Philips Hue 4+

Good product

the system and products are quite good. But recently I lost control of the scene settings. The lights turned off following previous settings, although I deleted the previous one. I am still trying to figure out how to reset it.

Okay,I found the problem. The settings were not updated to Home app form Apple. So I have to manually set the Apple Home

Sign in with no value

I bought into the hue ecosystem to not have a cloud based solution to turn on my lights etc. Changing the app to mandatory sign ins has no value for me (I don’t have a use case to control lights remotely), all functions I need run perfectly fine offline. Right now there’s an annoying banner to create a login quoting some undefined security benefits. Once it switches to mandatory I will move off the hue app.

Update:

I received following reply: “ The previous mechanism used to identify users — based purely on physical access (e.g., pushing the button on the Bridge during setup) — is no longer an adequate solution.”

Care to elaborate what the risk is making this inadequate?

How often have you dealt with users having an issue with physical access to the device being used by an unauthorized person to gain access to turning lights on or off?

Is this risk you’re claiming to address so high that you cannot trust the user to decide and must force a login even for users who purchased the product when it wasn’t the case, thereby removing functionality that was a prerequisite for purchasing the product?

Developer Response ,

As the features we develop grow, so does the need for more advanced security. To keep your accounts and products secure and ensure you get the most out of your system, you’ll need to create a Philips Hue account soon. We want to reassure you that your system will still work without an internet connection. After creating an account, your data will not be sold to any third parties, and you will only receive marketing communications based on your device and account preferences.

Philips Hue needs to offer the owners of our products a robust way to manage which applications, users, and ecosystems have access to their products — and that requires a way to securely identify the owner of the system. Our solution to this will be the Philips Hue account.   
 
The previous mechanism used to identify users — based purely on physical access (e.g., pushing the button on the Bridge during setup) — is no longer an adequate solution. We want to give users the tools to keep their data as safe as possible, so we believe that change is needed.   
 
Though the full functionality of authorizing access to your Philips Hue system and managing its users will not be fully rolled out when accounts become essential (most notably for Bluetooth users), Hue accounts will still be the foundation on which we’ll be able to implement these features. 
 
After creating an account, you’ll still be able to control your lights without an internet connection — just like before. Any usage data collection and marketing communications will remain optional. 

Unable to update the Hue bridge app

I just bought a brand new pack of 3 hue bulbs and bridge. After connecting the bridge to the wifi via the provided Lan cable, the app recognises the connection between the bridge and phone mobile. Unfortunately, for unknown reasons, the app keeps rejecting the app update of bridge, saying that my mobile is not connected to the wifi. My mobile is indeed connected to wifi therefore I don’t know what is the issue. This initial setup is supposed to be simple / fast but it is not. We cannot find any solution in the net to solve the issue. We went through Philips Hue website to reach the client service but unable to find it. We will return the product tomorrow !