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Author: Richard
Rating: 5
Review: Although the more recent Hue bulbs support basic control via Bluetooth, if you plan to own more than a couple of bulbs and/or want an actual ‘smart’ setup the Bridge is an absolute necessity. The price both on Amazon and elsewhere fluctuates quite dramatically, I purchased one for £20 during a sale event, however I have seen it priced anywhere up to £50. It may prove more cost effective to purchase as part of a starter kit, but not always so check before you buy. Despite having a ‘WiFi certified’ logo on the underside, the Bridge has to be connected to your router with an ethernet cable (a short one is provided in the box). You shouldn’t worry if your Bridge is a long distance from your furthest bulb as Hue uses Zigbee to create a mesh network across supported devices, so each bulb is effectively a repeater. I know this to work as during setup my furthest bulbs outside were not found until some closer to the Bridge had been. Subsequently all bulbs have been connected with 100% reliability. Although Zigbee is a universal protocol the Hue Bridge does not simply support any and all Zigbee devices produced by other manufacturers. If you do a little Googling you will soon find some lists of non-Philips devices that will work with the Hue Bridge. This is useful as it enables you to add some devices Philips simply don’t make or perhaps save some money with a 3rd party bulb/lightstrip. Be aware though anything 3rd party cannot be added to an ‘Entertainment area’ and will not be exposed to Apple Homekit. If you want to really utilise the full potential of your Hue devices I highly recommend creating a Hue Developers account on the Philips Hue website. It’s free and provides simple guides on how to use the Hue API to access the Bridge via a web browser and create/upload much more complex rules beyond anything the Hue app or even paid for 3rd party apps can manage. Even with limited coding experience it is quite easy to get your head around. You will soon realise just how much more devices such as the Hue Dimmer are actually capable of, for instance buttons could do completely different things depending on the time of day, or the current state of a certain light/group, or automatically switch a light back off after a given time delay if switched on during a certain time period. So many more possibilities. I would not have been able to achieve my desired setup without using the API in conjunction with the Hue app, so might well have given a lower star rating without it. I did have to contact Philips support as the first unit I received was faulty. They were quick to respond and seemingly knowledgeable which is rare these days. If your Bridge refuses to connect to Apple Homekit giving the error “Unable to Add Accessory. The setup code is incorrect.” read this bit… The first Bridge I received would not connect to Homekit whatever I tried, so I contacted Philips support who within 24 hours got back to me asking for a photo of the underside of the Bridge, which I duly supplied. The following day I received a phone call from them confirming that this is a known issue and although they had issued a recall of all the faulty units from retailers a few were still out in the wild. They offered to either swap it out under warranty, or as I was within 30 days of purchase I could swap it with Amazon should I prefer. The second unit I received worked flawlessly.
