If you’ve been looking to upgrade your smart home, it looks like Philips will have you covered with a brand new Philips Hue Bridge Pro that boasts some impressive (in case almost unnecessary so) capabilities.
Signifies that the company behind the Philips Hue mark, accidentally leaked the existence of the new bridge a few days ago with spoilers for new lights and a cable associated video derh bell, but another leak – this time via Lowe’s – has clued us into what is upgrading the bridge Pro boasts over general promises that it is faster and is able to support more units.
Lowe’s runs a program called Loop that gives customers free samples of new and pre-release tech, and it looks like such a product is Philips Hue Hue Bridge Pro. More people have shared pictures and asked questions about the product on social media – with a tester that is completely unsure what to do with the new Bridge Pro as they have no Philips Hue Smart Lights. 9to5Google reports that some people have even taken to Facebook Marketplace to sell their bropros.
These shenanigans have given us some key information. First, the Bridge Pro can allegedly support 150+ lights – a huge increase from the current limit of 50. It may seem excessive for smaller homes, but will make the interest of anyone who currently uses more bridges to cover their entire house.
Philips Hue Bridge Pro also promises to offer full home control so you can rely on this case-compatible hub to control more than just Philips Hue technology.
The second, much more interesting addition is Hue MotionAware Tech, which promises to transform your light bulbs into motion sensors. Exactly how this works has not been revealed, so it is not clear which Hue Smart Pulbs supports this upgrade, but it seems that rooms with three pears or more will be able to register people passing by and responding accordingly.
It is possible that it can use something like the surrounding Sensing technology that the Alliance Alliance Alliance showed in a video earlier this year. Surrounding Sensing is a use of use built by a company called Ivani to demonstrate what is possible using Zigbee Wireless Protocol (used by Philips Hue units).
Now it would be smart and possibly give me a reason to fill my home with smart pears.
Even with these serious leaks, we should take details with a pinch – however, if you ask us, it certainly looks like it is a matter of when not if Philips will debut the Bridge Pro.
IFA seems to be a probable event that will happen – given the Berlin Tech show due only in a few weeks, and Philips has debuted tech there before – but we will have to wait and see.
