Beth Comstock, President & CEO, GE Business Innovations, today shared GE’s plans to engineer intelligent, color-changing LED lighting compatible with Apple’s HomeKit during GE’s Connected Future event, unveiling LED-enabled Intelligent Environments capabilities for cities, buildings and homes.
“As we continue to grow our infrastructure business by connecting our brilliant industrial machines to the Internet, it is important that consumers experience connected things in easy-to-use, everyday ways. Lighting is how many first experiment with the idea of a smart home, and our insights show that consumers want the ability to control lighting from anywhere, automate lighting and pair lighting with other devices—like sensors, thermostats and door locks,” said Comstock in a statement. “We’re excited to announce our support for HomeKit as it will bring a seamless, intuitive user experience using Siri and superior quality of light from America’s most trusted lighting brand for more than a century.”
Embedded with GE Align technology, GE’s HomeKit-enabled LED bulb takes smart home technology a step further, giving consumers the ability to automate lighting according to the body’s natural sleep circadian rhythm. Lighting impacts our sleep patterns, and GE Align tunes the light spectrum to help promote the body’s natural sleep cycle by controlling the blue concentration of light output. In the morning, GE Align produces a bright, bluer tone that suppresses the body’s production of melatonin, and in the evening it produces an amber light, reminiscent of candlelight and campfires.
HomeKit provides an easy, secure framework to easily navigate, integrate and control GE intelligent LED lighting, enabling:
• Individual device control and grouping devices into scenes all under one command
• Interoperability and integration with other connected devices
• Secure pairing through authentication and end-to-end encryption between GE intelligent LED and iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch
GE’s HomeKit-enabled intelligent LED offering will be available later this year.
Source: GE Lighting
Finally! And so much for Hue. I have about $300 worth of Hue but have been holding out for Siri integration before decking out every light in the house.
I won’t touch another GE product if they gave it to me. What a shame that company has hollowed itself out to a soulless, emotionless, arrogant imitation of a real manufacturer.
Im yet to see an led light bulb solution that offers the warmth of the incandescent bulbs ..
Once i see that … Im in !
HUE imho does not come close …
LEDs are much closer to incandescent than CFL. But Full Spectrum CFL had some of the best CRI apart from the old filament. They have spent a lot in R&D… I think if you don’t put them side by side, you would like current LED color temps.
Then you’ve not actually seen or used HUE bulbs. The spectrum is almost infinite with HUE it’s just a matter or picking a warmer white (or any other color) from a palette of colors.
Off topic: I don’t know why I’m always so disappointed when British people in forums seem incapable of typing a coherent sentence in their own language.
Glad you got that off your chest, should we talk about Geography now.
Hue is too expensive.
I hope these are not like priced. I want $5 to $8 max for each bulb. You may think I am crazy, but light bulbs used to cost 5 cents, and now they are about $25 or more for Hue.
There are some cheap Chinese knock offs out there, but an integrated system for home kit, is exciting.
I agree absolutely. Home automation is a great idea, but only works well when you have a decent number of devices. If each device costs $25 to $50, then most people would only use them sparingly if at all. On the other hand, if somebody can get the price down to something like $10 for a smart lightbulb, and not require a dedicated controller, then it would be a game changer.
Any manufacturer offering the combination of low unit price and integration with HomeKit would make massive inroads into the home automation market. It could be worth selling lightbulbs and plug-in mains outlet smart switches at near to cost price in order to encourage sales of more profitable associated products like heating controllers or blind controllers.
I agree. I’m slowly replacing CFLs with LEDs as the CFLs burn out, but I have far too many light bulbs to start buying Hue bulbs. LEDs are pricey enough, which is why they’re being replaced one/two/three at a time rather than doing the entire house at once.
Once again, the issue for me is going to be compatibility with the color of my tattoos.
Do the bulbs have to be preset to fade over time?
HUE had a great product (I think, I didn’t actually buy it) but they priced themselves out of the market for most of us.
The GE Link hub on the other hand, (a non color changing system) uses the Link Hub. Cheap and very unreliable, week range, and very un-user friendly. They do get points for a very good telephone support service and a decent iPhone app.
Lets hope GE does a better job on their new hub.
A new Apple TV base doubling as a hub? I’ll buy that.
😛 GE ripping off Philips again? GE: The Samsung of the USA.
Yeah I know. Some people here like GE. I don’t.
It’s all about the price point. I’ve got some hue lights but I do not use features enough to justify ~ 70$ a bulb for more of them. Siri has got to get better too. I can see it now…”Siri, turn the lights off”…Siri: “I’m sorry, I don’t see Lightsoff in your address book. Would you like to search the Internet?
Isn’t that the Deli down the road?