As a respite from all the in-your-face robotics and high-tech fanfare going on at the Consumer Electronics Show, Architizer found one moment of Zen playing around with the ambient lighting options of Philips Hue Tap. The puck-like remote control syncs to Philips’ smart, color-changing Hue lights via ZigBee, a lower-energy, appliance-specific alternative to wi-fi that is so efficient that the remote control doesn’t need batteries: The kinetic energy produced by pressing its buttons is enough to power the device. It also has a range of upwards of 100 feet, a Philips rep from Eindhoven tells us, depending on the thickness of your walls. From business to your personally preset “party modes” with the push of a button:
Hue’s options span the color spectrum, which you choose using a Hue app. But there’s more to it than instant disco: The Philips rep made sure to tip us off on the option to make your own personal haunted house: to show off Hue’s capabilities, the lighting brand partnered with the SyFy network to create an “immersive lighting experience” synced to the channel’s new time-travel show “12 Monkeys” (based on the ’90s Terry Gilliam flick of the same name). This could be the future of home entertainment — or just as popular as that weak Smell-o-vision fad that people have been trying to make happen for decades. The future is much more retro-looking than we imagined.
Images via Philips