Lighting is the accessory to watch in the future, not only because of its functional use but also for the new applications and innovations in lighting control that are a key component of the smart home technology trend.
According to research by ReportsnReports.com, lighting control has held the largest share of the smart home market, and that growth is expected to continue as home lighting options get smarter.
Following are a few of the app-based smart home lighting innovations available in the market:
Philips Lighting rolled out a major update to its Philips Hue app for iOS and Android-based devices. The new features allow users to personalize and control their home’s Philips Hue smart lighting system.
“We’ve made our smart home lighting even smarter. New features include shortcuts, which make setting up rooms a breeze, new color pickers as well as 30 new scenes that allow instant scene setting to match your mood or that special moment,” says Jasper Vervoort, head of Marketing and Product Management, Home Systems & Luminaires at Philips Lighting. “In designing the upgrade, we took advice from lighting designers, user experience specialists and, most importantly, from our customers,” he adds.
The new scenes in the app have been handpicked from the company’s lighting designers. With a tap, the user can enjoy a sunset in Honolulu or a night out in London’s Soho district, with lighting to match their mood. The app update also allows users to create their own personal scenes, including extracting the relevant colors from favorite pictures and intelligently applies them to the lights.
Brilliant, an innovator in smart home experiences, recently announced the availability of its award-winning smart home control. Brilliant replaces existing light switches to give touch and voice control over smart home devices — including lights, music, climate, locks, and doorbells. With Amazon’s Alexa built in, Brilliant enables voice control in any room without the need for voice appliances, the company says.
Aaron Emigh, the CEO and co-founder of Brilliant, came up with the idea when he updated his home with the latest smart home products and found the resulting experience lacking. There was no solution that tied all the smart home products into one simple, ubiquitous interface, he says, so he set out to make his own.
“The smart home experience has been fragmented, and it has been difficult for friends and families to use the home,” says Emigh. “Brilliant is dedicated to elevating the smart home experience with effortless home control that is seamless, simple and accessible throughout the home for everyone.”
LIFX Smart Lighting users in the United States can now control their lights with Microsoft’s virtual assistant, Cortana.
Cortana can set reminders and complete basic tasks, such as turning LIFX lights on and off or it can be used to change the brightness of the lights by simple commands. LIFX lights are programmable for millions of colors, thousands of shades of white, mood-creating scenes, themes and more. They work almost anywhere in the home and can be accessed via phone, tablet and voice.
With the Cortana integration, LIFX supports the leading voice assistants in the market, including Apple’s Siri, Google Assistant and the Amazon Alexa, the company says.
Cortana also works with Windows 10 PCs, Harman Kardon Invoke smart speakers, Windows Mobile, iOS, Android and Xbox One as well as other Cortana-enabled devices.
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