TECH SPECIAL...... Connected living: Do more with lights

Connected living:  Do more with lights   Traditional lighting companies and technology giants alike want to   change  the way your light up your home From refrigerators that warn you when your veggies are getting stale to  washing  machines that inform you when the laundry is done, consumer  electronics companies are turning to technology at an increasingly rapid  pace to make conventional, boring household appliances `smarter'. So much so that the biggest names in the tech world, including Apple, Google and Amazon, are getting in on the connected living action. While smart household appliances are still to make their way to the Indian market ­ and will take even longer to become affordable ­ you can take the first step towards a smart home today without breaking the bank. There are few things less exiting than home lighting, and until now the only real choice you had was between various shades of white. All that has now changed with connected lighting, a concept that revolutionises home lighting using your home Wi-fi network and smartphone. PHILIPS HUE Philips is a brand that's long been associated with lighting, in both consumer  and commercial environments, and it's been quick to jump on to the connected living bandwagon. The company recently launched its Hue lighting system in India, and we had a chance to put it through its paces. The Hue starter kit consists of three bulbs that look just like off-the-shelf LED bulbs. They even fit into standard bulb holders. Along with the bulbs  is the Hue Bridge, a small circular device that plugs into your Internet router. The Hue smartphone app connects the Bridge to the bulbs and gives you all the control at your fingertips. Getting Hue up and running was a cinch.Setting up the Bridge in the living room and connecting it to the router was painless, and with the three bulbs screwed in and the Hue app installed, we were good to go in under 30 minutes. The app is easy to use, but it could take a while to discover all of the deep functionality on offer. You can choose from any colour of white that traditional bulbs come in, but beyond that, you can choose literally any colour in a 16-million colour spectrum. You can also choose each of the bulbs to illuminate in a different colour and at a different intensity. And it's all done through the app's intuitive interface. Beyond picking colours off a spectrum, you can also have the Hue system replicate the mood from a photo. You can load up any photo in the app and pick colours from it to light up your room. Outside of the app, the Hue web portal also lets you control the entire system when you're away from home. The Hue Starter Kit is available for around Rs 16,000 and Philips also offers individual bulbs and LED light strips separately. One Hue Bridge supports up to 50 bulbsstrips, so you can go pretty crazy with the Hue set-up. But while Hue makes a compelling argument, Philips has a fair amount of company in the connected living space. Here are some of the heavy hitters also eyeing the same market. APPLE HOMEKIT It's a proven fact that whenever Apple enters a product category, the entire category grows, and with HomeKit, the Cupertino tech giant is eyeing the home automation space in a big way. With HomeKit, Apple isn't looking to sell us products ­ which we're sure it eventually will ­ but more than that, it's a framework which it hopes other brands will adopt so your entire smart home is controllable through one system. HomeKit is built into iOS 9, so you'll conceivably be able to control everything from your lights to your door locks right from your iPhone or iPad, wether through an app or through voice commands to Siri. Thanks to Apple's considerable clout, there are already several big companies building HomeKit support into their home automation offerings, and even Philips has announced that Hue will be getting HomeKit support. GOOGLE NEST What started out as a smart home thermostat from a plucky start-up has evolved into a home automaton beast once Google made it its own. The Nest brand itself consists of a smart thermostat, a security camera and a smoke alarm, but Google's acquisition of the company gave rise to Works with Nest. With the expansion of Nest, the system now integrates with a bevy of products across a wide variety of categories, much like Apple's plans for HomeKit. Works with Nest also extends support for Philips Hue, but beyond that also ties into other devices like smart watches and fitness trackers as well as door locks, security systems and baby monitors, to name a few. Both Goole and Apple have been wooing developers by encouraging them to implement the Nest and HomeKit systems respectively.While Nest products aren't available in India, some devices that support both systems are, and what's great for consumers is that most connected products will likely support both.

Sameer Desai

MM28OCT15