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.

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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