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  • Author Author: TechnoChic
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Arduino, Raspberry Pi, or ??? I'm Hacking Philips Hue Lights and I need your help!

TechnoChic
Arduino, Raspberry Pi, or ??? I'm Hacking Philips Hue Lights and I need your help!

Hi! It's Natasha.

I'm working on my next project for Element14 Presents which involves hacking the Philips Hue Lighting System. I need your help to determine which path I should take - please watch the video for the details of the project:

I will need to spend a lot of time learning to work with the Philips Hue API (and there's even a new one that just came out!) So, I want to make a well-informed decision:

  1. Should I use Arduino, Raspberry Pi, or another system?
  2. I will need 5 sensors (one under each cabinet) to detect my presence within a few feet of the sensor. What sensor system is best? Will it connect easily to the microcontroller system?
  3. What other ideas do you have for controlling the Hue Lights?

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments below. Thanks in advance for your help!

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  • I did a bit of hacking with Philips Hue, but it was quite a few years ago. I took an entirely diffeent approach and hacked the hardware so that I could build custom lights that were controllable from the Hue ecosystem. Maybe not too relevant to your project but here's some info if you're interested:

    https://0xfred.wordpress.com/category/electronics/philips-hue/

    Getting back to your question, I'd definitely be tempted to go with a Pico for any new projects. It's cheap, it's available, and the development environment  seems to work well. It used to be a little clunky to set up but there are some good tips here on E14 and apparently they have improved the setup if you're on Windows. In theory it would be possible to go directly to Hue via Zigbee, but that seems quite locked down. Your idea of Wifi and Hue API seems like a good pragmatic approach.

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  • I did a bit of hacking with Philips Hue, but it was quite a few years ago. I took an entirely diffeent approach and hacked the hardware so that I could build custom lights that were controllable from the Hue ecosystem. Maybe not too relevant to your project but here's some info if you're interested:

    https://0xfred.wordpress.com/category/electronics/philips-hue/

    Getting back to your question, I'd definitely be tempted to go with a Pico for any new projects. It's cheap, it's available, and the development environment  seems to work well. It used to be a little clunky to set up but there are some good tips here on E14 and apparently they have improved the setup if you're on Windows. In theory it would be possible to go directly to Hue via Zigbee, but that seems quite locked down. Your idea of Wifi and Hue API seems like a good pragmatic approach.

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