Wi-Fi lighting lamps - Philips Hue, or the future of the smart home. Wi-Fi lighting lamps - Philips Hue, or the future of the smart home Philips light

If we talk about the history of a world famous company Philips, then we can say that it passes through several centuries. In fact, the company was founded almost at the very end of the 19th century, in 1891, in the Dutch city of Eindhoven, as a small enterprise specializing in the production of incandescent lamps. The founders of the company were the father and his two sons by the last name Philips, in honor of whom she received her name, which later became world famous.

In just a few years, the company Philips seriously strengthens its position in the lighting market and very soon one of the world leaders in production incandescent lamps... Soon a real industrial revolution begins on the European continent, which prompts the founders of the company Philips create its own laboratory, which begins to intensively engage in research activities. The company very soon had a lot of innovative projects for that time related to radio broadcasting and electrical engineering.

Until now, the company Phillips continues its incessant research activity and makes many revolutionary discoveries, constantly replenishing a huge list of inventions made by its highly qualified specialists. Every minute the company Philips strives to make everyone's daily life much better.

The company is currently Philips is a global giant with more than 120,000 employees working in its branches located in 100 countries around the world. The company's annual turnover exceeds 25 billion euros.

Still, like a hundred years ago, the company Phillips confidently maintains its leadership in the field of the latest developments and high-quality production of lighting and electrical products. As before, the most daring innovative solutions are being implemented. Company Philips is actively engaged in investment in the development of new digital technology, LED devices and continues to further develop the market for devices using traditional lighting.

Modern products of the company Philips fully meets the growing needs of consumers in all sectors of its application. For premises, new lighting devices are being developed, which regularly serve to illuminate houses, apartments, shops, offices and industrial premises. When it comes to open spaces, here too the company Philips a huge selection of devices is offered to help solve the problems of lighting streets, various public places and sports facilities. There are products used in the automotive industry.

Company Philips fully closely monitors the entire development, production and marketing chain of its lighting and electrical products. Tellingly, the company employs about 50,000 highly qualified specialists in these areas of its production.

If there is a need to purchase any electrical device or lighting device, you can go to any specialized store and see everything you need produced by the company Philips... By purchasing a product from this company, you can be sure that it will serve properly and for a very long time.

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On May 15, 2016, Philips Lighting Solutions, the leader in the lighting technology market, celebrated its 125th anniversary. The company has come a long way from manufacturing incandescent lamps to creating intelligent lighting systems. Today the Dutch manufacturer is the market leader and develops innovative lighting solutions for all segments of business and public life.

65% of the largest airports, 30% of hospitals, 35% of cars, 55% of football stadiums and 30% of offices around the world are equipped with the company's solutions. Thanks to Philips, light has gone beyond the ordinary. We invite you to follow the path of development of innovations of one of the largest and oldest companies in the world.

In 1891, entrepreneur Gerard Philips founded in the city of Eindhoven (Netherlands) a factory for the production of lamps with carbon filament.

Beginning in 1895 and over the next 10 years, the production of Philips light bulbs increased 20 times and reached four million. The company outstripped all competitors for which the manufacture of these products was only part of the business.

After 5 years, the brother of Gerard Philips, Anton Philips, joined the Philips business.

Russia played an important role in the development of the company's international business. In 1898 small production Philips has received an order for the supply of 50,000 charcoal candle lamps for the crystal candelabra of the Tsar's Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. It was the first international contract between the brothers.

The luminous flux of the first incandescent lamps was very low. Therefore, by 1906, Philips was setting up the production of lamps with tungsten filaments. Due to the high melting point (3380 ° C), the heating of the filament began to reach higher temperatures, which significantly increased the light output. The tungsten lamp becomes the main product of the Philips brothers' electrical empire in Eindhoven.

To optimize filament production processes, Philips opened its own chemical laboratory in 1909. This accelerated the company's transformation into a modern industrial enterprisespecializing in the mass production of lighting solutions.

In 1912, all Philips factories were merged into a single corporation Philips Gloeilampenfabrieken (Philips incandescent lamp company), where Gerard and Anton Philips became directors. On April 1, 1922, Philips had over 5,500 employees.

In 1914, the company opens a research laboratory to develop various types of lamps. Gradually Philips is developing the production of lamps of several types and sizes for home, outdoor and automotive lighting.

In 1919, Philips released the Goliath, the world's largest lamp with a power of 25,000 watts and a diameter of about a meter. "Goliath" served to illuminate the lighthouses.

In 1923 Philips begins production of neon tubes, flexible colored lamps capable of taking the shape of letters. Unusual lighting solutions are beginning to be put into words and are increasingly used in outdoor advertising.

In 1931, Philips developed low-pressure sodium lamps, the power of which made them suitable for outdoor lighting of ports, marshalling yards, facades, streets and roads. The lamps are named Philora, derived from a combination of the words Philips and Aurora. This represented an allusion to the bright red sky at dawn, since when the lamps were turned on they glowed red, which turned yellow when heated.

In 1980, Philips introduced its compact fluorescent lamps, the most energy efficient solution for home lighting at the time, and 10 years later began manufacturing recyclable compact fluorescent lamps with reduced mercury content.

In 1999 Philips introduced the first light-emitting diode (LED) lighting solution, in which, instead of a filament or gas, light is created by passing a stream of charged particles through a semiconductor device. LED bulbs consume far less energy than any other lighting solution and Philips is today the world leader in LED technology.

In 2007, fashion designers start using LEDs to create clothes. The Bubelle dress, the inner layer of which is equipped with biometric sensors, "reacts" to emotions and displays them on the outer LED layer of the dress.

In 2009, the company first introduced Philips Lumiblade organic light-emitting diode (OLED) lamps, which remove the shape and size restrictions inherent in traditional lamps and fixtures. The uniform glow, unusual shape, low thermal radiation, extremely fine structure and controllability of these light sources provide almost limitless possibilities for the development of revolutionary lighting solutions and concepts. For example, OLEDs were used to create stage costumes for the Black Eyed Peas in 2011.

On November 27, 2012, the legendary Empire State Building in New York was lit up with 16 million Philips colors. Grandiose light show started at 9 pm and was followed by the hit "Empire State Of Mind" performed by Alicia Keys. The scaled view for the first time demonstrated the wide range of applications of LEDs.

On April 13, 2013, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands inaugurated the new Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, which, like the works of art on display, was illuminated by Philips LEDs.

In 2013, a unique environmental project was implemented in The Hague. The Koningstunnel tunnel was painted with a special paint that can purify the air. The ultraviolet light from Philips fluorescent lamps activates the cleaning properties of a paint that neutralizes car emissions and improves air quality.

In 2010, as part of another environmental project Philips installed a Bird Light lighting solution on the Dutch company NAM's oil platform near Vlieland Island. Thanks to the special Bird Light technology, the red component is eliminated from the light spectrum, which reduces the disorientation of birds during migrations and prevents them from colliding with oil platforms.

In 2011, Connected Lighting was introduced, incorporating the company's most advanced smart lighting solutions. Thanks to technical properties LED lighting systems can be programmed and remotely changed numerous lighting scenarios, taking the light beyond its traditional functions. The “smart” solution City Touch was presented, which allows you to control lighting in the city from a single remote control and reduces energy consumption by up to 80%.

In 2011, the company introduced Luminous Textile, a light panel consisting of multi-color programmable LED modules embedded in sound-absorbing fabric panels from the Danish company Kvadrat Soft Cells. The main feature of innovative light wallpapers is the ability to stream dynamic content. In addition, Luminous Textile panels do not allow extraneous sounds into the room and absorb echoes.

In 2011, Philips developed and marketed the LED counterpart of the 75-watt incandescent lamp. This solution reduces energy consumption by up to 80% and life cycle is 25,000 hours, which is 25 times the shelf life of a 75-watt lamp.

In 2012, the company introduced the Philips Hue ZigBee-controlled LED bulbs. The system can reproduce all shades of white - from warm to cool - and the full spectrum of colors, and also uses up to 80% less energy than an incandescent lamp. Thanks to ZigBee technology, lamps can be networked and controlled by Android and iOS mobile devices, including the Apple Watch.

In 2013, Philips OneSpace appeared - an LED panel that emits high-quality homogeneous functional light, close to natural daylight, blocks the appearance of glare and shadows without distorting the colors of objects. The ultra-thin "ceiling" 12 centimeters thick minimizes the number of other lighting fixtures and leads to improved room acoustics.

In 2014 the company presented the Luminous Carpet - “smart” carpet. Thanks to built-in LEDs and programmability, the carpet turns into a unique communication tool that can convey all the necessary information and simplify orientation in an unfamiliar space.

In 2016, Philips is working with the University of Arizona to explore energy-efficient ways to grow plants that could be food for astronauts on the Moon and Mars. In a prototype lunar greenhouse, a nine-week study showed that replacing a water-cooled sodium discharge (HPS) lighting system with a Philips LED system increases the yield of high-quality lettuce, improves operating efficiency, optimizes resource use and cuts energy costs by 56% ...

Company Philips "Lighting solutions", part of Royal Philips (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHIA), is an international company, one of the leaders in the production of lighting solutions and integrated lighting systems, as well as rendering services in the field of lighting.

Understanding the positive human impact of light, coupled with cutting-edge technological developments, enables the company to create innovative digital lighting solutions that open up new business opportunities and help improve people's lives. The company is a leader in the implementation of energy efficient LED solutions in both the consumer and professional segments.

Integration into the Internet of Things has taken light beyond simple lighting and turned it into a tool that can transform any building and urban space. In 2015, sales were € 7.4 billion.

Philips has long established itself as one of the largest and most serious manufacturers of lighting fixtures and lamps. Periodically, Philips has lamps that are pleasant to put at home - they are beautifully executed, have different backlight colors and are a little more than completely useless. For example, I could not resist and bought myself Living Colors.

Don't ask me why, emotions cannot be explained. I liked how the glass ball changes the color of the backlight and how beautiful it looks in the dark. After playing with the lamp for a couple of days at most, I threw it away, and it turned into another dust collector, which is an eyesore. I was frankly sorry for the money spent on it (about $ 300), and somehow no one thought to give it to me. Such toys are almost an ideal gift, as a rule, you definitely don't have them, they arouse interest, and most importantly, they don't buy them for themselves. And as a gift, they look appropriate, and the recipient of it often comes up with where to put it and how to use it.

The use of Living Colors turned out to be appropriate only once, in one designer and terribly expensive apartment there were a little more than a dozen of them, and together they created lighting for various objects. It looked interesting, but it was an exception to the usual and expected use of such lamps.

I will not recall other Philips lamps, for example, induction-charged candles, which can often be found in restaurants where they have taken root quite well. In 2012, the company set out to show us the future of conventional lighting lamps that have not changed since Edison. Edison lamps have become a household name in America since the 1880s, replacing gas-fired lighting. At the same time, Edison introduces a household switch, which has survived unchanged to this day. Simplicity of design has won over time.

Unfortunately, the developments of Alexander Lodygin have been completely forgotten, who in Russia developed most of the lamps, including those with a tungsten filament - these are the lamps that are used today. His contribution can hardly be overestimated, since it was according to his patent that incandescent lamps began to be produced by General Electric in the United States, however, he was also the first to propose to twist the filament in a spiral, and also to pump out air from the flask.

The idea of \u200b\u200ba lighting lamp has hardly changed over the years. The incandescent lamp was simple and straightforward, like a shovel, its main purpose - to illuminate rooms or outdoor spaces. Because of this, the housings, filament materials, resource, brightness, and power could differ, but not the principle of operation. Turned on - got the light. Turned off - the lamp stopped working. In the 70s of the last century, the fashion for the automation of premises, including residential ones, went. Switches became “smart”, they could react to human presence and turn on the light. You could clap your hands to turn on the lights. But all the developments concerned precisely the switches, and the ability to adjust the brightness of the lamps using a wheel and a simple electronic circuit also belonged to them. But no one tried to reinvent the lighting lamp. The materials changed, the lamps became less voracious, the technology itself changed - but the principle of operation of lighting lamps was the same as at the dawn of their appearance. Starting in 2012, this principle can be changed, and we are on the verge of a truly “smart” home, which can be intelligent and independent of us.

Philips HUE lamps that are networked

Philips redefined the concept of a conventional lamp and assumed that in the future, such lamps could fulfill completely different tasks. Track the presence of people and animals in the room, automatically adjust to the current task (a person sat down in a chair - a floor lamp next to it lit up), accompany a person from room to room (the light is on in front of you and goes out after you). What looks fantastic, is easily implemented in practice even today, it is a matter of desire and availability of free funds. The lack of box solutions makes such systems terribly expensive and incompatible with each other. Philips decided to correct this defect and build a prototype that would become the ancestor of the entire direction.

Considering the high cost of each lamp with a built-in Wi-Fi transmitter (to be precise, a ZigBee transmitter, but not to be confused, I will call it Wi-Fi), they decided to make them LED and add additional control options. It makes no sense to waste time on trifles, all the same, such devices will remain expensive. ZigBee (802.15.4) was chosen as the standard, which allows lamps to be networked. The main characteristics of such a network are as follows - guaranteed and safe data transmission, while the data transfer rate is low. Also one of the requirements was the low power consumption in standby mode.

Having written a proposal that lighting lamps are networked, I realized that the future has not just arrived, it has already given us all our heels and is ready to change the lives of future generations. I never thought that lighting lamps could be networked. I write and understand that science fiction has burst into ordinary life.

In the current implementation, one controller can control fifty lamps, but the number of controllers is unlimited, and in theory you can build very complex structures of thousands of lamps. This is unlikely to be needed in an ordinary house, but, for example, for theaters or public places it promises interesting scenarios application. Obviously, using such lamps in the theater, you can achieve new unique lighting effects and stronger influence on the audience. The number of scenarios and places for using such networks of lighting lamps is almost endless.

That history is being made in this area is felt by many people. For example, there is a LifX project on Kickstarter, in which it is supposed to create a “smart” lamp with a built-in Wi-Fi module, as well as various backlight colors through the use of LEDs. Initially, the creators of the project wanted to raise $ 100,000, but in two months they received one million three hundred and fourteen thousand, which characterizes the interest in this area.

Unlike the Philips project, it is not supposed to be controlled by a set of lamps, but only by individual lamps. But the project itself looks like a copy of the existing Philips Hue, and even the prices of one lamp are equal (about $ 70 in the USA). The fundamental difference between these projects is only in one thing, Hue exists not only on paper, but has already gone on sale, while LifX was late with the release and does not yet have any tangible advantages.

What's in the box and how does Philips Hue work

In the US, a Philips Hue kit costs $ 199 (three lamps, a controller), an additional lamp costs $ 60. In the US, they can be purchased from the Apple Store and can also be ordered home delivery. It doesn't make much sense for Russia to buy these lamps in the USA, they are intended for other power grids and can whistle unpleasantly (a kind of high-frequency noise). In Europe, a set costs exactly the same amount, but in euros.

The box is made very nicely, you can turn the wheel and see what colors are available to you.

Take out the lamps and screw them into the places where you plan to use them. There is one big ambush here that I didn't even think about until Hue came to me. The lamps use an E27 base, it is ordinary and standard. But here's the bad luck - most of the chandeliers, wall lamps in my apartment, it turns out, use a thinner base. Climbing room after room, I realized that I was faced with a non-trivial task - to find where to connect these lamps. Believe me, I did not expect such a turn at all.

There were wall lamps in the corridor, in which there was an E27 base, and I breathed a sigh of relief. But the joy was premature, the size of Hue smart lamps is much larger than that of modern, familiar lamps.

As a result, it simply did not work to screw in the lamp, there was no room for it. I had to find several lamps, which also had an E27 base, but it was also not so easy to get through the neck with the Hue lamp. Having perverted, I still achieved my goal.

Next, you need to connect the controller to your Wi-Fi router (the wire is included). This is another drawback, the lamps can be controlled only with this connection, and this is somewhat annoying. It's good that I have the ability to pull out one of the network cables, I don't really need it. But when buying Hue, you need to understand that you need a router that is connected to the network, otherwise your system will simply not work.

Press the central button on the controller, after turning on all the lamps. Within a couple of seconds, the controller finds our lamps and shows their status. An important point is that in order to fully control Hue lamps, they cannot be disconnected from the mains, that is, your switches must be on all the time. And you will have to turn off the light from your phone or tablet. It sounds terribly unusual and inconvenient, I am sure that in the future they will figure out how to get around this drawback. I have a bad idea of \u200b\u200bthe situation when leaving the room, instead of the usual flick of the switch at the door, I have to get into the phone to turn off the light.

The third step is to install Philips Hue software on iOS (tablet or phone) or Android. There is nothing difficult in setting up the system and there are no these three steps, the child can cope with them. In the program you get access to various pictures in which you can move your lamps and choose the color of their glow.

Philips claims that each lamp consists of 11 LEDs, with a total of up to 16 million colors available. This is a clear exaggeration, as was the case with Living Colors, since it is impossible to achieve a natural blue or green color, in the second case it is a light green color. The number of colors is varied only at first glance, it is limited, and quite rigid.

The characteristics of Hue lamps are as follows:

Brightness - 600 lumens, which corresponds to a 50 W lamp;
Turn-on time - 2 seconds;
Maximum power consumption - 8.5W;
Resource - 15,000 hours, which will be at least 10 years of active use;
Lamp height - 110 mm, diameter - 62 mm;

Especially for Russian users, I want to note that buying Hue lamps or any other expensive lighting lamps, for example, energy-saving ones, is contraindicated in the absence of high-quality current in the apartment - they will burn out. You need to install filters at the inlet, only after that, making sure not to replace the lamps every 3-4 months, you can experiment with expensive light sources. Otherwise, it makes no sense.

In the program, you can customize presets, that is, choose a color, its brightness (color temperature ranges from 2000 to 6500 K). All this is done for each lamp. You can set the alarm clock for a specific time, then the lights will turn on gradually and wake you up (Philips already had such an alarm clock with a built-in radio - a useful thing only if you sleep alone or get up together).

The program also has “light recipes”, these are four types of backlighting, differing in intensity.

My little daughter really enjoyed playing with the program and changing the color of the lighting fixtures. But I could not find a practical application for different backlight colors at home. It is possible that the hand of a designer is needed here, who will adjust the floor lamp and wall lamps correctly by the fireplace or next to the bookcases. In many ways, this is a very interesting story for interior designers, as well as companies that sell turnkey smart homes. Compared to smart home solutions, the Philips Hue set is practically worthless (the cost of solutions, as a rule, starts from 15,000 euros and more).

Turning on the lamps through a network service occurs with a long delay, instead of 2-3 seconds it took me 10-12 seconds. What is the reason for such a delay is not clear.

The number of other minor bugs associated with the program is quite large and noticeable. But at the core of its first pancake, even if it came out lumpy, it shows very good prospects. Another thing is that the question remains, how to use this toy in practice (it will be great if you can suggest those scenarios that are close to you - why do you need different colors of illumination in different rooms, conditions).

Short conclusions

Philips anticipated the future and released smart bulbs before any of its competitors, there is currently no alternative to Hue. But pioneers are always bumping up, and Philips will be no exception, since it is extremely difficult to come up with real, not far-fetched lamp application scenarios. Philips hardly touched on this side of the issue.

The company says that they are developing similar lamps of a different power, for different caps, and you will be able to form a network of different standard sizes of lamps. All this will happen in the near future. This will automatically remove some of the questions, but the main one will remain - who needs it and why. As an interesting gift, Hue has no competitors, interest is guaranteed, as is a short game. Constant use? A big question. Although, perhaps, you will convince me and tell me how you can use such lamps and why. Thank you in advance for that.

Eldar Murtazin ()

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