Philips Hue smart bulbs get a connectivity upgrade

Phillips Hugh Announce Upgrade her contact Smart bulbs that support the material above the string This will allow them to run both Thread and Zigbee at the same time. The change means you can connect compatible Hue lights and fixtures directly to the Matter ecosystem – Apple Home, Amazon Alexa, or Google Home – while keeping them connected to the Hue Bridge and Hue ecosystem.

“Today, you can’t turn on Zigbee and Thread at the same time, so when you turn them on, you have to choose,” said George Yanni, CTO of Philips Hue. Edge. “If you want to switch later, you have to reset it.”

The upcoming Hue update is enabled by a radio synchronization feature developed by Hue chip supplier Silicon Labs, called Concurrent Multi-Protocol (CMP) technology. This technology allows Bluetooth, Zigbee and Thread to operate in parallel.

“This means the light can be linked to a Hue Bridge or Hue Remote and Thread network,” says Yanni. “It will listen to both sets of commands and respond without you having to think about switching or setting it up differently.”

The feature will be rolled out later this year to Hue devices built on the Silicon Labs MG26 and SiMG301 wireless SoCs. “It was always the plan to do this, but it wasn’t quite ready at launch,” says Yanni.

Interestingly, the Qorvo chip that IKEA uses in its devices is capable of using similar technology. It is called synchronous current. One advantage of enabling both radios is that the powered devices can act as network extenders. So your Hue bulbs can help support your Thread network.

Today, you can pair your Hue lights with the Hue Bridge and then expose them to Apple Home, Google Home, and other Matter platforms via Matter bridging. With CMP, Matter traffic will no longer need to be routed through the Hue Bridge. Alternatively, the lights can have two masters, maintaining synchronized communications with both the Hue ecosystem and the Matter controller. This means you can pair directly with Matter without giving up Hue features.

The immediate benefit is flexibility today, but there is also future-proofing for tomorrow. “We don’t use Thread in our use cases,” says Yanni, but he doesn’t rule out moving the Hue ecosystem to Thread if the standard evolves to offer more benefits than Zigbee.

“It gives us options if future developments in the Thread standard will allow us to use it in our own use cases,” he says. “This might be something that might make us reconsider the situation,” he says. “If we could actually do better synchronization of entertainment, and more motion-sensitive areas on the Thread network.” “This is not the case today and there are currently no plans to do this, but I can imagine a future where this could happen if we are allowed to do new features and provide new functionality.”

Meanwhile, Hue users will soon be able to connect compatible bulbs directly to Apple Home, Google Home, and other Matter platforms, while continuing to use features available through the Hue Bridge.