popularmechanics.co.za 61they were after ranged from boosting concentration and
making reading more comfortable to helping you wind
down for sleep.
‘The only way we could actually build that and still have
a decent light output was to use these special colour LEDs
(whitish green, a red/orange, and a blue/purple), and mix
those to get these different shades of white,’ Yianni
continues. ‘And that gave us the benefit of colour, which
we found very early on in the process was actually very well
appreciated by consumers.’
Yianni said he and his team realised they were on to
something after they seeded some very rough prototypes
of Hue to consumers to see how they would use them in
their day-to-day lives. Many testers refused to give the
bulbs back.
What engendered that love were the two major aspects
that differentiated Hue – and fixed the problems with
LED whites and colour-changing lights in a single product.
Not only could the bulb emit virtually any colour of the
rainbow, but it pretty much looked like a normal light bulb.
The weird fins were gone, and the light it cast was even
and diffuse. Most importantly, it fitted in the standard
E26-size light sockets. You could pop a Hue into virtually
any fixture you already owned, from overhead lights to
your grandma’s antique lamp, and it could transform the
look of the whole room.
The other big differences were the way the bulbs
communicated with each other and the way you
communicated with them. Hue had a Bridge, a small
puck that plugs into one of the Ethernet ports on your
WiFi router. This allowed you to create and save elaborate
lighting schemes, control them all from an app on your
phone, or even automate them with other devices, in turn
making those better and more useful. One Philips tester
had the light blink pink whenever she received an email
from Facebook. And the bulbs being able to talk to each
other effectively extended the range, with each acting as
a relay station, so you could control your lights even in
rooms where the WiFi might be spotty.
To get Hue ready for prime time, Philips had some
engineering hurdles to overcome. Getting an LED array,
a microchip controller, and a radio into a standard bulb
was challenging. Yet surprisingly, that wasn’t so much due
to size limitations as it was thermal constraints.
‘Early LEDs were very much heat-limited because you
can’t run them super hot or the electronics fry,’ Yianni says.
‘You kind of play this balance of how you manage the heat
PH with getting enough light output. We actually had to make
OT
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UE
MAY / JUNE 2022 61custom LEDs to get a decent amount of light output in
white. So we developed a special lime LED – kind of
a whitish green – that’s super energy-efficient. Your eye is
most sensitive to green light wavelengths, so at the time
this was one of the most energy-efficient ways to create
perceived brightness. These multiple lime LEDs, together
with direct red-orange and royal blue LEDs, were what we
combined in our first-generation Hue bulb to deliver good-
quality white light.’
Similar to how Philips set out to make tunable white
bulbs and ended up with full-spectrum colour-changing
ones, another crucial design decision within Hue, was sort
of a happy accident. In the lead-up to the launch, Yianni
and his engineers were behind schedule and didn’t have
time to develop all the features they had hoped to build in.
They had to back-burner some in favour of working on
a new one: making the software in the bulbs themselves
updatable. This ended up being a boon, allowing Philips to
roll out numerous updates and features over the years,
including tricks for automation, compatibility with various
sensors and switches, and rapid channel adjustments.
Philips sold out its launch stock in the first week,
and the same has happened for many subsequent Hue
releases. Yianni says the team has ambitions towards
sleeker automation, but also to pivoting back to focus on
those potential health benefits that were the original
goal. Whether or not we can have better living through
better lighting remains to be seen. But homeowners
appreciate good design and problem-solving (and evidently,
attractive colours).YIANNI AND HIS TEAM REALISED
THEY WERE ON TO SOMETHING
WHEN MANY TESTERS REFUSED
TO GIVE THE BULBS BACK. ONE
HAD SET THE HUE TO BLINK PINK
WHENEVER SHE RECEIVED AN
EMAIL FROM FACEBOOK.