Smartphones are becoming an absolutely essential part of everyday life. From the early days when Palm phones started to feel like a personal assistant, we now have mobile technology that can help in every part of everyday life.
One of the most intriguing recent developments has been the increasing popularity of home control, where your phone can activate and switch off certain appliances in your home, with the Phillips ‘HUE’ lighting system leading the way.
Having the ability to control your lighting system from your phone is fantastic, but Talk to HUE, the latest app to work with the devices, goes one step further. Cleverly integrating Google’s ‘Voice’ recognition system, it allows you to switch your lights on with a simple voice command, and much more besides.
Here, straight from the developer, are the app’s best features:
– Auto-discovery of available HUE bridges
– Auto-discovery of available light scenes and groups
– Google Voice Recognition with improved matching algorithms for better recognition of sound-similarities
– Standard commands to switch on/off all lights
– Switch light scenes
– Select light groups
– Additional standard commands will tell you the current time and allow to set a timer or tell you the list of available commands.
The app connects really well to a HUE bridge, and the Google Voice technology works just as well as it does everywhere else it has been used, and I had no problems getting the app to function as it should, responding well to both my voice and my friend’s, who owns the HUE system I tested this on.
There are quite a few commands that the app responds to, and the continuous service function seemed to work well enough, and will probably be where the app spends most of its time, long after you have initially played around with it.
A superb addition to a HUE home setup, this is well worth the small asking price, and comes highly recommended.
