statement on their developers forum:

“There is no intention to block any third-party bulbs using ZigBee Light Link from working with the Philips Hue system”

However unfortunately at present the bulbs do not work with Hue.

A further comment from Philips said:

“As the IKEA bulbs do not behave fully compliant with the ZLL standard, they are rejected by the Hue bridge. IKEA is aware of this and informed us their intent is to have the IKEA smart lighting bulbs to work with the Philips Hue bridge. We offer our support to realize this in the future.”

This goes against a basic principle of ZigBee as defined on their website:

“Products with the ZigBee logo work together seamlessly, even if they’re from different companies”

We have asked both Philips, Ikea and ZigBee for a comment and any idea of timescales and we will update you when we here back. 

Hopefully this will be fixed soon as the system has just gone on sale in the UK. The more Smart Tech that works together the better!

**UPDATE 27/4/2017**

We have had an exclusive comment from IKEA and Philip’s after contacting their press office for a comment:

Philip’s Lighting commented:

“Philips Hue follows the ZigBee Light Link standard. Several third party brands have implemented this standard in the way that the Hue system expects and can therefore be connected to the Hue bridge. The Hue app will recognize and display these third party products as generic ZigBee Light Link products. IKEA is free to make the same implementation choices. We cannot confirm if in that case the IKEA products would work with the Hue bridge without having done the required testing from our side.”

IKEA then said:

“We are working on a software update to be compliant with Philips Hue Bridge and will release it as soon as it is ready. We will continue the journey towards the smart home and making our products compatible with others on the market with the ambition to make it simple for the many people to create a better everyday life at home.”

These comments confirm that at some point IKEA Trådfri lights will work with Philips Hue – allowing you do add their bulbs or lights and hopefully control them within the Hue app.

Brilliant news for all Hue owners – follow us on Facebook & Twitter for the latest updates.

PS. You can purchase Philips Hue products from Amazon UK.

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