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

If we talk about the history of the world famous company Philips, 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 company specializing in the production of incandescent lamps. The founders of the company were the father and his two sons by last name Philips, in honor of whom she received her name, which later became world famous.

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

Up to now, the company Philips continues its never-ending research activity and makes many revolutionary discoveries, constantly adding to the huge list of inventions made by its highly qualified specialists. Every minute the company Philips strives to make everyday life each person is 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 globe. The company's annual turnover exceeds 25 billion euros.

Still, like a hundred years ago, the company Philips confidently maintains its leadership in the field latest developments and high-quality production of lighting and electrical products. As before, the most daring innovative solutions are being implemented. Company Philips actively invests in the development of new products 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, more and more new lighting devices are being developed that regularly serve to illuminate houses, apartments, shops, offices and industrial premises. When it comes to open spaces, here the company Philips offers a huge selection of devices that help solve the problems of street lighting, various public places and sports facilities. There are products used in the automotive industry.

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

If you need to purchase any electrical device or lighting device, you can go to any special shop and see everything that is required, 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 market, turned 125 years old. The company has come a long way from the production of incandescent lamps to the creation of intelligent lighting systems. Today, the Dutch manufacturer is a 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 usual perception. We invite you to follow the path of innovation development of one of the largest and oldest companies peace.

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

Since 1895, and over the next 10 years, the production of Philips light bulbs has increased 20 times and reached four million. The company was ahead of all competitors for whom 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.

In the development of the company's international business important role Russia played. In 1898 small production Philips has received an order to supply 50,000 charcoal candles for the crystal chandeliers of the Tsar's Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. It became the first international contract signed by the brothers.

The luminous flux of the first incandescent lamps was very low. Therefore, by 1906, Philips was establishing 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 a staple of the Philips brothers' electrical empire in Eindhoven.

In order to optimize the production of filaments, Philips opened its own chemical laboratory in 1909. This accelerated the transformation of the company into a modern industrial enterprise specializing in mass production of lighting solutions.

In 1912, all Philips factories were merged into a single corporation, Philips Gloeilampenfabrieken ("Philips Incandescent Lamp Company"), with Gérard and Anton Philips as 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 establishing the production of lamps in several types and sizes for home, outdoor and automotive lighting.

In 1919, Philips launched 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 lighthouses.

In 1923, Philips began producing neon tubes, flexible colored lamps that could take the form of letters. Unusual lighting solutions are beginning to be put into words and increasingly used in outdoor advertising.

In 1931, Philips developed low-pressure sodium lamps with a power that allowed them to be used for outdoor lighting of ports, marshalling yards, facades, streets and roads. The lamps were named Philora, derived from a combination of the words Philips and Aurora. This was an allusion to the bright red sky at dawn, as when turned on, the lamps glowed red, which turned yellow when heated.

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

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

In 2007, fashion designers begin to use 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 organic LED lamp(OLED) Philips Lumiblade that remove the shape and size limitations of traditional lamps and luminaires. The homogeneous glow, unusual shape, low thermal radiation, extremely fine structure and controllability of these light sources provide almost limitless possibilities for developing 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 lit up with 16 million Philips flowers. grandiose light show started at 9 pm and was accompanied by the hit "Empire State Of Mind" performed by Alicia Keys. The scale presentation demonstrated for the first time the wide application possibilities of LEDs.

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

In 2013, a unique environmental project was implemented in The Hague. The Koningstunnel has been painted with a special air-purifying paint. The UV light from Philips fluorescent lamps activates the cleaning properties of the paint, which neutralizes vehicle emissions and improves air quality.

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

In 2011, integrated lighting systems (Connected Lighting) were presented, incorporating the most advanced developments of the company in the field of "smart" lighting. Thanks to technical properties LED lighting systems can be programmed and remotely change multiple lighting scenarios, taking the light beyond its traditional functions. An "intelligent" City Touch solution was presented, which allows you to control the 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 multicolor 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 broadcast dynamic content. In addition, Luminous Textile panels do not let extraneous sounds into the room and absorb echoes.

In 2011, Philips developed and brought to market the LED equivalent of the 75-watt incandescent light bulb. This solution reduces energy consumption by 80%, and its life cycle is 25,000 hours, which is 25 times the life of a 75-watt lamp.

In 2012, the company introduced Philips Hue ZigBee-controlled LED lamps. The system can reproduce all whites from warm to cool and a full spectrum of colors, and consumes 80% less energy than an incandescent lamp. Thanks to ZigBee technology, the lamps can be networked and controlled via mobile devices based on Android and iOS, 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 12 cm ultra-thin "ceiling" minimizes the number of other lighting fixtures and leads to improved acoustics in the room.

In 2014, the company presented Luminous Carpet, a smart carpet flooring. Thanks to the built-in LEDs and the ability to program, the carpet turns into a unique communication tool that can convey all the necessary information and make it easier to navigate in an unfamiliar space.

In 2016, Philips is working with the University of Arizona to explore energy-efficient ways to grow plants that can feed astronauts on the Moon and Mars. A prototype lunar greenhouse conducted a nine-week study that showed that replacing a water-cooled sodium gas discharge (HPS) lighting system with a Philips LED system resulted in increased yields of high-quality leaf lettuce, improved operational efficiency, optimized resource utilization, and reduced energy costs by 56% .

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

Understanding the positive impact of light on people, combined with advanced technological developments, allows 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 consumer and professional segments.

Integration into the Internet of Things has taken light beyond mere illumination and turned it into a tool that can transform any building or urban space. In 2015, sales amounted to 7.4 billion euros.

Philips has long established itself as one of the largest and most serious manufacturers of lighting fixtures and lamps. From time to time, Philips has lamps that are nice to put at home - they are beautifully executed, have different colors of illumination 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 can't 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 abandoned it, and it turned into another dust collector that is an eyesore. It was frankly a pity for the money spent on it (about $ 300), but somehow no one guessed to give it to me. Such toys are an almost perfect gift, as a rule, you definitely don’t have them, they arouse interest, and most importantly, they don’t buy such things 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.

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

I will not mention other lamps from Philips, for example, candles with induction charging, they can often be found in restaurants, where they have taken root. 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 horns in lighting. At the same time, Edison introduced a household switch, which has survived unchanged to this day. The simplicity of the design has conquered time.

Unfortunately, the developments of Alexander Lodygin, who developed most of the lamps in Russia, including those with a tungsten filament, are completely forgotten - these are the lamps that are used today. It is difficult to overestimate his contribution, since it was under his patent that General Electric began to produce incandescent lamps in the United States, however, he was also the first to propose twisting the incandescent filament in a spiral, as well as pumping air out of the bulb.

The idea of ​​a lighting lamp has hardly changed over the years. The incandescent lamp was simple and clear, like a shovel, the main purpose was to illuminate rooms or outdoor spaces. Because of this, cases, filament materials, resource, brightness, and power could differ, but not the principle of operation. Turned on - received light. Turned off - the lamp stopped working. In the 70s of the last century, there was a fashion for the automation of premises, including residential ones. The switches became "smart", they could react to the presence of a person and turn on the light. You could clap your hands to turn on the lights. But all the developments concerned precisely the switches, they also included the ability to adjust the brightness of the lamps using a wheel and a simple electronic circuit. But no one has tried to reinvent the lighting lamp. Materials changed, lamps became not so 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 threshold of a truly “smart” home, which can be intelligent and independent of us.

Philips HUE lamps that network together

Philips revisited the concept of a conventional lamp and envisioned that in the future such lamps would be able to perform completely different tasks. Track the presence of people and animals in the room, automatically adjust to the current task (a person sat in a chair - a floor lamp lit up nearby), accompany a person from room to room (the light burns in front of you and goes out behind 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 out-of-the-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 whole direction.

Given the high cost of each lamp that has 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 features management. There is no point in 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 secure data transmission, while the data transfer rate is low. Also one of the requirements was 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 crushed all our heels and is ready to change the life of future generations. I never thought that lighting lamps could be networked. I am writing and I 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 consisting of thousands of lamps. It is unlikely that this will be needed in an ordinary house, but, for example, for theaters or public places, this promises a very interesting scenarios applications. Obviously, using this kind of lamps in the theater, you can achieve new unique lighting effects and have a stronger impact on the audience. The number of scenarios and places for using such networks of lighting lamps is almost inexhaustible.

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


Unlike the Philips project, here it is supposed to control not a set of lamps, but only individual bulbs. But the project itself looks like a copy of the already existing Philips Hue, and even the prices of one lamp are equal (about $70 in the US). The fundamental difference between these projects is only one, 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 Philips Hue works

In the US, a Philips Hue kit costs $199 (three bulbs, controller), and an extra bulb costs $60. In the US, they can be purchased at the Apple Store, as well as ordered home delivery. It does not make much sense for Russia to buy these lamps in the USA, they are designed for other electrical networks and can whistle unpleasantly (a sort of high-frequency noise). In Europe, the set costs exactly the same amount, but in euros.


The box is made very nicely, you can spin the wheel and see what colors will be available to you.



Take out the lamps and screw them into the places where you plan to use them. There is one big ambush that I didn't even think about until Hue came to me. The lamps use the E27 base, it is ordinary and standard. But here's the problem - most of the chandeliers, wall lamps in my apartment, it turns out, use a thinner base. Looking around room after room, I realized that I had 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 hallway that had an E27 base, and I breathed a sigh of relief. But the joy was premature, the size of the “smart” Hue lamps is much larger than that of modern, familiar lamps.


As a result, screwing the lamp simply did not work, there was no place for it. I had to find a few lamps that also had an E27 base, but it was also not so easy to crawl through the neck with a Hue lamp. Having perverted, I nevertheless achieved my goal.

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




On the controller, press the central button, 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 unplugged, 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 uncomfortable, I'm sure that in the future they will figure out how to get around this shortcoming. I have a hard time imagining the situation when leaving the room, instead of the usual flick of the switch by the door, I have to get into the phone to turn off the light.

The third step is to install the Philips Hue app on either iOS (tablet or phone) or Android. There is nothing difficult in setting up the system and there are no these three steps, even a child can handle 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, in total up to 16 million colors are 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 pale green color. The number of colors is varied only at first glance, it is limited, and quite tough.


The characteristics of Hue lamps are as follows:

  • Brightness - 600 lumens, which corresponds to a 50 W lamp;
  • Turn-on time - 2 seconds;
  • Consumed maximum power - 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 it is contraindicated to buy Hue lamps or any other expensive lighting lamps, for example, energy-saving ones, in the absence of high-quality current in the apartment - they will burn out. You need to install inlet filters, only after that, making sure that you do not need to replace the lamps every 3-4 months, you can experiment with expensive light sources. Otherwise it is meaningless.


In the program, you can set up presets, that is, select a color, its brightness (color temperature ranges from 2000 to 6500 K). All this is done for each lamp. You can set the alarm 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 all together).


The program also has “light recipes”, these are four types of illumination that differ in intensity.


My little daughter really enjoyed playing with the program and changing the color of the lights. But practical application for different backlight colors I could not find at home. It is possible that a designer’s hand is needed here, who will set up the floor lamp and wall lamps correctly by the fireplace or next to the bookcases. In many ways this is very interesting story for interior designers, as well as companies that sell turnkey “smart” home. Against the backdrop of smart home solutions, a Philips Hue kit costs practically nothing (the cost of solutions, as a rule, starts from 15,000 euros and more).

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

The number of other minor shortcomings associated with the program is quite large and noticeable. But basically, even though the first pancake 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 backlight colors in different rooms and conditions).

Short conclusions

Philips anticipated the future and released smart bulbs before any of the competitors, there are no alternatives to Hue at the moment. But pioneers always make bumps, and Philips will be no exception, since it is extremely difficult to come up with real, not far-fetched scenarios for using lamps. In Philips, this side of the issue was hardly touched upon.

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

Eldar Murtazin ()

 

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