So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodbye. Adieu Adieu, to Hue and Hue and Hue....
2017 I started implementing Hue around my home in San Jose and, at the time, the choice was pretty much Hue or, um, well.... Hue. And it was eye wateringly expensive... actually still is. Don't get me wrong, it's good stuff. But it is very expensive. I also had a lot. So much, in fact, I had to run a 2nd bridge.
When I moved back to the UK in 2021, I took out some of my Hue products from the house in San Jose, and brought them with me, including one of the bridges and the whole Hue Sync setup I had which was the Hue Sync, and 6 Hue Play bars.
In 2022 I bought a house in the UK, and by then the gradient light strip for Hue Play had come out, and so I bought that. That covered ¾'s of the TV, so I still needed 2 Play bars to cover the bottom of the TV.
Meanwhile, I was buying Nanoleaf lamps for the house. Partly because they are about ⅓ of the price with the same/better functionality, but also because most of the house required bayonet (B22) bulbs/globes rather than screw in ones, which is what all my American bulbs were. By the way, US bulbs do work in the UK with no problem at all!
I also had a few Hue Lightstrips, but any new ones I was buying Eve lightstrips.
I had enlarged my Nanoleaf Canvas and also bought Nanoleaf Elements.
The only new Hue bulbs I had bought were because Nanoleaf didn't support the size, and were the E14 Candle bulbs, and also some Hue outdoor lights that I liked for my front door - the Appear Outdoor wall light.
So, you can definitely say that Hue was becoming a niche product in my house.
That hub was beginning to really annoy me. It was now doing so little, but I couldn't get rid of it because of the Hue Sync.
Then......
The Nanoleaf 4D
and, because it uses a camera, it would support the 3D mode on my TV. Something Hue did not do.
Now, if you don't care about this section, go to a lower section which will talk about how I actually got rid of the hub!
It's also very well priced and supports TV's up to 65" or up to 85". That's actually an important difference, as if your tv is over 65" and less than 85", you can buy the longer strip, and cut it to size.
The other things I like about this set up are:
- the light strip goes all the way around the TV, not ¾'s
- There's only one power supply which powers everything
- There's no longer a device in your HDMI stream.
- It works with live TV - but actually, that isn't an issue for me as I a
That last one provided an unexpected bonus. As soon as I remove the Hue Sync Box, the picture on my TV seemed to improve, especially with the black getting more black. I thought it may have been me, but my partner agrees too.
Physical installation is quite easy. The small installation manual seems to suggest installing the light strip from a corner is a good idea, but if you want to hide your cables well, and you use a pedestal, then installing from the bottom centre seems to be the best idea as you can then hide the cables behind the neck of the pedestal. The point, here, is that the installation is actually extremely flexible.... and you'll see why very soon.
Calibration
Let's Calibrate!
Before you calibrate the set up, I'd heavily suggest you watch this video on YouTube.
I found it after I had calibrated, and it certainly improved my setup. So watch it first, and you will actually show it and pause it during your calibration.
My screen shots are from after I had set up the device, which does appear in Apple Home, but you see them during initial set up.
Not too surprisingly, you get there from device settings, and then you select.....Calibration!
The next step is simple, you actually indicate where you have put the camera. Select Above or Below. Now, how to place teh camera is one of the tips in the video above.... so watch that video if you haven't already!
Now you start to really get into the fun, which is the Light Strip Calibration. (I'm sorry, I just keep having Kool and the Gang's "Celebration" going through my head - Let's Calibrate!)
Because you can install the light strip anyway you want, unlike Hue, you have to tell it where the corners are. You do that by selecting a corner, seeing where the green light is, and turning the dial so the green light actually shows in the corner you selected. When you have it in the right place, you repeat for another corner. Yes, you have to do this for all four corners!
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In my case, for the top left corner, the light appeared in the bottom left corner. I move the dial for it to appear in the top left. I repeated for each corner.
When you have done that, you now get to tell the camera where the edge of the screen is. Once more, this is where you need that video I pointed to earlier, as it gives you a useful place to pause and shows a screen that will help you place the camera. I found it much easier to use the full screen option.
Once you've done this. You are fully calibrated.
Well..... not quite. You are as far as Nanoleaf is concerned, but it doesn't work very well with Letter Box video. So, I suggest you show a favourite, bright, letter box video and then recalibrate the top part to be inside that letterbox.... otherwise the camera will always see black at the top.
Now you are done!
Except, well, one thing the Hue did well was around it coming on when you turned on the source. This is because it sits in the HDMI stream, where Nanoleaf 4D does not.
It's actually quite easy, I created an automation in Apple Home to do this for me, because the 4D appears as a light.
Basically, when the TV turns on, my automation closes the curtains, turns on a corner light and turns on the 4D. The Amplifier and TV turning on are actually taken care of via HDMI control from when I turn on the tv.
I have a similar automation for when the TV turns off, except it has a test to see what time of day it is, relative to sunset/sunrise so that it will, or will not, open the curtains.
Getting rid of the Hue hub.
In a previous post on Home Energy Management I talked about the Legrand setup I have. The Legrand Gateway is a Zigbee 3.0 hub and they have specifically added support for some non-Legrand devices, including Hue bulbs/lights.
What I'm about to go through here is specific to the Legrand Gateway, but it is mostly true of a number of Zigbee hubs that are out there. Essentially, what I've done is to consolidate my hubs using the functionality in another.
You now see what can be supported, and you can see that Hue is supported by the Legrand Gateway. I selected that, and now I have to put the gateway into pairing mode. You have to be very careful here, as if you press that button for too long, it will reset the gateway. The clue is the green light going solid green.
Once the gateway is in pairing mode, and the app sees it, it will move on and suggest that you go through. group of rooms. In my case, the lights were so far apart that it wasn't really possible and I had to go room by room by starting the process again. Not the fault of Legrand, it was more to do with getting the Hue bulbs/globes into pairing mode.
Once you start the process, you can select the room, you are given an option to add rooms, but note that you should scroll upwards as at the bottom is "import rooms", and this is to import from Apple Home. It is a good idea to do this as the integration with Apple Home can be a bit flakey if you don't use the actual room names that Apple Home uses. In this particular example I will be adding a Light Strip in the Utility Room, which already existed, so I just selected the Room name.
You are now asked if the light has been installed with a different application. The Answer, in this case, is yes as it was configured in the Hue App. This meant all I had to do was delete it from the Hue App, which remove dit from the bridge and then from Apple Home. To get it to appear in the setup list I found it varied between the various lights. With Hue Bulbs I found that it just appeared. but with the light strips I had to turn them off and back on again.
You can see that the light has now appeared as "Light 1".
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my selecting "Light 1" you can now name it. You will note that there is an option to make the light blink. This is useful if you did do multiple lights and you aren't sure which one it was.
The renamed Light now shows, and you have the ability to go onto another room if you wish.
The Light now appears in Apple Home. Most of the time, I found this to be correct, although occasionally I did find that it appeared with the correct name, but in the Default room.
By moving all my lights onto the Legrand hub, it meant that I could now remove my Hue hub.
Issues
It's not a perfect integration. You do not get all of the functionality that you get with Hue.
- You don't get the ability to define the power on state of the light. e.g., should there be. power loss, should it come on (Default), be off, or last known state. You can get around this by using the Hue app in Bluetooth mode and you can set that feature. It would be good if you could do that in the Legrand Home+ Control app, but you can't... even though it has been asked for by the user community.
- You lose ambient lighting control. In my case, for the lights that were left I did not need that capability, so it was not an issue for me.
- You lose the Hue scenes that would appear in Apple Home. Again, for me that was a non issue.
Benefits
If you remember, the Legrand capability was put into my home so I could understand my electricity usage. When you set up the lights you can put in their wattage, so when they are on. you can see what power draw they have on the house. Each individual light may not be much, but if you have enough, it starts to add up, especially if you leave them on.
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