Thinking about light

Jan 19, 2018

A year ago I talked about my early forays into the world of home automation, mainly via Philips Hue. I'm now treating the "experiment" as a success, and have decided to invest in more lights (and another Hue bridge for our main home). While thinking about this, I decided to check on the availability of an API. Sure enough there's a great REST API available for Philips Hue, as well as a number of SDKs.

All of which has me thinking about possibilities of using Philips Hue as a way to visualize data. Just as we use Forge inside Dasher 360 to overlay heatmaps onto rooms, how about using Philips Hue to display historical temperature values of the room (or for another room, for that matter)? Or perhaps connect Hue to Dynamo – using a similar technique to the one in this previous post – and show the results of an analysis…

Anyway, I'm currently working on a project relating to the use of Dynamo for urban design, so perhaps I'll start with connecting Hue to a simple node. It should be really cool.

If you have ideas on how else people might use this API, please post a comment!

photo credit: Scott Lewis Philips Hue Go via photopin (license)

4 responses to “Thinking about light”

friendfromarea51

January 22, 2018 at 11:53 am

Very curious about your dynamo project, wish I could offer some ideas though.

Reply
1. Kean Walmsley
  
  January 22, 2018 at 12:28 pm
  
  Thanks, Brian.
  
  I'll publish what I can, when I can!
  
  Kean
  
  Reply
Chad Boss

January 24, 2018 at 2:30 pm

Folks have been doing some interesting integration around IoT and home automation as it pertains to Type 1 Diabetes. Now that CGMs (Continuous Glucose Monitors) are available and store blood glucose data in the cloud, tech savvy parents and diabetics themselves are developing new ways of having their home alert them to dangerous blood glucose levels (either too high or too low). There's at least one instance of a system that changes the color of Phillips Hue bulbs to blue if the level is too low, and red if the level is too high. It's cool to imagine a time in the future when the lamp in the living room begins to change in color based on the blood glucose level of the toddler sleeping in his crib in the other room. Literally life saving technology. Here's a link to example. cepro.com/artic...

Reply
1. Kean Walmsley
  
  January 24, 2018 at 2:58 pm
  
  I've been a big fan of this kind of information display since Ambient Devices brought out their "stock orb" back in the early 2000s. (I never bought one, but am happy to see the concept lives on, and in a more flexible form.)
  
  Not that I'm comparing the display of blood sugar levels with stock data... what you're highlighting is way more interesting and important.
  
  Kean
  
  Reply

Thinking about light

4 responses to “Thinking about light”

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