Philips Hue — Complete Beginners Guide

today I'm going to show you a complete beginner's guide of the Philips Hue smart lights I'm going to show you some of my favorite tips tricks and hidden features allowing you to leave this video as a Philips Hue expert let's get started so you can see here I have a starter pack of the Philips Hue we've got four light bulbs and our smart Bridge inside the Philips Hue devices here work with Alexa Google home and apple home kit let's dive into this box and see what we have so we can go ahead pull the Box open and inside we're presented with three light bulbs on the front so we'll go ahead and pull these out and put them on the side and see what else we have inside of the box so on top we've got three light bulbs and take this box out and we've got the Philips Hue bridge and then another light bulb making a total of four so we'll take this fourth one out and put it onto the side we'll take the bridge out this is super important to connect to them we'll talk about that in a second and we'll see what else we have inside of the box here so we can go ahead and pull out the packaging here and I'm also going to pull out this ethernet cable right here and put that to the side and then of course Inside the Box you've got your Philips Hue personal Wireless lighting a little bit start quick start die here that we can pull out and have all the paperwork necessary to get started with our Philips Hue so the legal manual the bridge and all the documentation required so let's go ahead and clear off the table and take a look at what was inside the box here so we got light bulb one light bulb two light bulb three light bulb four the power connector the ethernet cable and the bridge and that's what we have inside the box there we also have this little connection here for our cable our power cable we just slide that on just like that and then we push down to release it so that's how we connect our power just slides in just like that and you push the button there to release it if you want to so super cool that you can have this modular power cable you plug this power cable right here into the back of your Bridge it goes in right there just plug it in right there and then you may be wondering what's this ethernet cable well you plug this also into the back of your bridge and then into your wireless modem that you have for your internet so you do need a Philips Hue bridge in order for this to work that's what powers and sends all the signals to each of the light bulbs you plug the ethernet cable into the very back of your Hue Bridge just like that and then in order to get these connected to your wireless network you'll need to find access to the back of your wireless modem which looks like this so on the back of your wireless modem you have a bunch of ethernet ports and of course you'll need to plug in your wireless modem you'll need to have your internet connection connected successfully and then you plug in the other end of this ethernet cord into the back of your wireless mode just like this to get ethernet access so then it sends a signal from your wireless modem to the to the Philips Hue Bridge right here and then allows you to wirelessly control the Philips light bulbs while using the app so that's what the setup looks like you'll plug this in into your power adapter you'll plug in your your modem and then you'll plug in the ethernet port into the very back of your wireless modem and then you'll plug that into the bridge and that's what allows you to connect to your Philips hue light bulbs wirelessly using the app so once you've set this up successfully you can go ahead and download The Philips Hue app and we'll take a look at what that looks like to connect our light bulbs now that we've got the Philips Hue Bridge connected to our wireless network we can head over to the App Store and download The Philips app so you just type in Philips Hue app and you search for it and this one right here the Philips Hue the official Philips Hue app you'll go ahead and press the get button authorized with face ID or touch ID or enter your password and it will start downloading to your phone so this application will allow you to wirelessly control your Philips light bulbs from the app and as long as you're connected to your Wi-Fi network you'll be able to get access to it you can check out the little previews here so control your whole home with the bridge you won't be able to see all the different lights and the different settings control one room with Bluetooth and you can see the different scenes that they have they have various different scenes that make it fun and then you can come over here here use scenes designed by experts except the mood or create your own scenes and select the color palettes that you want you can automate your lights with automations for any occasion sync your lights with Spotify create entertainment areas and use voice control so tons of options here on the Philips Hue app let's go ahead and open it and set up our account and connect our bridge for the first time so Hugh would like to find and connect to devices on your local network you're going to want to hit the allow button so it can talk to your Philips Hue Bridge wirelessly over your local network so you'll hit allow and over here it says welcome to Philips Hue you can try the demo or you can get started since we already have it let's go ahead and get started and you'll need to accept the terms of use and the Privacy notice in order to get started so you'll go ahead and hit continue and you'll need to create a hue account in order to get started so we'll go ahead and create an account and see what that process looks like if you have one already you can log in and sign in but it takes us to the website and log in dot meet you you select your country where in the United States we'll hit next and from here we're able to sign in with Google or if we want to create account we can enter our email and password so let's go ahead and make this process simple all right I've successfully entered my password in here and we can see it's creating creating our account verifying it and we've successfully logged in with Google so complete your few accounts set up you've used this email address for your account you'll go ahead and type in your name so we'll do that and then you'll agree to the terms of service again and then if you don't want any new product emails promotions or events you can go ahead and check that box and hit continue so we'll go ahead and do that it's signing us up and we have successfully created an account so do you want your app to be customized we can help customize your app based off the way you use our products and services such as showing you different default light scenes based off the ones you use the most so if you want it to be customized you can say yes continue or if you don't want to be customized you can hit don't customize we'll go ahead and say yes continue if you want them to reach out things like new products announcements product discounts new features in the app tips and recommendations you can go ahead and press the blue button yes continue or if you don't you can hit the button don't reach out we'll go ahead and say don't reach out and now it says can our friends reach out so the partners that they partner with their friends new products announcements product discounts tips and recommendations if you want them to reach out to you through email then you hit yes continue the blue button but if you do not want them to reach out you go ahead and hit the don't reach out button we'll select that for now and now let's get started if you want to modify your privacy settings in the future you can always go to settings privacy and messaging so let's start the setup process of our brand new bridge so hi Justin let's start what kind of system would you like to set up so you can say I have lights in a hue Bridge or I only have Bluetooth Lanes so we have the bridge we connected that to our wireless network so we're going to select the first one but if you do not have a bridge and you have Philips Bluetooth lights you can select the second one so we're going to select the bridge and it's going to process and allow us to connect to that bridge over the wireless network so connect a hue Bridge plug in your bridge to power then use the included cable to plug in into your Wi-Fi router and that's what you saw earlier in this video we plugged the device into power and then we connect it to the back of our wireless modem and our wireless router so your Hue Bridge must be connected to the same Wi-Fi network as the mobile device for the Hue app to find it so let's check our wireless network we'll go into settings and then we'll go to Wi-Fi and we can see that we're connected to Autumn right here so this wireless network that you plug your Bridge into must be the exact same wireless network that you're on on your mobile device so we plugged our Bridge into the Autumn wireless router and then we're connected to the Autumn wireless router on our phone so if we slide back over to the Philips Hue Bridge here we can go ahead and press the search button and see if it can find that bridge that we successfully plugged up so Hue Bridge found is connected it successfully but we have to press this button on our Hue bridge right now in order order for to wirelessly talk so I'm going to go ahead and do that and send the other room I'm going to press the button and you'll see it automatically will connect and just like that I press the button on the Hue bridge on the wireless network once it was powered on and connected to the Autumn wireless router and it automatically connected it to this phone because this is on the same Wi-Fi network so connected to your Hue Bridge we'll go ahead hit the continue button and we can start setting up our lights but before we can do that you have to update your Hue Bridge it's a mandatory update for you to use your Hue bridge and it can take about 10 minutes here so let's go ahead and hit this update now button we can turn on automatic updates to the bridge and we'll hit yes for that so it always gives us the latest security updates and then also keeps our Philips Hue you know with the latest features so preparing please keep the app open while we update so you'll just watch throughout this process you'll wait a few minutes as it updates the bridge on the wireless network and then after it's complete we'll be able to continue and finish the setup process all right now it's prepared it now it's installing one of two so your Bridge may be unavailable for up to 10 minutes you can leave that and check back later without interrupting the up now it's preparing two of two here please keep that open while we prepare the update now it's installing software update two of two human the Hue Bridge may be unreliable or unavailable for 10 minutes and then of course we'll need to check back in the app to see after it's completed the installation so you can check back later without interrupting the update now that we've checked back into the app the Hue bridge is up to date and your smart light setup system is back online so we can go ahead hit the done option here and proceed so now we're going to connect to our Bridge one more time I've got to go press that button on the Hue bridge to confirm and then it'll give us access to it all right now that we've pressed the button on the top of the bridge it's allowing us to continue we've activated and confirmed that it's the proper bridge that we're connecting to and it asks us what we would like to name this this bridge so Hue Bridge needs a home what will we call it so we'll go ahead and call it app find and we can type in our name here just like this and then press done now the home is created you bridge is now connected to app find just right there we see so we'll be able to go ahead and hit continue and add our lights to this bridge so really cool that uh you know it makes a simple process to set up here so here's what we have already known lights we've got some lights that are already searched for that we can you know add or we can go ahead and search again so we'll need to connect the lights to the power source in order for them to be searchable so let's um try doing that and I'll be able to demo one live for you as we connect it to the Hue Bridge all right so now we have a desk lamp here I'm going to go ahead and take one of the Philips hue light bulbs and screw it into the desk lamp just like this and then connect it to power and from this we'll be able to wirelessly see what this light looks like you can see it shining just like that we've got the power on and now I can come here and hit search again and it allows us to search for all of the lights that are powered on so just press the search button and it looks like one light was found so we'll be able to say start configuration and a new light was found just like that so all you have to do is just connect it to power and it can wirelessly detect where that light is and you can see it changed it to the color of pink so here I can come in here and name this desk lamp so we'll go ahead and hit the x button there and type in desk lamp and then from here it can say that it's a traditional lamp or if it's a ceiling round or recessed sewing light then I can say whether it's on a table a desk lamp right here we can select desk lamp or table wash and they've got you know floor lights ceiling lights wall lights other lights so they've got you know a ton of different lights that you can connect here you just select which one best describes the one that you're currently connecting and um we'll go ahead and hit done just like this so a new light's found you can see it's changing the color there just changed it to Orange I can come in here and manually change the color yellow green blue purple so I've got this whole color wheel here Color Picker that I can select and change the color to whatever I want so it's really nice that I can wirelessly control this light right from my iPhone this iPhone and the Philips Hue app is talking to the bridge that we connect it to a wireless router which is sending a signal to the bridge and allowing us to change the light color and access it right from our smartphone so we've got the desk lamp set up just like this and we hit done and now here's what we have we've got desk lamp and then we've got these three other lights that we have not set up yet so newly found lights we'll say that's all and then I can drag each light to a room so we can go ahead and create rooms here we'll start off and let's look at the types of rooms they have we're going to call this the office room but they've got the living room the kitchen the dining room the bedroom kids bathroom bathroom Nursery office guest room toilet staircase hallway laundry room storage closet garage other Recreation outside levels and more so you can name these rooms based off whatever you want they've got some preset names here or you can come up with a custom name at the very top there so we've got office selected we'll go ahead and hit done and then I can go ahead and drag this light here after I hit the done button it says that it has zero Lights Under the office so drag each light or multiple selected lights to a room we'll go ahead and tap on this it selects the desk light but it's not allowing me to drag it for some reason oh there it goes I'm going to revert that and try that again so you should easily be able to tap on this and drag to the office but it's not as intuitive so maybe I have to click and hold or tap and hold so that's how we can get access to the dragging today's sponsor is L gears three in one wireless charger that lets you charge your airpods your Apple watch and your iPhone all at once just like that has a nice Sleek design for your desk or your nightstand and it charges all three of your devices your air pods your 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start dragging and that activates your abilities of drag and then you can start moving it to the office or whichever room that you created so we'll drag that and move it to the office room and then select the done button so now that we've successfully moved all of our lights to the proper rooms we've got this light turned on in the office we're all set so I can hit done and I can see on our home page here that the lights are on if I want to turn them off I can just swipe that button right over to the left here and you can see the blue light turns off just like that if I want to swipe it on to the right you can see the blue light turns right back on just like that and this is the home version of your Philips Hue app so anytime you open up the Philips Hue app just by typing in Philips Hue and you open up the Hue app right here and you're presented with the home screen where you can see all of your lights if we were to connect the other three lights they would be demoed right here and you'd be able to see those too we can control the brightness right here oh just you know taking the brightness all the way down to one percent and then all the way back up to a hundred percent just like this inside of the Philips Hue app making it very easy for us to control the Philips hue light bulb with the Press of a button so really cool that we can come in here and adjust the brightness we can turn the light off and you can see it turns the lead off just like that we can turn it right back on and it turns it right back on so really cool that I can come in here and adjust the different lights the Philips Hue app has tons of features and we'll go ahead and start exploring those we have right now the Home tab next up is the automation Tab and we don't have any automation set up right now but you can also get automations from the Hue Labs which has very much preset automations or we can create our own automation so we can wake up with the light we can go to sleep we can come home leaving home a timer or we can create our own custom automation so one of my favorite automations is to wake up with light so as the sun comes up you can wake up you can select whatever time you want to wake up here we'll say 7 A.M Monday through Friday lights will start brightening at 6 30 with the fade duration of 30 minutes so here the lights will start to come on around 6 30 they'll fade in and then at seven o'clock they'll all be on exactly at 7am so you won't have to flip the lights on in the morning they'll already be on and they'll gradually gradually turn on as if the sun was coming up so it's really nice you hit the next button here you can see every light in your home if you select my entire home or you can just go ahead and select the office right here so we'll go ahead and select the office and now what Wake Up Style do you want we can do Sunrise where colors change and blend together to mimic the morning Sky recommended for gradient lights or you can fade to bright white lights start out dim and then Fades into full brightness I like the sunrise but you can select whichever one you want and then you can name this automation we'll go ahead and name it wake up and just like this we're able to set up our Automation and create our very first Automation in this home so now every day weekdays Monday through Friday 7 A.M wake up we'll have this automation happen it starts around 6 30. we can tap in it see all the details we can see that the office lights will turn on we can see what style they're in the maximum brightness the fade duration and more and you can come in here and modify that automation anytime you want you can press this button to turn that automation off or you can press it to turn it right back on so automations are really cool way you can come in and play with your Hue Lights and create all types of different settings and different different you know automations to help improve your life and make it easier and to set up the mood perfectly you know there are other automations that you can add in here for example when you go to sleep or when you come home and more other another another really neat thing about the Philips Hue automation system here is they have the Hue Labs where you can test out early adaptions of products that they release into the Hue Labs before they hit the app itself so you can come here and see all the different formulas they have and play with them and test them out before they actually Implement them inside of the Hue app themselves so it's kind of like beta testing they've got various different platforms here whether you're working with outdoor lights or you know buttons and toggles and different devices that are required so you can come here see all the different you know Labs that they have and install anyone that you want so some of them of course do require accessories like this tap dimmer right here they've got Autumn living scenes Festival lights and more so we can come here we've got a quick workout scene which is interesting we got a personal wake-up scene we can try it out just by pressing the little blue button there or the orange button there and says now on the Philips Hue app one of the easier way to use this formula set it up as a wake up automation so it looks like this wake up automation that we set up earlier was originally tested out in the Philips Hue labs and now has made it to the app so that's really cool because we just set that up to personally wake us up and this is exactly the same thing here that was implemented into that so we can scroll back here and see what other formulas we have so formulas inside the Hue Labs an easy and early way to test out features before they hit the app itself and um of course some of them require different hardware and others do not we can try testing out the living scenes here and see what that looks like so living scenes will be able to select different formulas here in color palettes and where we want it in our room so we'll be able to scroll up here and see all of those details in order to set up this formula so we can call this living scenes the icon is level labs and then we'll select tap we don't have a tab so we can't use tap or dimmer so I'll do virtual because there's we don't have these actual dimmer or tap accessories and then we'll scroll down we can say a palette and we'll say this happens in the office in transition time between colors will increase the brightness up to like 80 and then we'll hit install so now it installs this formula right onto our Philips Hue app and I can come in here and test out the living scenes by swiping that on and seeing the color options there you see it changes at an 87 chance there um and 87 brightness so I can tap in here and get those Hue Labs controls I can turn this scene off just like that it reverts to what we were using before or I can turn it right back on just by tapping the controls and flipping the switch over to the green option so you've got multiple options here for your living scenes and we can come in here and make modifications to those as needed we can change the icon if we want you know to something whether we want it in the office if there's an office icon I don't see one specifically the other there's one right there we can select the office icon we can change the brightness again we can or change the transition time between colors 10 minutes five minutes so however long if we do one minute seconds that may be easy to see we'll go ahead and update um so this will change the formula here a little bit it'll update the living colors every 10 seconds and once we turn this on we'll probably be able to visually see this um because once we turn it on every 10 seconds it goes by very quickly and you can see those color changes instantly rather than waiting 10 minutes so we can come in here to the living scenes tap on the settings again and see what kind of options we have here in the Hue lab controls so it's dinner party every uh it's at 87 brightness and we can see from the settings that we added earlier in the living scenes here we can send feedback and what do we think we can see that one time thingy is installed and we can go ahead and hit add new or we can edit those formula options just like that so looks like the colors are not changing specifically right now every 10 seconds we can add a second one here or we can go back and modify the one we have let's turn this off so this is a quick overview of Hume Labs where you can test out features before they hit the app we can come in here to the Hue Labs controls and turn off the scene and revert back to our previous settings for the lights and then of course we can hit the back button and go back all the way here to the automations Tab and here we've got our automations and then the option to access Hue Labs again next over is the sync button and you can sync your lights to entertainment they've got various options for doing this whether you want to sync your Spotify account plug in a Philips Hue play HDMI sync box or use your Mac or PC in order to sync the content that's streamed on your Mac and computer to the lights in that entertainment area and when you set up one of these options you'll need to map out which lights are in that entertainment area and then the Philips Hue app also the Philips version for the mac and PC requires an application that you must install so you'll need to switch switch that on to your computer and then once you install that you'll be able to connect to your Philips Hue app and modify all the different settings and of course the Philips Hue play HDMI box you'll need to buy that separate box and plug in your media to that HDMI box through the connection port and then it will you know sync your lights to that media that it plays through that box and then of course the Spotify app you just authorize your Spotify and every song that you put on Spotify is changed to the lights and you can have you know kind of like a disco party or you know light party inside of your house using spotify so that's the sync option you can sync your lights to the Spotify account an HDMI box or your PC or Mac makes it really fun to come in here and um you know have fun and secure lights to entertainment over on the next tab here the fourth one we have an explore tab where we can figure out what's new inside of Philips Hue so all the new features that come out we can check out the latest products the qtap switch mini white some more light and then we can see all the different latest products we can shop Philips Hue we can come over here and see friends of Philips Hue what works with Philips Hue so we can see Apple homekit Works Alexa Works Google Assistant works and more it's got different entertainment options that sync with you Samsung TV Spotify and more we've got different friends of hue switchers smart home devices so tons of options here of what works with you and of course apps that they like and support where you can check out you know various different apps that sync with Philips Hue products so tons of different apps you can come in here and scroll and check out that sync directly to your Philips Hue Lights and you can have your own little party with inside the apps so definitely cool to check out these explore tab you can see relevant topics learn new things about Philips Hue and more lastly in the Philips Hue app you have the settings where you can come in here and check out all the various different light settings accessory settings entertainment settings connected to voice assistance and more so this app is filled with tons of information and of course you can connect to it to wirelessly control your lights and it's pretty incredible let's take a look at what it looks like in a home with something like homekit connected to it so on this device we have the Philips Hue app in the home app and both of them are connected together if we come in here inside the home app we can see all of the lights that are inside the home and if we go to the settings over here we can tap back to the main settings and go under Voice assistance you can see that we've configured Siri and apple home so once you've configured this you'll be able to access your Siri settings inside of the Philips Hue app and then also control your lights inside of the home application so you've got Siri and home you can control your rooms enable your favorite scenes toggle your lights change your brightness and more so all you have to do is just press open the home app or you can swipe and find the Home app and then it's presented with all your lights inside of the Philips Hue app and also inside of the home app right here that we're taking a look at right now so it makes it really cool that you can integrate these you can also connect them to Google home Samsung and all the different smart devices like Alexa out there so you can control your your lights with your voice we can say turn on the kitchen and just like this the kitchen lights turn on turn off the kitchen and just like that you can see in the background there the kitchen lights just turned off we can scroll over we've got the office right here we've got the left light in the office and the right light in the office we can say turn on the office the iPhone charger is not responding so it turns on the two office lights and we don't have the smart plug plugged in so that's not responding but it just like this in the background we've got those lights turned on because they turn off the office lights and just like this it will turn off the office lights so really cool that you can use home kit in a Siri in order to access your Philips Hue Lights right here inside of the app you can come over here and set different automations also we can see that we have a motion detection automation set so so when a motion is detected under a motion sensor the lights turn on so we can enable this Automation and then we can come over here and see we've got one in the kitchen too so we've got various different automations going on here in the home app that are using the Philips Hue devices and we of course sync them over inside the Philips Hue app just by going to our settings and going to voice assistance and configuring Siri in apple home so it brings both of our both of the best worlds here where we can use the Philips Hue app check out today's sponsor racketon where you can get a 30 bonus today when you sign up using the link in the description at find.org racketon you can shop at your favorite stores with over 3 500 stores to check out and you install the plugin create an account on Rakuten and earn cash back today it's really cool that you can come here and get paid to shop and of course you can earn your 30 bonus today using the link in the description this helps out the app find channel a lot so check out today's sponsor rackington using appfine.org racketon and we can also use the home app at the same time in order to control our lights so it makes it really easy to come in here and control all of this straight from your smartphone so we can take a look at some of the settings inside here if we're to come in here and look at our view system we can look at some of the light settings we can tap on that see what the power on behavior is power on behavior is what happens when it connects to power immediately and this also occurs when a power outage happens so if the lights come on after power outage what is the default behavior for that light we can tap on it and we can say by default it's just the warm White full brightness or we can switch over to whatever last color it was set for or we can say power loss recovery it stays off or on or turns back on or we can use a custom color and brightness setting there so we can come in over here and choose those one by one for each of our different lights that we have in the house you can see all the accessories so we've got things like switches light switches and motion sensors in here we can come in here and see all the details for those just right here inside our app we can set settings for these controllers so what happens when you press the button what room does it affect what lights in that room does it affect and what happens when you press it one time what happens when you press it two times three times four times and five times you can come in here and set different scenes so one of my favorite things if we go back to the home app and we look at a room such as the kitchen we can see we've got three lights in the kitchen we can come over here and add scenes with the Press of a button so we've got the natural light scene you've got defaults relax reset read energize concentrate cold bright bright night light and dim but they've got over a dozen different scenes here and I wish I could demo them for you right here at the table but um it's just below it's mind-blowing when you have four or five lights and you press one scene all of those lights change different colors and create a beautiful looking scene a gorgeous scene that you can check out so we can come in here and you know select the blossom scene and it shows you the colors and then we can say set once just like this and then it automatically changes all the colors in the kitchen lights to that scene so it's really cool that you can have beautiful scenes you can adapt it based off the mood that you're in what you want to see the Galaxy scene or the Cocoon scene the Miami scene but still waters mountain breeze you can see the beautiful different colors that they have right here inside the Hue Phillips application where you can select your scene for your various different lights and it automatically adapts that room and make it feel just like that scene so it looks really nice and it's one of my favorite features of the Philips Hue system so you can come in here and detect you know what happens when you press these buttons on the controllers whether you want a specific scene to happen or whether you want the lights to turn on normally or whether you want something else to happen so really cool that you can come in here and adjust all of that information right here in the settings alongside the voice assistant settings and more so this has been a complete beginner's guide here of the Philips Hue showing you how you can set up your Hue Bridge into your wireless router connecting your lights for the first time and then checking out things like automations and sync and then being able to come over here and check out the settings within the Philips Hue app this has been great creating this video I hope you enjoyed it if you did let us know what your favorite feature of the Philips U System is in the comments below be sure to give us a thumbs up if you enjoyed this video and don't forget to don't forget to press the Subscribe button if you're not subscribed and turn on that notification Bell to figure out when we release our next video talking about Philips Hue and also technology and Ai and all kinds of tech videos coming soon we love creating this content for you and we can't wait to see you in the next video thanks for watching

Channel: AppFind

Views: 25,830

Keywords: Philips Hue, Smart Lights, HomeKit, Apple, Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant, Google Home

Id: PsSOxS2UY24

Length: 34min 14sec (2054 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 19 2023