Philips Hue Ends Support for Some Third-Party Bulbs Amid 'Interoperability Issues'

[MacRumors]

A new update to the Philips Hue operating software within the popular iOS app has brought about a few changes to the way the lighting system functions with third-party accessories. Specifically, the app will no longer support third-party bulbs that function with the ZigBee wireless protocol, including the GE Link LED and Cree Connected LED bulbs (via CNET).

Introduced on both the first generation and HomeKit-enabled second generation of Hue bridges, the 1.11 software update was enacted by the company due to an overwhelming number of "interoperability issues" with some third-party products. Philips points to numerous customer complaints of confusion and frustration when setting up these bulbs, in turn tarnishing the Philips Hue brand, as the major deciding factor for ending their support.

We are seeing an increasing number of interoperability issues with these untested third party products, which are causing increasing confusion for our installed base. They are also hampering our ongoing development and damaging the consistency of experience for the Philips Hue ecosystem.

The current plan moving forward is the "Friends of Hue" program that the company also began around the time of the 1.11 update last week. With the new initiative, Philips will send third-party bulbs through rigorous testing and certification before giving it the official Philips Hue bridge-compatible stamp of approval.

The company also noted that those affected by the removal of these select third-party bulbs represent a "minimal fraction" of the total lights working with the Hue bridge out there today. Affected lights already linked to a bridge will continue to work, but "new untested" will not be able to be added to existing Hue networks. Philips also pointed out that the blocked bulbs already working with a Hue bridge won't be able to properly receive updates after the 1.11 software update, so they could run into bug issues with no possible fix in the future.

Update: Philips on Wednesday announced a change of plans from its original announcement, confirming that it no longer intends to shut down the function of a select handful of third-party bulbs due to the unforeseen amount of customers it would affect.

We recently upgraded the software for Philips Hue to ensure the best seamless connected lighting experience for our customers. This change was made in good faith. However, we under estimated the impact this would have on a small number of customers who use lights from other brands which could not be controlled by the Philips Hue software. In view of the sentiment expressed by our customers, we have decided to reverse the software upgrade so that lights from other brands continue to work as they did before with the Philips Hue system.

The company did confirm that the "Friends of Hue" certified partnership program will continue as originally planned.

Article Link: Philips Hue Ends Support for Some Third-Party Bulbs Amid 'Interoperability Issues'

 

[OldSchoolMacGuy]

How dare they not allow cheap Chinese knockoff bulbs to work with their system and cut them out of making any type of money on a product and platform they built and own.

 

[dannyyankou]

Yeah, third party products are usually not good, and dangerous. I have a friend who got a counterfeit Mophie case and it melted.

 

[mikeb71]

Keeping my third party companies out of your ecosystem is fine, but it's not good practice to let them in first and take them away later, as some of your customers may have invested heavily in the third party bulbs.
Personally I've only ever used the official bulbs, but since I've had the Hue bridge 2.0 I've had nothing but trouble with the system .

 

[ecschwarz]

How dare they not allow cheap Chinese knockoff bulbs to work with their system and cut them out of making any type of money on a product and platform they built and own.

Yeah, third party products are usually not good, and dangerous. I have a friend who got a counterfeit Mophie case and it melted.

The bigger concern is that they broke compatibility with the GE Link and Cree Connected Zigbee bulbs, not necessarily some knockoff Hue bulbs. Most of these are good bulbs, but it's sort of ignoring the standard that's already in place. While I get that Philips never officially said they supported everything out there, and they have to make sure all of their products work as best they can, I can understand the frustration for a lot of people who now have bulbs that don't work as well or won't pair.

 

[Daniel L]

This is funny. The official hue bulbs barely work properly with the new bridge so at least they're working on that. It'd be really nice though to be able to add more bulbs at a reasonable price.

 

[adamjackson]

This is why I'm passing on all smart-home products for at least another 5 years. Once HomeKit is the defecto standard and is fully integrated into all hardware along with my AppleTV and controllable from anywhere with product standards that don't get cancelled / outdated after 24 months, I'll start buying this stuff.

You could spend many thousands on Nest, Philips, Amazon, Google, locks and all kinds of home apparatus today but nothing works together and it's all on a per-app basis. I don't want to launch 4 different apps to turn down my AC, turn off the lights and lock my doors.

 

[nuckinfutz]

This issue is overblown. I can go to Best Buy right now and buy Hue whites for $15. The only lights I've seen consistently cheaper than hue are OSRAM light strips.

I'm not going to muck up my system with mismatched bulbs. Philips is right on this one despite their poor bedside manner

 

[Weaselboy]

This is funny. The official hue bulbs barely work properly with the new bridge so at least they're working on that. It'd be really nice though to be able to add more bulbs at a reasonable price.

If you look around you can usually find the Hue A19 bulbs for $14.99. I see Best Buy still has them listed for that price now if you are in the US.

 

[ecschwarz]

This issue is overblown. I can go to Best Buy right now and buy Hue whites for $15. The only lights I've seen consistently cheaper than hue are OSRAM light strips.

I'm not going to muck up my system with mismatched bulbs. Philips is right on this one despite their poor bedside manner

This wasn't the case awhile back (when they were the Hue Lux bulbs), but the $15 ones are pretty nice and work well. I had a few GE Link bulbs my Hue system "inherited" that were nice to have as extras, but I could probably install the Hue ones if I wanted proper compatibility and needed control in that location. I'll probably put dumb bulbs in that location and find a new home for the Links.

 

[utwarreng]

Now if only Hue made bulbs that were for different sizes than A19. The lamps and lights in my house overwhelmingly use candelabra bulbs (for better or worse). I have some of the adapters, but unfortunately that doesn't help for some of the fixtures where the A19 bulbs are too big to fit.

 

[RMo]

The current plan moving forward is the "Friends of Hue" program that the company also began around the time of the 1.11 update last week.

Actually, Friends of Hue has been around for a couple years. It's just that nobody besides Philips has made products for it (with one of the first being the original LightStrips, and now there are several lamps and whatnot).

 

[pelegri]

This issue is overblown. I can go to Best Buy right now and buy Hue whites for $15. The only lights I've seen consistently cheaper than hue are OSRAM light strips.

I'm not going to muck up my system with mismatched bulbs. Philips is right on this one despite their poor bedside manner

It's not necessarily cheaper products. Philips has holes in their offerings that were served by other vendors. Removing functionality in the middle of an upgrade is very poor manner. And its not just not being able to add new lights; if you have to reboot after the upgrade and need to add the lights back you will have issues.

I have only Philips Hue products connected to my bridge but I think this upgrade has been handled very poorly by Philips.

 

[rdlink]

This is why I'm passing on all smart-home products for at least another 5 years. Once HomeKit is the defecto standard and is fully integrated into all hardware along with my AppleTV and controllable from anywhere with product standards that don't get cancelled / outdated after 24 months, I'll start buying this stuff.

You could spend many thousands on Nest, Philips, Amazon, Google, locks and all kinds of home apparatus today but nothing works together and it's all on a per-app basis. I don't want to launch 4 different apps to turn down my AC, turn off the lights and lock my doors.

Spoken like someone who obviously hasn't used it, and who doesn't know what they're talking about. I have an Ecobee 3 thermostat, Hue Lights, Lutron Caseta, and a Schlage Sense. They're all operable using Siri, and can be operated and configured with a single app called Home. It did cost $14.99, but it controls both mine and my girlfriend's house.

So if you're "passing" for the "next 5 years" you're going to be missing out on a lot of living while the rest of us are living large and happy.

 

[OldSchoolMacGuy]

The bigger concern is that they broke compatibility with the GE Link and Cree Connected Zigbee bulbs, not necessarily some knockoff Hue bulbs. Most of these are good bulbs, but it's sort of ignoring the standard that's already in place. While I get that Philips never officially said they supported everything out there, and they have to make sure all of their products work as best they can, I can understand the frustration for a lot of people who now have bulbs that don't work as well or won't pair.

Better they break compatibility not than wait. They get all kinds of people expecting them to make their 3rd party products work with their HUE systems.

This is like crying that your $2 eBay Lightning cable doesn't work with your iPhone.

 

[ecschwarz]

Better they break compatibility not than wait. They get all kinds of people expecting them to make their 3rd party products work with their HUE systems.

This is like crying that your $2 eBay Lightning cable doesn't work with your iPhone.

I'm not disagreeing with you, although your sentiment has appeared to be that anything third-party equals crap. A "$2 eBay Lightning cable" or "cheap Chinese knockoff bulbs" may not adhere to any standards, yet Philips did advertise Hue as ZigBee Light Link certified/compatible, and the GE Link or Osram Lightify or Cree Connected are also such. Hence, there is some sort of promise of interoperability.

My theory is that there were some bugs with the newer Bridges and HomeKit and Philips found it easier to drop support for everything else, eliminating a variable. If I were in their shoes, I probably would've done the same thing to focus on my own ecosystem, since third-party support was never officially promised (maybe implied through ZigBee certification?)

If anything, the more apt analogy would be for Apple to stop allowing the use of third-party USB or Bluetooth keyboards from their Macs. In theory, they use the same standard as everything else, but they're not the Apple official ones.

I have only Philips Hue products connected to my bridge but I think this upgrade has been handled very poorly by Philips.

I think this is really the crux of the issue: Philips knew that users were using third-party bulbs, set up this update, but didn't tell anyone what it would actually break, and handled it poorly. There are ways to drop support delicately. It reminds me a lot of the backlash Apple got for the new Apple TV not working with Bluetooth keyboards or the Remote app at launch.

 

[steve knight]

This issue is overblown. I can go to Best Buy right now and buy Hue whites for $15. The only lights I've seen consistently cheaper than hue are OSRAM light strips.

I'm not going to muck up my system with mismatched bulbs. Philips is right on this one despite their poor bedside manner

but when I got in last year only the GE bulbs were under 20.00 hue did not have anything under 50.00 so I have a bunch not the greatest bulbs they often need to be reset to work well. been replacing them with the cheaper hue bulbs. I used hue to control them because when they stopped working I just reset the bulb and told hue to find new lights and off they went again. with smartthings I would have to delete al lthe bulbs info delete the bulb and find it again.

 

[ziggie216]

Owners are not crying out because they can't add on "cheaper" products to Hue controller. It's that Philips has switch bait us. Some of us had bought Hue knowing that its ZigBee compatible and that we have the ability to add on 3rd party products.

Philips is part of the Connected Lighting Alliance. Read this section before throwing out your typical sarcasm
http://www.theconnectedlightingalliance.org/faq/

What is the mission of The Connected Lighting Alliance?

The mission of The Connected Lighting Alliance is to promote and stimulate the development of open standard wireless lighting solutions that are maximally interoperable and provide value to end users.​

Why is interoperability important?

...The alliance strives toward a future where a consumer can buy a lamp from company A, put it in a luminaire from company B, uses a control from company C or a wireless switch from company D, and have a total solution that works. ...
​

Now that I have a controller from company C, it doesnt allow me to add bulbs from company B. Is that total solution that works? Nope!

 

[Robstevo]

Spoken like someone who obviously hasn't used it, and who doesn't know what they're talking about. I have an Ecobee 3 thermostat, Hue Lights, Lutron Caseta, and a Schlage Sense. They're all operable using Siri, and can be operated and configured with a single app called Home. It did cost $14.99, but it controls both mine and my girlfriend's house.

So if you're "passing" for the "next 5 years" you're going to be missing out on a lot of living while the rest of us are living large and happy.

The rest of us as in 0 .0000001 percent of the world lol

Sorry your comment made me laugh because litterely noone I know had smart appliances because we are not lazy.

 

[rdlink]

The rest of us as in 0 .0000001 percent of the world lol

Sorry your comment made me laugh because litterely noone I know had smart appliances because we are not lazy.

I see. So having your lights, thermostats and locks be available from anywhere in the world, being able to walk into a lit, warm house, or allowing friends, dog sitters, craft trades into your house, or have your lights on when you walk downstairs in the morning, set a mood in your house with a simple voice command, turn off a light you left on upstairs, etc. makes one lazy?

Perhaps you should get your head out of where it's currently stuck and try to go buy some of these products that I referred to in my previous post. You will find them in scarce supply, because a bunch of people are buying them.

And think about how you're "not lazy" next time you pick up your television remote...

 

[Xian Zhu Xuande]

How dare they not allow cheap Chinese knockoff bulbs to work with their system and cut them out of making any type of money on a product and platform they built and own.

GE and CREE are not 'cheap Chinese knockoffs'.

 

[rdlink]

This issue is overblown. I can go to Best Buy right now and buy Hue whites for $15. The only lights I've seen consistently cheaper than hue are OSRAM light strips.

I'm not going to muck up my system with mismatched bulbs. Philips is right on this one despite their poor bedside manner

My issue was that Hue bulbs were just too dim, and the Cree bulbs were not. It's my understanding that Hue bulbs are based on Zigbee, and Zigbee is a standard. IMO it means that it should work with any Zigbee compatible devices.

 

[OldSchoolMacGuy]

GE and CREE are not 'cheap Chinese knockoffs'.

How dare Philips make items not originally intended to work with their system no longer work with their system because they have to deal with people complaining about problems getting them to function.

It's like being upset that your $2 eBay Lightning cable stops working with your iPhone.

 

[rdlink]

How dare Philips make items not originally intended to work with their system no longer work with their system because they have to deal with people complaining about problems getting them to function.

It's like being upset that your $2 eBay Lightning cable stops working with your iPhone.

Disagree completely. Cree lights are Zigbee compatible, and Hue claims to support the Zigbee alliance. I will tell you this. I have some Hue lights that I bought 4 years ago, when they first came out. I will continue to use them because I am invested into the product. But I will put my money in other products.

 

[mw360]

It's my understanding that Hue bulbs are based on Zigbee, and Zigbee is a standard. IMO it means that it should work with any Zigbee compatible devices.

This is true, but in reality it hasn't worked out, and interoperability just wasn't working at all well. Let's face it though, these manufacturers are all bulb guys, not software guys. It's hardly surprising they've not been able to hold a standard together between them.