My ex-girlfriend's dad had Control4 systems at all of his houses, even on his boat, and I must say, even though this was 4 years ago, I was very impressed with what it could do. You could use your phone if you wanted to, but he had universal remotes that all looked the same, but could control anything he had setup, since you can buy individual add-on modules for different features. That system was mostly for people where money is no concern. In certain parts of the house, he has touch screens built into the wall, and the system could be programmed with macros to do many things in whatever order you wished by only touching one button.
His system is what got me really interested in home automation, but the only home automation I've invested in were a few Hue bulbs. I read where Control4 recently released a more "affordable" solution with the controller itself starting at $600. One day I hope to be able to do everything that setup did, but right now, unless you're willing to spend a lot of money for a complete system, it's not going to happen.
When shopping for these Hue bulbs, I noticed the huge variety of wireless protocols everyone's device used. Hopefully one day there will be a standard where every device will be able to talk with another. From what I understand, the new Control4 controller will work with everyone's wireless protocol, but I'm assuming this is because they can integrate every wireless protocol into their controller.
The Hue bulbs work off Zigbee, and I bought some WeMo Lightify LED strips to use for my under cabinet lighting because the bulbs and the fixtures currently there go out frequently and last week one bulb got so hot it exploded. The Lightify strips are supposed to be able to work off the Zigbee wireless spectrum, but I can't connect them to the Philips Hub to control them off the same system. The only reason I didn't buy the Philips Hue LED strips is because they cost $99 for 2 feet. You can cut them to size like the standard LED strips that have been around for a while, but once you cut them, the cut piece becomes unusable. Since I have 4 different areas under my cabinets that need lighting, I would be spending $400 and probably cutting half of them to size.
I bought some LED strips for my PC, and they only cost $15 or so for 5 meters. I also have an Aqua Computer Farbwerk Bluetooth controller, which can control 4 sets of LED strips, and it only cost my $30-$40. Supposedly, this Aqua Computer Farbwerk controller can be used as a standalone device outside of a computer, so I might try rigging something up, but it still won't integrate with my Hue products.
You mentioned it being a pain to have to continuously use your phone to control the Hue bulbs, but you don't need to do this anymore. I bought a dimmer, which sits in a base and can be stuck to the wall wherever you want it. The dimmer controller can be removed, or left in the base (which looks like a Lutron switch) but it's not wired to anything. You can program the dimmer to work with as few or as many lights you want, it has an on button, an off button, and of course the dimmer. This way you can operate the lights without your phone. I also bought a Philips Tap Switch, which I like better. It's round, it has 3 buttons on it, and it too sticks to the wall but can also be removed from the base. It doesn't require any batteries because it works off of Kinetic energy. Each button can be programmed to a scene, either one already available from Philips or you can create your own. Each button can be programmed to turn on however many bulbs you wish along with whatever color you wish. You can program one button to turn on the lights (however many you want, whatever colors you want, and whatever brightness you want), and with a second press, it turns them all off. You can program each button to operate all the lights in the house or you can program it where each button turns on/off lights in different areas of the house or all of them together. So if you want all the lights to turn on to a certain color and to a certain brightness, you can do that. If you want all the lights to turn on to a different color and a different brightness, you can do that with one of the other buttons, so depending on what time of the day it is, you can press a different button to turn on/off whatever lights in the house that you want. Both of these devices, the dimmer and the tap switch eliminate the need to use your phone everytime you want to turn them on/off. You can now do the same with voice commands, whether you have an Apple phone or an Android phone. The Hue app itself is very basic, and I hardly ever use it. Anyone can download the SDK from the Philips website and create any application they want to control the lights, have them blink or change colors briefly if you receive an email, text, etc or have them do the same based on the temperature outside or if it's going to rain. The apps people are creating are plentiful, but I see more made for Apple devices than Android.
Sorry for the long post, but I bought my Hue lights last week and have looked extensively into their functionality, which I'm sure has probably changed quite a bit since your post. I just wanted to let you know that many, many options are now available which may not have been available a year ago. I also bought some nest thermostats, which I haven't hooked up yet, but once everything is setup, I'll even be able to control everything with my Logitech Harmony remote. If one day I can afford to update to a Control4 system, everything I have can be operated from this remote. These devices weren't cheap, but I figured they would pay for themselves in energy savings, especially when I install motion detectors in my daughter's rooms so the lights will cut off automatically since for some reason they don't know how to do it.
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