The Philips Hue bulbs and Nest Mini speakers have a special relationship. One which makes the two very useful to have as a pair.
The bulbs now support out-of-home control without a Hue Bridge. If you’re new to this whole home automation thing, the Hue Bridge is a device you need to control some of the functionality on Hue products. Such as sleep and wake routines.
Thanks to newly added support for the Nest Mini though, you can still manage to turn the lights off even if you’re not at home.
Hue bulbs & out-of-home control will work with more than Nest Mini
To be fair, the Nest Mini isn’t the only way you can control Hue bulbs away from home without the Bridge. The Google Home, Google Home Mini, and other smart speakers from Google support this feature too.
You can even manage to control the bulbs without the bridge away from home with just your smartphone. Using Google Assistant.
According to Philips, the feature compatibility was added as part of a Google firmware update in the middle of last month.
Specifically that was sent out around September 14. So, this isn’t an entirely new feature. Nor is it limited to just the newly announced Nest Mini. That being said, it seems to have gone mostly unnoticed.
The feature is enabled for all Philips Hue Bluetooth bulbs
Out-of-home control without a bridge will work for every Philips Hue Bluetooth bulb. Not just a special few. This versatility means you don’t have to rush out and buy a new collection of bulbs if you already have some that support Bluetooth.
In addition to controlling the bulbs out of the home, you can also set the bulbs up without the bridge. So long as you have them connected to Google Assistant in one of the aforementioned ways.
That shouldn’t be a hard task for most people. Since Google Assistant is baked into just about every Android device these days. One thing to also consider is how easy it will be now to integrate Hue bulbs into your life.
While you will still need the Hue Bridge for some stuff, the main things no longer require it. This is simplification in its most useful form. Letting users do everything from configuration to usage with a product in a more seamless way, and with less equipment.
If you already owned Hue bulbs and a compatible Google smart speaker, you should everything you need to already get this going.