Eve Adds Support for iOS 14's HomeKit Adaptive Lighting to Eve Light Strip

[MacRumors]

Eve Systems, known for its line of HomeKit-connected products, today announced the launch of a new firmware update that will bring HomeKit Adaptive Lighting support to the Eve Light Strip.

Eve is one of the first companies to embrace Adaptive Lighting, an iOS 14 feature that is designed to allow HomeKit-connected lights to adjust their color temperature throughout the day. Warm colors are used in the morning, cooler colors are used midday, and blue light is reduced at night for better sleep.

Color temperature shifts throughout the day without user interaction, using subtle transitions between color options. Using the Adaptive Lighting feature with the Eve Light Strip requires a HomePod or an fourth or fifth-generation Apple TV as a home hub.

Those who own an Eve Light Strip can install the firmware updates through the Eve app. The Eve Light Strip can be purchased from the Eve website for $80, with a 6.5-foot extension available for $50. Eve products are also available from Amazon.

Article Link: Eve Adds Support for iOS 14's HomeKit Adaptive Lighting to Eve Light Strip

 

[Kylo83]

Wish hue would add it

 

[Rychiar]

wish LIFX had it

 

[Ent]

This is a ripoff. Wait for a Black Friday sale or Amazon prime day.

 

[Joseph C]

Wish hue would add it

It's available in Beta in Germany and Philips say Hue will get it worldwide "later this year".

I cannot wait for it.

 

[44267547]

I have these LED light strips in my entertainment room in my house, and they’re awesome. They have such a warmth they Present (Perfect amount of brightness), and you can virtually put them anywhere behind/under furniture. The blue LED isn’t to stark, but I have mine embedded underneath the TV entertainment center, and it’s just the right amount of ‘glow’.

 

[Kylo83]

It's available in Beta in Germany and Philips say Hue will get it worldwide "later this year".

I cannot wait for it.

same needs to come soon

 

[coredev]

Homekit earning more and more traction, cool

 

[Unggoy Murderer]

wish LIFX had it

They've said they're looking into it.

Only had one bit of Eve kit and it wasn't great... has the recent stuff improved? I got a load of Lifx (4x GU10's and 2x strips at 4m each) and they've been top notch.

 

[idrewuk]

I feel like I'm missing something here; what's the point exactly, do people a) have their lights on all day long or b) are sat in the house all day to even notice?

 

[hellosil]

I feel like I'm missing something here; what's the point exactly, do people a) have their lights on all day long or b) are sat in the house all day to even notice?

Not all indoor spaces have enough natural light coming in during the day.
Personally I find it nice to have more energetic lighting at the home office during the day, and warmer light in the evening in the living room.
And working from home the home office and the living room are often the same space.

 

[Unggoy Murderer]

I feel like I'm missing something here; what's the point exactly, do people a) have their lights on all day long or b) are sat in the house all day to even notice?

I'm stuck working from home at the moment, and I like having my workspace backlit. This feature would be pretty nice for a lot of folks like me doing the same.

 

[ruimpinho]

I've got a Eve energy plug on prime day for 50% off. Eve produces great devices, but a bit too pricey. With a decent discount, I'm pretty happy.

 

[KeesRomkes]

After announing this I’ve been looking for ways to do it in homebridge - and I nailed it by using nodered and updating the color of the lights based on the position of the sun.

The effect is quite calming, and as said before energetic - I also only turn my lights on when it’s “dark” (<15 lux) but Berlin winters - that’s quite often.

 

[atomic.flip]

I just don’t know how I feel about an operating system subtly driving my behavior to the point of when I sleep and when I wake up.

of course I say this after being held hostage by a PC that had to install a “feature update”/service pack for windows 10 that took 12 F—-! Hours to complete LOL

ok I give in. Just let me sleep. LOL

 

[name99]

They've said they're looking into it.

Only had one bit of Eve kit and it wasn't great... has the recent stuff improved? I got a load of Lifx (4x GU10's and 2x strips at 4m each) and they've been top notch.

I've dealt with a bunch of HomeKit vendors and Eve is BY FAR my favorite. It's bulletproof, just works without random weirdness. It's expensive, yes, but they're now my first choice if they offer what I want; life's too short to put up with the nonsense of other vendors. (Basically Hue and Ikea are second tier, requiring HomeBridge for full access to their functionality, and with various hassles in the setup and occasional random weirdness. Anything below those two [eg Wyze or Wemo or the Chinese no-names is just too much pain unless you have absolutely no choice.])

The one issue with Eve is that they are Bluetooth only, meaning Bluetooth range limits (but VERY convenient setup, and, like I said, reliability). If you require long range you will need to buy their range extenders which is, yes, even more dollars. Unfortunately quality costs...

 

[name99]

I'm stuck working from home at the moment, and I like having my workspace backlit. This feature would be pretty nice for a lot of folks like me doing the same.

Issue a) Lightstrips generically.
They are nice for situations where you just want some glow, not "massive" amounts of light. One example is behind a TV (this makes the TV surprisingly nicer, even if you stick to a fixed color, not changing colors or ambilight or suchlike). Another is above your bed behind the headboard, if you read paper a lot. (It's probably not good for reading off a tablet because of reflection, but your room geometry may vary.)
A third case is if you have people walking around the house late at night, to create a light that's good enough but not too strong in a hall or stairs or kitchen.

If you just want to experiment, Ikea sell a lightstrip (superbasic, white only) for like $5. (For that price they don't include a USB charger you will have to buy separately, which to judge from certain iPhone12 rants, is the most difficult and expensive thing on earth, so be warned...)

Issue b) Fancy color changing light strip.
I'm not sure I see how I would use that in my house, rather than a basic on/off white strip. But I live in LA and every room has lots of sun right now. It's possible once winter really kicks in and the rooms are darker I will start to see places where it could add to the tone of the room.

My general feeling with all these items (ie fancy lighting, nice HomeKit stuff) is you honestly can't tell how you'll use it and feel about it without experience. It's hard to sniff and mock that you don't "need" something you haven't lived with. My philosophy (and I'm still very happy with it after a few years) is be willing to spend whatever you can budget (for me it's about $100/month) on experimental stuff to make the house nicer. I'd say about $20 of that $100 is wasted on average BUT the $80 that isn't wasted makes me so happy that it far overwhelms the $20!
I didn't think I'd like the Ikea light strip for book reading as much as I do.
I didn't think I'd like backlight LED's behind my TV as much as I do.
I REALLY like how I basically never switch on or off lights in my house (they're variously controlled by sun location, by a smart light sensor, and by presence), to the extent that it feels offensive when I go to another house and have to control them manually, like an animal! Likewise for smart blinds.
(And the same goes for some non-tech things. Foam mattress topper. 1000 thread count sheets. Foam bathroom mats. A very nice [functionally, not artsy] night stand setup. Light diffusion film on some appropriately chosen windows.)

On the other hand, I was disappointed by full color hue bulbs. Technically they work, can't complain about that. But they just don't solve a problem I have. I've tried using them in various ways and nothing has really stuck as something I care about.

Variable color temperature I'm still not sure about. I have my own hacked up Adaptive Lighting version right now (looking forward to when I can switch it off and rely on HomeKit doing this!) and, yeah, sure, it's nice. But (for ME! your milage may be very different) it's not a life changer, not something I care about nearly as much as, say, smart blinds.

 

[laszlo182]

why do they need to support it this special protocol? cannot just homekit send commands to change the temperature of lights?

 

[redscull]

Question to anyone with experience with this stuff: do we yet have the technology where a light strip like this, and I guess the hub via homepod mini, will turn on/off based on me entering/leaving the room, ideally because it proximity detects my Apple Watch?

I feel like I understood this to be something newly made available if you have the new HomePod mini and an iPhone 12, but not any combination of other/older Apple products.

 

[odHbo]

I’m surprised this is getting so much flack. Adaptive Lighting is very important growing market in smart home lighting. I t is definitely a luxury product in the sense that it requires an investment to take full advantage of it but the benefits are very compelling.

You have to look at your home lights in the same way you adopted Night Shift and True Tone on your iPhone/iPad. As humans, we are very sensitive to light and the technology around us (lights) significantly disrupts our sleeping patterns.

Bright lighting (day time light or blue light) reduces serotonin levels (which wakes us up/keeps us up)

Warm lighting (sunset) increases serotonin levels (making us sleepy)

With Apple’s integration of Adaptive Lighting in Homekit, your scenes will activate with lighting temperatures that match natural circadian rhythms. This creates the magic technology experience everyone strives for of invisible technology. It just works.

Currently you have to do a massive amount of code (not easy for common folks) to do this.

 

[Apple Freak]

I'm hoping TP-Link bulbs and smart plugs will adopt HomeKit after not too long. I currently have about 5 of these devices being controlled by 3 Echo devices but I would love to switch to 3 HomePod Minis and not have to replace anything else to use HomeKit.

 

[name99]

why do they need to support it this special protocol? cannot just homekit send commands to change the temperature of lights?

Existing lights are all over the place with color temperature. Put Ikea, Wyze and Hue side by side, run through the color temperature range, and be amazed/depressed at how different they are.

It's possible (I don't know) that the new protocol allows the hardware a second chance ("god damnit, when we say 4000K we MEAN 4000K") at getting this right?

It's also possible that this is laying the framework for a more generic low latency "variable lighting" system. Imagine that you could subscribe to "lighting streams" like you subscribe to music, so that some of your lights are constantly changing. The outdoor lights have holiday themes, green on St Patricks, orange for November, red+green for December! For parties get a wild and crazy theme changing every minute. For the hall way "surprise me" which is sometimes African Sunset, sometimes Northern Lights...

Hue has stuff kinda like this, but everything about Hue's UI is so awful (IMHO) that I avoid ever opening their app. A generic "subscribe to this light stream" API + UI is much more interesting...

 

[name99]

I'm hoping TP-Link bulbs and smart plugs will adopt HomeKit after not too long. I currently have about 5 of these devices being controlled by 3 Echo devices but I would love to switch to 3 HomePod Minis and not have to replace anything else to use HomeKit.

If you are the kind of person who's happy running a (very simple) home server, look into the HomeBridge project. This is software that runs on a variety of devices (I use an old mac mini, other people use a Raspberry Pi or a Windows machine). Easy install; access through a web browser. What it does is bridge various non-HomeKit HW into HomeKit so that HomeKit can control them. It usually works pretty well.

Going forward (in my experience) I would still buy genuine HomeKit stuff if possible because the cheaper stuff tends to not be as well debugged and to randomly have to be rebooted or to fail for no reason. But it's an easy cheap way to grandfather in any devices (like smart plugs or bulbs) that you already have.

 

[Unggoy Murderer]

I've dealt with a bunch of HomeKit vendors and Eve is BY FAR my favorite. It's bulletproof, just works without random weirdness. It's expensive, yes, but they're now my first choice if they offer what I want; life's too short to put up with the nonsense of other vendors. (Basically Hue and Ikea are second tier, requiring HomeBridge for full access to their functionality, and with various hassles in the setup and occasional random weirdness. Anything below those two [eg Wyze or Wemo or the Chinese no-names is just too much pain unless you have absolutely no choice.])

The one issue with Eve is that they are Bluetooth only, meaning Bluetooth range limits (but VERY convenient setup, and, like I said, reliability). If you require long range you will need to buy their range extenders which is, yes, even more dollars. Unfortunately quality costs...

Thanks for all the info!