Posted by JDJ
- February 09, 2024, 19:54:43
After all these years, there are still gaping holes in the Hue app. How about reporting on those? For example, you can set a gradual dimming of Hue lights at night, but only if you set it at a specific time every day. Who goes to bed at the same time every day, robots? Same for waking up: you can set a gradual sunrise, but only at a set time every day. Got an early meeting? Tough luck, either change your whole setup, or forgo that feature on a day you might need it most.
There is a way to do on-demand gradual dimming of lights. Hue Labs is an "experimental" collection of routines intended to introduce new features. The "Personal Go To Sleep" routine will let you initiate a gradual dimming of lights or other features with the tap of a button on a Hue remote device. But because it is on this website and not integrated with the hue app, you can't use the app to initiate it, it doesn't work with a voice assistance like Alexa, Siri, or Google Assistant, and weirdly it doesn't work with many of Philip's own sensors. It works with the Tap dial remote, but not the Hue Smart Dimmer Switch remote, despite being the newer product. Despite being a very simple feature of adding user-initiation to a routine already available as a scheduled automation, Personal Go To Sleep routine has been languishing in this beta state for almost a decade now. Which begs the question: why are we paying an outrageous premium for Philips Hue when they seem to lack commitment to basic support or development for the product line? This is such low-hanging fruit, one wonders if Philips is outright contemptuous of it's product base, or if the original development staff have moved on, leaving inept lower-cost support technicians to keep things running at the status quo, and throw us some bones with holiday color schemes.