Philips Hue will require an account

Hardware
1

Via Twitter (sorry, I can’t get used to calling it anything else), it seems that Hue have confirmed that they will soon require all users to have a Hue account.

Hello Mysk, thanks for reaching out. Believe us, this change can only benefit the users, when it comes to security. Soon it will indeed be mandatory to have a Hue account in order to control the lights.

https://twitter.com/tweethue/status/1704535648437256657

It’s worth looking at the responses to the thread, to see their (in my view highly spurious) reasoning that it is around security. At one point they make the comment about it being for targeted marketing based on products already owned, which I think is more likely.

Edit: this post here, among others

We want to reassure you that your system will still work without an internet connection. After creating an account, your data will not be sold to any third parties, and you will only receive marketing communications based on your device and account preferences.

https://twitter.com/tweethue/status/1704731415508623442

Either way, I am not impressed and suspect many other MPU folk won’t be either…

1 Like
2

Yeah, I’m pretty unhappy about that.

Will likely look into blocking outgoing traffic from my hue bridge which is in an IoT vlan which already denies incoming connections that don’t originate from inside. Just means I’ll have to temporarily remove that rule to check for firmware updates on occasion.

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Just FYI that there is a firmware update available to enable Matter support.

5

I have all of my Hue bulbs connected directly into Home Assistant through a Zigbee radio. This is done using the Zigbee2MQTT add-on and they all work perfectly. I do not use the Hue hub or app to control any of the bulbs.

7

There were a number of very good tutorials I followed on YouTube by experienced Home Assistant users. I followed them and everything has been working without any problems for well over a year.

I’m away at the moment. When I’m back at home I’ll dig out the links to the videos and share them here.