Philips Hue is making user accounts mandatory if you want to use its app. But there are alternatives.

According to its current privacy policy, with an account, Hue gets access to the configuration of your system to provide the right software updates to the devices. It can only use your data for marketing or share it with third parties if you provide additional consent.

However, in a change to the current policy, Yianni says Hue will not collect usage information from users without additional optional consent. “So, we do not require users share anything about how they use our products,” he says.

“Previously creating an account was consent for usage data processing that we are in the process of decoupling and will be decoupled before accounts become essential — that makes sure it’s possible to create an account without sharing usage data,” says Yianni. However, if you choose to use the cloud services for things like out-of-home connectivity, you will need an account, and Hue will process your data, he says.

If this change to the privacy policy does happen, Home Assistant’s Schoutsen agrees that it would make the requirement for an account more palatable. “But it all depends on the exact changes,” he says.

  • Butterbee (She/Her)English
    13•1 year ago

    Well shit. I liked my hue bulbs. They were the only ‘smart’ stuff I was willing to set up in my home. The reasoning they gave for this is so disgustingly disingenuous.

    • GreatAlbatrossEnglish
      11•1 year ago

      The good news is, most hue bulbs can be controlled directly over zigbee now. I migrated mine a few days ago, and the trickiest part was persuading Hue to delete the bulbs so they could enter pairing mode.

        • GreatAlbatrossEnglish
          5•1 year ago

          You’ll need to have a zigbee radio on a HomeAssistant instance (maybe possible with other software).
          And on HomeAssistant, run ZHA (or similar) with the zigbee radio.
          Sorry if that’s teaching to suck eggs, just wanted to clarify.

          If you’re already set up with that, it’s just a case of deleting a bulb from the Hue bridge, and searching for it using the zigbee integration. Once it’s deleted from Hue, it will go into pairing mode. You may need to power cycle the bulb if it does not appear in the search within 10s.

          HASS was able to support my white/ambiance bulbs and colour bulbs without any issues. In fact, it responds faster. The only downside is that they don’t so much fade, as jump to a new value. The update frequency is about 2 times per second.

          • Butterbee (She/Her)English
            3•1 year ago

            Not sure what you mean by teaching to suck eggs, but don’t apologize! I’ve never really looked into home assistant. I thought it was an apple exclusive thing. It can be run locally?

            • GreatAlbatrossEnglish
              3•1 year ago

              Ah, I meant I didn’t want to feel like I was condescendingly explaining things to people who already knew.

              It’s free software, and supports a lot of things.

              Homeassistant can be run completely locally. The on an old pc, raspi, or even a virtual machine when you’re trying it out.

              Operation wise, you can use a browser, or the app for added functionality (for example, it can log the battery level of your phone)

              And with the various sensors and devices you can build up automations.
              So, for example, when phone battery is below 20% at 10pm, flash the bedroom light to remind you to charge.

              They even have a demo based on a fake house on their website for looking at.

              The only physical thing you’d need otherwise is a zigbee dongle (£20-ish).

              • Butterbee (She/Her)English
                3•1 year ago

                Oh wow! Thanks, it seems I have quite the rabbit hole to go down but it looks worth it! Gosh anyone remember the days when you could buy a thing and just be able to use the thing for as long as you owned it. Or when you owned the things you bought at all? Am I just a boomer?

          • Butterbee (She/Her)English
            2•1 year ago

            So you have probably figured it out by now but on the off chance that someone else is reading this and wonders about the bulbs not fading but instantly changing, you can set the transition speed (At least if you are using zigbee2mqtt, I am brand new at this so I haven’t tried zha). It would be found in “Settings (Specific)” for each bulb. I set my bulbs to 0.25 seconds transitions and they fade very nicely! Also thank you very much for getting me started with HA! It’s very neat. It’s a liiiiitle jank. But it’s very cool and I’m happy to not be forced into letting some other company have control over who uses my lights and who doesn’t.

            • GreatAlbatrossEnglish
              2•1 year ago

              Ah, excellent! Thanks for that, I’ll definitely see if I can do it under ZHA.

              And no problem, glad you got off the hub!