Lutron Caséta has added two new smart switches to its lineup. The switches are modeled on its existing non-smart “Diva” paddle switch style, giving its distinctive smart switch line a more traditional look. Lutron Caséta is probably one of the most reliable DIY smart lighting systems available today; it uses a proprietary protocol powered by Lutron’s smart hub rather than Wi-Fi or Bluetooth.

The new $69.95 Diva smart dimmer is a wired paddle switch with a toggle slider for dimming, and the $59.95 Claro smart switch is a standard wired on-off switch. Both products look like traditional paddle switches, and other than a small LED light, there’s nothing to single them out as “smart.” As with the existing Caseta smart dimmer, the new Diva smart dimmer won’t need a neutral wire. (Though the Claro switch will.)

The switches are available today, September 12th, at The Home Depot. Lutron is also selling a Diva Smart Starter Kit for $119.95, which includes the dimmer, a Lutron Smart Hub, a wireless Pico remote, and a matching faceplate.

Image: Lutron

A new old look

The look of the new devices is more in line with what most of Lutron’s competitors are doing in this space; Eve and Leviton recently launched new switches that stick with a more traditional look.

Lutron says the reason for the new design is to fit better into most homes, where paddle switches are common. “Some folks find the existing Caséta aesthetic too contrasting to their existing switches,” Adam Mack, Caséta product manager, told The Verge. “We wanted to give homeowners another option.” Mack says Lutron is not discontinuing its existing Caséta style, however, and will continue to develop it.

The current Caséta design has distinctive icons on the switches and multiple buttons, plus a press and hold function that can confuse people unfamiliar with them. The Diva dimmer uses the more traditional paddle design for on-off, plus you can press and hold the paddle to slowly dim to off or use the slider for precise dimming. An LED light bar shows the dimming level, and there’s a preset function to return the light to where it was previously.

Image: Lutron

Most noteworthy, however, is that both new switches will work with wired three-way and multi-location switches, something existing Caséta switches don’t do unless you add a wireless Pico remote. This means you can replace one wired switch with a Diva smart dimmer or Claro smart switch, and the existing mechanical switch (or switches) will continue to work as expected. (There is some extra wiring required.)

Lutron is also launching an accessory switch later this year for new installs, which will work like a mechanical switch but come with special wiring. It also won’t count as a device on the Lutron system (which has a maximum of 74 devices). Up to 10 accessory switches can be paired with one Caséta smart switch.

The Diva and Claro work with all existing Caséta products — including the Lutron Pico remote to add a second wireless switch or remote control — and the Claro will also work for on-off control of ceiling fans. The switches come in six colors, including white, ivory, and black.

The new switches require the $80 Lutron Smart Hub to add connected features such as scenes and schedules using the Lutron app as well as to connect to other smart home platforms, such as Apple HomeKit, Samsung SmartThings, Amazon Alexa, and Google Home.

Lutron is involved with Matter, the new smart home standard, but has not announced how or when it will support it. “Today, we support all the major systems that Matter is going to integrate with, and we continue to be committed to supporting those platforms,” said Mack. Its proprietary Clear Connect protocol is a low-power, long-range protocol similar to Thread — one of the main protocols of Matter. It seems unlikely Lutron would abandon that in favor of a different technology at this stage, especially as its products already work with most smart home platforms.

Thousands of Colorado residents found themselves locked out of their smart thermostats during sweltering temperatures last week in an effort to prevent power demand from overwhelming the grid.

About 22,000 Xcel customers lost control of their smart thermostats for hours on August 30th, Denver7 News reports. That led to backlash on social media as some people said the temperatures inside their homes reached as high as 88 degrees Fahrenheit. Outdoor temperatures climbed into the 90s that day across parts of Colorado as much of the western US grappled with sweltering heat.

All of the customers affected had enrolled in an energy-saving program, called AC Rewards, that’s meant to ease the strain on the power grid during heatwaves. Xcel can adjust those customers’ smart thermostats when demand gets so high that there might not be enough supply to meet it. Xcel offers a one-time $100 credit on electricity bills upon signing up, and $25 a year afterward for participation.

When the utility adjusts a customer’s thermostat, the customer typically has the option to opt-out. But, “On rare occasions, system emergencies may cause a control event that cannot be overridden,” the company says on its website.

Last week was the first time Xcel barred customers from overriding their adjustments in the six years since the program started, according to Denver7. High temperatures, soaring power demand for air conditioners, and an unexpected outage all contributed to last week’s energy emergency, Xcel vice president Emmett Romine told Denver7. Xcel did not immediately respond to a press inquiry from The Verge.

Extreme heat is stressing out power grids across much of the Western US during a prolonged heatwave that started last week and is expected to linger well into this week. California’s grid operator has urged residents to conserve energy over the next several days to avoid blackouts.

Americans are facing growing power interruptions compared to the past, in part because of more extreme weather. 2020 was a record year for power outages in the US. Punishing summer heat in Texas last year triggered a similar backlash from residents when utilities set customers’ smart thermostats to higher temperatures to limit power demand.

Such programs are part of a strategy called demand response that’s supposed to help power grids become more resilient to extreme weather events that are becoming more frequent and severe as global temperatures rise. Energy providers are always managing a precarious balance between supply and demand that can quickly lead to power outages during demand peaks. Demand response can smooth out those peaks, which typically spike when heatwaves drive up demand for electricity to power air conditioning. So while some customers might see their thermostats set to higher temperatures than they anticipated, that’s supposed to help power stay on for their households and their neighbors.

There is a risk with that strategy, however, if smart thermostats keep homes at dangerously high temperatures. Prolonged exposure to high temperatures — especially at night when people are at home sleeping — can lead to heat-related illness and even death. Heat spells kill more people in the US than any other weather-related disaster.

Matter, the upcoming standard that’s attempting to give the smart home a single unifying language, is almost here — and I was just treated to an early demonstration of the kinds of cross-platform compatibility that it should enable in the future. The demonstration was given by Eve, which produces a range of smart plugs, radiator valves, lighting, and security devices.

Historically, Eve has only ever worked with Apple’s HomeKit smart home platform. This is because it didn’t want to use cloud-to-cloud platforms, preferring to keep its devices on locally-controlled platforms for privacy and security. Eve has had an iOS app but no Android app, and it didn’t support Samsung’s SmartThings, Amazon’s Alexa, or Google Home. So it was notable to see all four platforms represented as I approached Eve’s booth at the IFA trade show in Berlin.

The reason for the shift is Matter. It’s perhaps the most significant thing to happen to the smart home since its inception, and in theory, we’re just months away from it becoming publicly available. Eve also announced it’s launching an Android app as a counterpart to its existing iOS app, but the big deal with Matter is that you don’t technically need a device manufacturer’s app at all. You can just set up and control your Matter-enabled devices with existing apps, whether it’s Apple HomeKit, Google Home, Amazon Alexa, or Samsung SmartThings apps.

That’s exactly what Eve was demonstrating at IFA. The Matter specification hasn’t been finalized yet, so none of the devices were running their final Matter-enabled firmware, but it was enough to see the kinds of functionality we might be able to expect when Eve’s devices get updated to support it.

The Amazon table contained a fourth-generation Echo speaker, along with a typical non-smart bulb plugged into an Eve Energy smart plug. Right now, Echo speakers can’t control Eve products, because the latter aren’t Alexa-enabled. But both products are compatible with Thread, one of the wireless protocols Matter works over and which can run locally. Eve was showing off how Matter will enable these two previously incompatible devices to speak to one another.

Eve’s booth reps were pretty insistent that no one other than them uses voice commands to control each of their smart plugs, so I was reliant on them to issue the commands that would control Eve’s devices. “Alexa, turn off my Eve Energy,” one rep asked a fourth-generation Amazon Echo. After an (admittedly quite long) beat, a bulb plugged into an Eve Energy smart plug clicked off.

Matter’s design makes it simple and seamless for users across different platforms to control the same smart home products natively. The result is a more cohesive experience, where whichever voice assistant you choose to use can control all your Matter-enabled devices and where configuration changes made to a device via one ecosystem will automatically be reflected everywhere else. Each of the four demo stations was using the same model of Eve Energy smart plug, without the need for separate models for different ecosystems. Because the accessory already supports Thread, updating it to support Matter was a relatively seamless process, Eve’s PR Director Lars Felber tells me.

On the Google table, there was both a Thread-enabled second-generation Nest Hub and a Google Pixel 6 Pro running the Google Home app. First, Felber told the Nest Hub, “Ok Google, turn on my lights.” The instant the Google smart display recognized the command, the Eve Energy smart plug behind it clicked on the attached light bulb. The smart display had sent a signal to the smart plug over Thread to turn it on, thanks to Matter.

Using the Android phone running the Google Home app was less seamless in my demonstration. “Phones don’t do Thread,” Felber explained to me. As a result, the handset needed to communicate with the Nest Hub over a local Wi-Fi network for the smart display to send the command to the smart plug via Thread. Unfortunately, attempting to control the smart plug from the phone straight up didn’t work. The icon on the phone responded to my taps, but the light remained unchanged.

It was a shame to not see Matter working flawlessly, but trade show floors are admittedly one of the worst possible places to demonstrate technology like this. Felber told me that there were around 50 overlapping Wi-Fi networks in the trade show hall we were in, and even the least congested Wi-Fi channel still had nine devices on it. The Thread protocol also uses the same 2.4Ghz frequency as Wi-Fi, resulting in more interference. The amount of noise also made issuing voice commands difficult without yelling inches away from the stand’s various smart speakers. Plus, the Matter standard currently isn’t final — so some bugginess is perhaps to be expected.

A third table showed off Matter’s integration with SmartThings. Confusingly, there was only a single Samsung phone (a Galaxy S22) on this table, with no Thread border router in sight. But Felber confirmed to me that the company was using an Aeotec-manufactured SmartThings Hub — that for some reason was hidden inside the table — to transmit the signal to the Eve Energy. While totally misleading, the demo worked well. Using the SmartThings app to control the smart plug felt instantaneous.

Finally, there was the Apple table, the least surprising of the four because it demonstrated a hardware setup that the HomeKit-exclusive Eve lineup already supports just fine — albeit now updated to use Matter rather than just Apple’s HomeKit. Alongside the smart plug and bulb on that table was an iPhone 13 and a HomePod Mini smart speaker acting as a Thread border router. Controlling the smart plug via either was very responsive.

Photo by Jon Porter / The Verge

Although the launch of the Matter standard means Eve’s devices are about to get a lot more functional, existing owners shouldn’t need to buy new hardware to reap the benefits. Felber says Eve plans to push an OTA update to all its Thread-enabled products (which account for 14 of its 18-strong product lineup) to use Matter. The Eve Energy will be first, hopefully by the end of the year, with other devices like the Eve Door & Window, the Eve Weather, the Eve Motion, and the Eve Thermo following afterward.

Turning light bulbs on and off is a simple smart home party trick, and there are plenty of other examples of smart devices that work across different ecosystems. But seeing a currently Apple-exclusive accessory work (relatively) seamlessly across all these different ecosystems, with both voice and app control, has me pretty excited for what Matter might be able to achieve when it launches this fall.

Photography by Jon Porter / The Verge

In case anyone is needing extra RGB lighting in their lives, LG’s new MoodUp fridge has you covered. The refrigerator, which the South Korean electronics giant announced this week at IFA in Berlin, has LED light panels on its front that can illuminate in over a dozen different colors (22 for the upper panel, 19 for the lower). There’s also a built-in Bluetooth speaker (I know).

You control the light panels through LG’s app, where there are a series of preset color schemes to match different seasons and moods. But of course, you can also take full control to create a gloriously ugly kitchen color scheme of your own devising. I was helpfully shown such an abomination during an in-person demonstration on the show floor, and it was quite something.

(For whatever reason, LG chose to display its MoodUp fridge demonstration with a mirror on either side at a 45-degree angle, which is why it looks like there are three refrigerators in the photograph below.)

Image: LG

Where things get really interesting is when you combine these light panels with the fridge’s Bluetooth speaker, where the panels are able to flash in time with the music. You know how everyone jokes that the best house parties always take place in the kitchen? Well, LG’s taking that quite literally.

From a more functional perspective, the MoodUp is loaded with sensors to flash if you accidentally leave one of its door’s open, or automatically illuminate to guide you toward a midnight snack.

It’s an interesting response to Samsung’s series of Bespoke refrigerators, which are available in a range of different colors to suit your home’s style. As of earlier this year, Samsung will also print custom images on the front of them for an even more personalized look. The nice thing about LG’s take on this colorful design is that you can change your fridge’s colors with a tap. When they’re not illuminated, LG says the fridge offers a combination of gray and white color schemes “for a more traditional look.”

Oh, and the LG MoodUp also works as a fridge, where LG promises “advanced refrigeration and smart technologies for better food freshness and enhanced convenience.” LG’s press images show MoodUp fridges that are either one or two-doors wide, and there’s also a model with a window in the fridge door that lets you see its contents from the outside. There’s no word on pricing or a release date, in case you’re actually interested in buying this thing.

Photography by Jon Porter / The Verge

Signify is making further inroads with the gaming community with its new lineup of Philips Hue Play gradient lightstrips for PCs. Much like the 55-inch Play lightstrip explicitly made for TVs, the PC versions of the Play lightstrips provide flexible accent lighting that attaches to the back of your monitor.

The lightstrips will be available in bundles sized for displays ranging from 24 to 27 inches ($169.99) or 32 to 34 inches ($189.99) and an additional bundle that supports a trio of 24 to 27-inch monitors ($279.99). The new family of Play lightstrips can sync with other connected lighting in the Philips Hue ecosystem and will be available starting September 13th.

Photo by Jon Porter / The Verge

The Play lightstrips for PC will be compatible with the existing Hue Sync desktop app and can work with the Play Sync box from Philips Hue, just like the larger lightstrips used with TVs, but they don’t require it. They will also connect with Corsair’s iCue lighting software. The software allows you to synchronize existing lighting effects on your PC and connected peripherals with the Play lightstrips.

Smart lighting integration with gaming software is something we’ve seen before from Lifx and Nanoleaf, which have their own apps that connect with Razer’s Synapse software and offer similar functionality. Corsair even has its own existing family of lighting accessories, including lightstrips for your PC monitor. However, if you’re someone that already has a house full of lighting accessories in the Philips Hue ecosystem, the Play lightstrips could be worth checking out.

It’s official, Philips Hue’s gorgeous Lightguide bulbs are real. Signify, which owns Philips Hue, announced the new white and color ambiance light bulbs at the IFA tech conference in Berlin this week, confirming The Verge’s earlier report of the imminent arrival of the oversized dimmable smart bulbs designed for open lighting fixtures.

Other new products incoming to Hue’s smart lighting line include a Hue Play Gradient Lightstrip for PCs, a slimmer downlight for low-profile ceilings, and a tunable white filament candle bulb. Signify also announced a partnership with Samsung SmartThings to sync music with your smart lights, and new features for its Hue app, including the ability to set automatic away lighting — which Hue is calling “Mimic Presence” lighting.

Image: Signify

The Lightguide bulbs are the first real statement lighting bulbs from Hue. With a distinctly contemporary design, the bulbs come in three shapes — large globe, ellipse, and triangular — and can be paired with a specially designed pendant cord, available in white and black.

Photo by Jon Porter / The Verge

Each bulb has a glowing inner tube that diffuses light, and each sports a glossy finish designed to make the bulbs shine more brightly. They are capable of illuminating your home with both white and color ambiance and putting out up to 500 lumens.

The bulbs cost $74.99 to $89.99 each, and the cords are $49.99. Both are coming later this year.

The other new hardware products include an updated filament candle bulb; the current version is just dimmable. The new Philips Hue White Ambiance Filament bulb adds tunable white light, so you can adjust from warm to cool white light. It’s coming on September 13th to Europe and North America for $44.99 or in a 2-pack for $64.99.

Image: Signify

New Philips Hue slim downlights are available now for $69.99 each. These have a lower profile, canless design to go where traditional can lights can’t. Using a tab system, the lights — which are just three-quarters of an inch thick — snap directly into the ceiling to connect to the junction box. At 1200 lumens, with white and color light, the Philips Hue slim downlight is designed for any room of the house and is wet-rated, so can be used in a bathroom.

The new Philips Hue Play gradient lightstrip for the PC comes in three sizes, and pricing starts at $169.99. It’s also available on September 13th, and be sure to read my colleague Alice Newcome-Beill’s take on this new gaming peripheral.

With all this new hardware, the Hue app is getting some new features, too, including a “Mimic Presence” automation. This turns your lights turn on and off during the day and / or at night automatically when you’re away from home, as a security measure.

Image: Samsung SmartThings

Mimic Presence is coming to the app this month and will be controlled from the Hue Automation tab, where the Spotify music sync integration is currently. This will also be the new home for the Philips Hue Sync app. If you use the Hue Play Sync Box to sync your lights with your TV, you’ll be familiar with this app. Now you’ll be able to control all your Hue lights and devices from the main Hue app.

Speaking of music integration, Signify confirmed details of its leaked expanded partnership with Samsung SmartThings. Its smart lights will be able to sync with music on Samsung Galaxy smartphones and tablets through a new Philips Hue and SmartThings app music sync, starting on September 1st at 8PM ET.

Music sync lets you pulse your colored Hue lighting in sync with the beats of your favorite songs. It does require a Hue Bridge, and the service only works on Galaxy devices. But it will work with any music service; the Hue app only supports Spotify for music sync.

Finally, Signify reconfirmed its commitment to Matter. Gerwin van der Horst of Signify told The Verge at the IFA Smart Home League event on August 31st that it will be rolling out firmware to update its existing bridge to Matter as close to the launch of the new smart home standard as possible.

The update will make all its smart lighting products, existing and forthcoming, Matter-compatible. Hue currently supports most of the popular smart home integrations, including Apple Home, Google Home, and Amazon Alexa, as well as Samsung SmartThings. Matter compatibility should bring more integration on the hardware front, allowing you to more easily pair Hue bulbs and accessories with non-Hue devices.

Smart door locks and video doorbells are great conveniences for those who live in single-family homes, but what about the millions of people who live in flats, apartments, and condos? They might also like to answer their front door from their phone — whether they’re home or not — and perhaps buzz their visitor in without getting off the couch or rushing home from the office. Ring, maker of the original video doorbell, thinks it has a solution.

Ring Intercom is a DIY, retrofit device that attaches to the intercom inside your home and connects via Wi-Fi to the Ring app on your smartphone. It’s specifically designed for European apartment buildings where multiple flats (or apartments) have one entry point and only an audio intercom system installed. With Ring Intercom installed, when someone rings your flat, you can talk to your visitor and buzz them in through the app. There’s no video component — it’s all audio — and there’s no recording feature. Ring Intercom simply replicates the existing function of your intercom on your phone, letting you talk to your front door from anywhere.

The main benefit of Ring Intercom is the ability to talk to visitors and buzz them in remotely, using your phone from anywhere or an Echo device if you’re at home. But having packages or food deliveries make it inside the building and potentially to your front door, rather than sitting on the doorstep exposed to the elements and potential thieves, also adds another level of security and convenience.

The battery-powered Ring Intercom is launching this week at IFA in Berlin. It will be available first in the UK for £119.99, and in Germany, with preorders starting on September 28th and shipping scheduled for October 26th. A bundle with a Ring battery charging station and a spare battery will be £149.99. Ring, which is owned by Amazon, is also offering the product at an introductory price of £89.99, including the extra battery devices, which total a value of about £48. Ring Intercom will be available in France, Spain, and Italy in early 2023 and is scheduled to arrive in the US next year

“It’s as obvious a solution as the video doorbell,” Jamie Siminoff, founder and chief inventor of Ring, said in an interview with The Verge. “If I were born or grew up in Europe, maybe I would have built this first.”

Three times as many people live in multi-unit buildings worldwide as in single-family homes, he says, so this solution was one the company had been trying to develop for a long time. Siminoff said that while its doorbell product line “has done well in Europe,” there was a large percentage of the population that simply couldn’t use one.

Ring did introduce the Peephole Cam a couple of years back, which worked for apartment doors (the doorbell camera was in the peephole). But that didn’t solve how to talk to someone calling at your building door (and Ring discontinued the Peephole last year).

“There are tens of thousands of variations [on intercom systems],” said Siminoff. “This is designed to work with over 90 percent of them. It took a lot of work to develop, and it has a ton of intelligence packed in it that decides what it’s been connected to, similar to how some smart thermostats work.”

The Ring Intercom connects to your internal intercom handset and is powered by a rechargeable, reusable battery. It’s compatible with most audio intercom handsets (but not video systems), and there’s a compatibility checker at Ring.com. There are no structural changes to your apartment required, and the installation process is completely DIY.

When someone presses your apartment button at the main entrance, it triggers two-way talk through the Ring app. You can only answer calls when someone buzzes your apartment, so you can’t use it to listen in on people hanging out in the doorway whenever you fancy.

There is no recording capability, as there is with Ring Video Doorbells; there’s just live, two-way talk. “I don’t know if people would want [recording],” says Siminoff. “And there are local laws around recording audio.” The activity log in the Ring app will tell you if you missed a visitor. The activity log also shows every time the remote unlock feature is activated by you or any shared user in your household to whom you’ve granted access.

Ring Intercom also has an optional feature that allows Amazon delivery drivers secure, time-based access to your building to drop off packages, similar to Amazon’s Key program, so you don’t even have to answer the buzzer. Ring says it will be adding an Auto-Verified Guests feature that lets you share revokable virtual keys with, say, your dog walker or cleaning person. This is something most smart door locks allow you to do.

Ring Intercom can also connect to Amazon’s voice assistant Alexa, allowing you to use any Echo smart speaker or display as a hands-free intercom and talk to your visitor through it. You can also unlock the door with voice, but you need to set up and use a voice pin code.

Image: Ring

While Ring Intercom will work in the US, Siminoff said Ring chose to focus on Europe for launch, where there’s a larger potentially untapped market. “I think everyone always figures that once you get to Amazon, you just have magic wands full of engineers and unlimited resources,” he says. “But we do have to focus, so we wanted to focus on Europe, get it launched there, get it going, then we’ll bring it to the US.”

While Ring says you can link Ring Intercom to other Ring devices like the Ring Indoor Cam, there’s no combined functionality; it’s just that both devices can be accessed from the same app. Intercom is a purely audio device. “There are ways you could add video to these types of devices,” says Siminoff. “But it’s a much tougher thing to do and involves more parties, such as the building owner. “ With Ring Intercom, you can stay connected to your front door with a device you can buy and install on your own “with just a couple of screws and half an hour on a Sunday,” says Siminoff.

After years as an Apple-only smart home company, Eve is finally turning to the dark other side and launching an Android app. At the IFA tech show, the company announced that its suite of smart home products — which include smart plugs, smart light strips, smart switches, and smart sensors — will get its own Android app in late 2022. Most Eve products will also become compatible with other smart home systems, including Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and Samsung SmartThings.

This giant shift (which we did see coming at CES, but still, we’ll have to see it to believe it) is largely down to the upcoming smart home standard Matter. Matter’s primary raison d’etre is to make more devices work with more platforms, removing the confusion and chaos that dominates today’s smart home.

When Matter arrives this fall, Eve’s products should work with any Matter-compatible ecosystem without needing a cloud-to-cloud connection. Amazon, Google, and Samsung have all committed to making their platforms Matter-compatible. Those platforms’ reliance on the cloud had previously prevented Eve from working with them, with the company preferring to stick with a system that processed all device data locally — Apple’s Homekit.

Since the announcement of Matter, Eve has been working on transitioning all its relevant smart home products over from Bluetooth-only to adding Thread radios — Thread is one of the main protocols of Matter. The company says its Thread-enabled devices will begin receiving free over-the-air firmware updates to the standard, which will make them compatible with those other platforms.

Image: Eve

This week, Eve also announced the Eve Light Switch with Thread for North America ($49.95), upgrading one of its last remaining Bluetooth-only products. The Eve Flare portable lamp is the only device it still sells that works solely over Bluetooth.

The third generation of the Eve Light Switch is a smart light switch (but not a dimmer switch) that can control standard LED lights, allowing you to pair your lights with motion sensors, set them on schedules, or program lighting scenes. Unlike its predecessor, which was a single-pole switch, the third-gen model is compatible with three-way switches — where two light switches control one light. It does require a neutral wire and should be available in October.

Alongside the light switch, Eve announced new versions of its Eve Motion Blinds smart shades, with motors for Venetian blinds (Europe only) and Honeycomb shades joining its existing Roller shades motor. The shades are custom ordered from companies such as SelectBlinds and come with Eve’s Thread-enabled motors inside. An Eve Shutter Switch is also coming to the European market in December. The 99.95 euro switch will work over Thread and can replace an in-wall roller shutter switch.

Image: Eve

Eve also announced a white model of its Eve Outdoor Cam ($249.95) coming in December. The black version is my Apple HomeKit pick for the best smart floodlight camera. Eve’s cameras work over Wi-Fi and, as smart security cameras are not yet part of Matter, will probably continue to only work with Apple Home’s HomeKit Secure Video Service.

So while Eve’s cameras stay on Apple, for now, the rest of its smart home products will soon be partying on Android, too. A smart home company launching an Android app may seem minor, but this one is almost like Apple announcing its Apple Watch will work with Android — so tied to Apple has Eve been. It’s one of those signs we’ve needed that point toward Matter actually happening. As fall rapidly approaches (yes, it is indeed now September), it is past time to expect some solid evidence that Matter is all we’ve been led to believe it can be.

Signify looks set to release a stunning new line of light bulbs for its Philips Hue brand, as the company continues to innovate its LED-based smart lighting line. The new Lightguide line features oversized dimmable smart bulbs that come in three shapes and are designed for open lighting fixtures. These look like they could add some seriously stylish mood lighting to any setup.

The new full-color and white ambiance bulbs appeared on Amazon.de this week — first spotted by Fabian over at HueBlog.com. According to him, the bulbs will start at 75 euros ($75 USD). That’s each. These bulbs are not cheap, even by Hue standards.

Resembling Hue’s filament bulbs, dimmable white bulbs similarly designed for mood lighting, the Lightguide bulbs have the same subtle black base and clear glass bulb. But the Lightguide line is capable of full-color light as well as tunable white light and dimming. The new decorative bulbs come in three shapes: triangle, ellipse, and globe.

The bulbs are also big, clocking in at just under eight inches tall and five inches wide. By comparison, Hue’s filament Edison bulb is 5.2 by 2.4 inches. These are clearly not designed to be hidden in a lampshade but, rather, to be on display as beautiful light bulbs in open fixtures.

Each bulb has a visible inner tube and a reflective, glossy surface that “gives them a special light,” according to the product description. They output up to 500 lumens of light and 2,700 Kelvin, which is similar to the filament line, making these ambiance bulbs not suitable for task lighting.

As with all Hue bulbs, they are both Bluetooth and Zigbee enabled, so they will work with a Hue Bridge, directly with your phone or tablet, or paired to an Amazon Echo smart speaker. You should be able to control them with the Hue app, Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Apple HomeKit, and Samsung SmartThings, as well as all of Philips Hue’s other smart home integrations. Signify has also committed to supporting the new smart home standard Matter through the Hue Bridge.

We may hear more about the new line, including exact pricing and availability, next week at IFA 2022. Signify — the company that owns Philips Hue — has traditionally announced new products at the event, which is known as Europe’s biggest tech show.

In the meantime, enjoy these pretty pictures and maybe start bulking up your smart lighting budget.

Images via Amazon.de

Walmart is expanding its Walmart Plus InHome program, adding Chamberlain’s myQ smart garage door controller technology to its list of in-home / in-garage delivery partners. Starting in September, Walmart Plus InHome delivery customers can have their groceries securely delivered into their garage if they have a myQ smart garage door controller. And if they don’t have one, the company will install one for free.

Walmart’s in-home delivery service currently works with the Level Lock smart lock and the Aladdin Connect Genie smart garage door opener, as well as any keypad-controlled lock or garage door. Even without the free offer, partnering with Chamberlain will greatly expand the number of customers who are equipped to use the service; The Chamberlain Group claims its myQ technology is installed in one in five households in America.

Chamberlain myQ was a launch partner for Amazon’s in-garage delivery service, Amazon Key, and still works with that program.

With the myQ integration, the Walmart delivery person gets one-time access to the garage via a myQ-connected device, such as a myQ smart garage control hub or a myQ smart garage door opener. You don’t share any codes or apps, and the delivery person will close the door when they leave.

Image: Chamberlain

The Walmart Plus service costs $12.95 a month / $98 a year, and unlimited InHome delivery is an extra $7 a month or $40 per year, $138 annually for both. The delivery person can also pick up any returns.

As part of the partnership, myQ is offering a free “technology upgrade” to make any garage door compatible with the delivery. According to Chamberlain, both new and existing subscribers to Walmart Plus InHome are eligible for a free installation of a myQ smart garage control hub (which regularly costs $29.99).

Walmart’s InHome Delivery service is currently available in Dallas, Los Angeles, San Jose, San Francisco, and Chicago, among other cities (you can check here to see if it’s in your area). Earlier this year, Walmart said it planned to expand InHome Delivery to reach 30 million US homes by the end of 2022.