Philips Hue Plans To Make All Your Lights Motion Sensors (theverge.com) 24
Philips Hue is rolling out MotionAware, a new feature that turns its smart bulbs into motion sensors using radio-frequency (RF) Zigbee signals. The upgrade works with most Hue bulbs made since 2014, but requires the new $99 Bridge Pro hub to enable. The Verge reports: To create a MotionAware motion-sensing zone, you need Hue's new Bridge Pro and at least three Hue devices in a room. It works with all new and most existing mains-powered Hue products via a firmware update. That includes smart bulbs, light strips, and fixtures. Portable devices, such as the Hue Go or Table Lamp, and battery-powered accessories, such as Hue switches, aren't compatible. Neither is Hue's current smart plug. [...] "All of the functionality you get with our physical motion sensors -- including turning on when motion is detected or off when there's been no movement for a certain amount of time -- can be configured on motion-aware motion events," says George Yianni, Hue CTO and founder, in an interview with The Verge. "We've done something that's quite a lot better than what else is out there."
MotionAware is occupancy sensing, not presence sensing; it requires movement. Yianni says it's comparable to the passive infrared sensing (PIR) Hue's physical sensors use. This means it can be triggered by pets or other motion. A sensitivity slider in the app helps fine-tune detection. According to Yianni, a key benefit over PIR is that a MotionAware zone can cover a larger area than a single PIR sensor, and it's also not limited to line of sight. MotionAware can't sense light levels, which Hue Motion Sensors can, but you can pair a light sensor to a motion zone to feed it that data. The positioning of the lights will also play a role in determining the effectiveness of the motion sensing. "We recommend that the lights surround an area which will roughly define the detection area in which motion will be detected," says Yianni. "It will sense around the lights and in the broader room thanks to reflections, but detection reliability will depend on lots of factors."
Beyond lighting automation, MotionAware can also integrate with Hue Secure, Hue's DIY security platform that includes cameras, contact sensors, and a new video doorbell. Motion detection can trigger lights to flash red, activate Hue's new plug-in chime/siren, and send an alert to your phone with a button to call emergency services. [...] MotionAware is built on RF sensing -- a technology that uses wireless signals to "see" a space and detect disruptions within it. The data is then sent to the Bridge Pro, where AI algorithms are applied to figure out what is causing those disruptions, so the system can act accordingly. This is why it's limited to the Bridge Pro, the V2 bridge isn't powerful enough to run those algorithms, says Yianni.
MotionAware is occupancy sensing, not presence sensing; it requires movement. Yianni says it's comparable to the passive infrared sensing (PIR) Hue's physical sensors use. This means it can be triggered by pets or other motion. A sensitivity slider in the app helps fine-tune detection. According to Yianni, a key benefit over PIR is that a MotionAware zone can cover a larger area than a single PIR sensor, and it's also not limited to line of sight. MotionAware can't sense light levels, which Hue Motion Sensors can, but you can pair a light sensor to a motion zone to feed it that data. The positioning of the lights will also play a role in determining the effectiveness of the motion sensing. "We recommend that the lights surround an area which will roughly define the detection area in which motion will be detected," says Yianni. "It will sense around the lights and in the broader room thanks to reflections, but detection reliability will depend on lots of factors."
Beyond lighting automation, MotionAware can also integrate with Hue Secure, Hue's DIY security platform that includes cameras, contact sensors, and a new video doorbell. Motion detection can trigger lights to flash red, activate Hue's new plug-in chime/siren, and send an alert to your phone with a button to call emergency services. [...] MotionAware is built on RF sensing -- a technology that uses wireless signals to "see" a space and detect disruptions within it. The data is then sent to the Bridge Pro, where AI algorithms are applied to figure out what is causing those disruptions, so the system can act accordingly. This is why it's limited to the Bridge Pro, the V2 bridge isn't powerful enough to run those algorithms, says Yianni.
"Plans to Make All Your Lights" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"Plans to Make All Your Lights" (Score:5, Informative)
Zigbee's safe, it is not routable across your network, it requires a Zigbee hub. Devices typically don't have any kind of registration process other than putting them in pairing mode and telling the hub to look for them.
Now the hub, that you're going to have to be careful with. THAT can call home.
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Is pairing mandatory?
I recently bought a powerline ethernet/wifi adapter, and as soon as I plugged it in, it connected to my neighbour's network. They have a couple of powerline adapters which they apparently didn't bother to set up security on. Default network name, no encryption.
I guess in an effort to make sure stuff "just works" a number of manufacturers allow them to be used without setting that stuff up.
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I blocked Internet access from my hub, but it still got an update via a phone update. I'm trying to avoid the 'mandatory user accounts to make you safer' bullshit. Right now I have no user accounts, and I'm safe. Saving a username and password in their crappy cloud isn't going to improve that. If the Hue app goes crap, then there's Hue Essentials, which might work well enough for a bit longer.
Any more of this sort of crap though, and my (small) setup is moving to Home Assistant. HA can do all the same stuff
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Zigbee, hubs and thread/matter, z-wave (Score:4, Informative)
Now Thread allows routing over IPv6. So your Thread devices can talk to the internet.
Think of Z-wave as the thing you want, no internet connection, home network with all your devices.
zigbee is the better version of Z-wave but with a terrible vendor association.
Matter is a slightly improved zigbee application layer that runs on UDP
Thread is a networking layer (mostly), that gives every device an IPv6 address and allows your light bulb on the internet. Thread is something only the device makers want, since controlling your devices is more valuable than selling you a device once.
Now none of this matters because the Connected Standards Association controls z-wave, zigbee, Thread and Matter and they only want to promote Thread and Matter. At least until the next shiny thing comes along.
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Thread doesn't have to allow devices to access the internet. It can be local only if you want. All devices implementing it are required to work local only.
Phillips drop their hardware and don't open source (Score:2, Informative)
Don't buy Phillips.
Re:Phillips drop their hardware and don't open sou (Score:5, Informative)
they've also enabled the vast backlog of their old hubs to route their old lights to Matter over Wifi, so once support for THOSE ends, they will continue functioning in that way as well (the hub wont get software patches anymore, but should keep on truckin')
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They might not be able to do presence detection though. It sounds like you need the special hub to correlate signals from at least three devices in a room.
You can get cheap Matter and Zigbee radar based presence detectors on AliExpress, which will keep working forever. You can even make your own with a ESP32 and radar module. They work well, better than the old IR detectors.
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Also its is merely offloading that processing. It could be baked in to a future Matter standard to do the same.
Re:Phillips drop their hardware and don't open sou (Score:4, Informative)
Phillips Hue bulbs have been out for over 12 years and can still be used today using either their hub or a 3rd party zigbee hub with no server.
Re:Phillips drop their hardware and don't open sou (Score:5, Informative)
Actually quite the opposite. I have several friends who have Philips Hue lights throughout their houses and have for over a decade had ones that still have full functionality and have outlasted virtually all non-smart LED bulbs I've bought. Most everyone I know replaces their lights because the electronics give up not because of functionality.
The only incompatibility Philips introduced was with one bridge a while ago, but upgrading the bridge allowed the old lights to work just fine on new systems along with adding extra functionality and support for new products (which couldn't be added to the old bridge). Plus the equipment natively supports Matter.
Philips is a shining example of someone who actually supports both forwards and backwards compatibility of their products and functionality and also implements open protocols alongside their closed ones.
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They split Hue off to Signify, who license the name. Signify is clearly looking to make money at all costs, and are leafing through the chapters of Enshitification for Dummies at speed.
I'd be less worried about their cloud services going away than I would be about it sucking up every last bit of data about me that it can, or going subscription only or whatever. The good news is all Hue hardware can be controlled by Home Assistant if you want (but you don't get such a nice phone app).
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Your lights knew what your were doing in your room (Score:4, Funny)
I'm all for adding 25MP cameras to lights as well.
How about making lights that do light bulb things? (Score:2)
I fired all of my Hue lights. They weren't successful at being light bulbs. For instance, I had two pot lights in parallel over the fire place. Sometimes they would come on in uneven intensity, or one would come on blue instead of white... sometimes one or both would simply choose not to respond until a hard reset was done. They weren't alone... I had idiosyncratic behaviour across 8 fixtures and a full set of swaps.
Finally I just tossed the lot, installed some dimmer switches, and went old school. Everythi
Simple nope, nope and NOPE ! (Score:2)
WiZ has done this for years, no $99 hub needed. (Score:1)
slsia
Obligatory... (Score:2)
All your light are belong to us
How dare they! (Score:2)
You guys deserve all the enshitification you get.
Suspensors or GTFO (Score:2)
Meh. I want a lamp that floats around and follows me like in Dune.
Not my lights. (Score:2)