with the onset of longer days and warmer nights our minds are turning to the outside spaces of our
homes and how to make entertaining and relaxing in them really special lighting is one of the easy
ways to quickly upgrade an outdoor space and by the use of the philips hue lighting system
we're going to see exactly how effortless it is to turn this into this stay tuned to the end of the
video for some top tips on how to use some of the hue features to get the most out of your garden
lighting now to transform this outdoor space we've had some help and support from friends of the show
mj electrical who you may have seen on a couple of previous videos and it's always nice to catch up
with business owner matt bolton as he was one of my first ever students more years ago than
either of us care to he's doing extremely well for himself you're keeping okay matt yeah very
well very well good stuff uh we're gonna have a chat about your thoughts on this system a little
bit later in the video uh your team has done a lot of the in-store work already so you want to
go and crack on with the commissioning work and i'll have a look at the likes we're putting in
excellent and i will be testing you on ohm's law later who we're using two different types
of fitting in this video which will nicely demonstrate a few different ways we can light up
a garden we're installing some outdoor led strip which we'll get to in a moment and we've also got
the lily outdoor spotlights in both its standard and its xl sizes and it really is a brilliant
piece of minimalist design the smaller version has a lower light output which would be perfect
for smaller spaces or a subtler effect but in some areas of this space we've decided to go large an
advantage of using the higher output fitting is that you can always dim it down to a lower level
depending on how the space is being used at any given moment key features from an installation
point of view include the interchangeable base you can either have this flat base which makes
it perfect for installing to hard surfaces like large stones paving slabs or decking and the like
or you can just unscrew it and replace it with this spike which is then perfect for
installation into soft ground like a flower bed or a lawn so you could mount it high up on a wall or
a pergola or other garden structure or have it down low pointing up into the foliage of a bush
it also has a removable hood on the fitting that allows you to reduce glare and direct the light
with it in place or gives you a more diffused spread of light over a wider area if you remove
it keeping in with the theme of being easy to install all the connections are plug and play
via these handy little t connections that allow you to tap off to a fitting while also giving you
a connection to run a cable onto the next point of use and then the connection to the power supply
is just via this little control box and this simply plugs into a socket outlet and that's the
installation work pretty much done so previously in this installation we used to have these rather
ropey old fittings that were hardwired into connection boxes and so kev off of mj electrical
has been around replacing these boxes with mk master seal socket outlets and whipping out the
old rather tired lights and replacing them with the philips hue fittings instead and this is one
of the real benefits of this tech because it's not just simple to install with its plug and play
approach it's also really easy to adapt adjust and extend either moving the existing fittings
around and plugging them in wherever you've got a socket outlet or just extending off one of the
other fittings we're using an up-light approach on this installation to try and highlight some of the
trees and bushes in this handsomely established garden there's a couple of approaches you can
use here lights installed a little further out from the foliage will show off the tree
or shop as a whole but if we bring it in close and shine it up into the underside of the crown
the light will filter up and catch the undersides of leaves and branches at different points we can
even bring it right up to the trunk to achieve a different effect where the central column of
the tree becomes the highlight and this will be particularly effective in late autumn and through
winter when the leaves have fallen off the tree leaving you with the bare branches to illuminate
and that's where that flexibility and ease of movement comes into its own as you can move
the fitting to different positions really easily for different circumstances and effects you could
even if you're feeling brave and have suitable access equipment get the fitting up into the tree
pointing down to achieve further exciting looks however the real flexibility of this product comes
into its own in the app more on that in a moment let's take a look at the other fitting that we're
using on this installation and that is the light strip outdoor which comes in two different lengths
one five meters and the other two meters there's loads of the light strip variations available but
what sets these two apart is their ip67 rating making them perfect for as the name would suggest
outdoor use following the same principles as the lily xl it's really easy to install and requires
no fiddly connections or cut points simply connects to this little control box which plugs
into a socket outlet and you're good to go it's really flexible and can be bent follow contours
of paths or curving walls or it can simply be laid in a straight section along the edge of a
dect area or under the eaves of a conservatory or a house when hidden away out of sight the
light output from it can be used to create an effect like a seating area or a wall or similar
it's kind of floating with a pool of light under it another great way that the hue system can
be used in outdoor lighting is by enhancing the security of your home to demonstrate inside each
of these fittings there's a philips hue gu10 lamp first of all there's the timer function to bring
the lights on and off at set times however as i've said in previous videos for those of us who
spent our formative years in the 90s we know that harry and marv are sitting in a van down the road
noting these times down so much better to turn on the randomized function instead and the chosen
lights will come on and off at random times which could help to enhance security this can
then be further improved with the use of sensors that will detect movement and bring any assigned
lighting on when triggered critically you can also have them come on at a certain temperature
as it's thought that having lighting at a cooler white is more off-putting to potential crims now
if you're interested in any of the fittings that we've looked at so far in this video then the good
news is you can get 10 off your order by using the discount code efix10 at the philips hue store i'll
leave a load of affiliate links in the description below so just click on one of those and it'll take
you to the fitting that you're interested in now let's go and have a catch up with matt and see
what he thinks of this system so matt you've had pretty much an afternoon to play around with this
which is not a lot of time and with all these kind of plugs and connectors it does feel a little bit
like a consumer product so yeah what advantage is there for the electrician who's installing these
so with this product we'll start off with the sort of main side of it and the light units
themselves are extra low voltage so a lot of them are 24 volts and so you haven't got to worry about
trailing needs and flower beds and people cutting through them with trimmers or gardening tools
which is a great safety benefit and and in terms of commissioning the app itself is very intuitive
as soon as you've got them all plugged in turn them on and they come on a warm white color as
standard and then as you're adding them you can then flick through the colors to identify
which light is which so you can very quickly build up the scene go around add them all on and you
assign the names as you're you're adding it in and you can create your rooms so for instance on this
job we've got the back garden and the driveway at the front yep um once you've got them added
on sign names to them drop them into your rooms and then within that you can then organize them
i like to get them in order as we know them yeah that's my cd so we can get them in order in this
particular garden we've managed to get it so it flows right through from the patio over there
right through the whole garden yeah over to this area yeah so it's interesting that's one of the
things you brought up because that's kind of one of the things that electricians they get a bit
nervy about when there's an app involved you know and it's like all that connectivity but you found
the app pretty intuitive to to get hooked up yeah it's clear that philips obviously spent a long
time developing this app um it works faultlessly so we've not issued we've not experienced any
issues with it so far yeah that's really good it all hooks up to that bridge now that's
from where we're sitting it's kind of out the front of the house so is there any kind of concern
with the range of the fittings because obviously we're quite a long way from the bridge but there
will be limiting factors i mean an installation like this where we've got quite a few devices
and you know they've created a strong mesh network so we've not experienced any issues on this
obviously you are going to get limited factors to where you can put them but you can always
then try and bridge that with extra fittings to to strengthen the mesh so yeah that's it because
they're quite about 10 meters don't they but obviously you know depending on all sorts of
things that could be a little bit less yeah but like you say if a fitting is too far away you
could just you know replace a lamp sort of on the back wall of the house maybe just to boost that
exactly that and as you say it forms that mesh it all links together so you're not just relying
on one connection that or each connection to the to the hub or the bridge they're all forming that
kind of meshed connection yeah clever stuff no that's a good product so one of the things that
we mentioned there matt is the ease of adjustment what advantages does that bring to an electrician
in terms of making a little bit more money so this is a product that you can obviously try and upsell
and the ability to be able to put it in more vote remote locations around the garden around the
premises without having to get main circuitry back to a point within the building has its benefits
um and you know it can be treated as a add-on product so you know that could be an upsell
advantage and particularly in areas if you're trying to install led tapers we've got behind us
the traditional system you'd have to get a driver in a external adaptable box yeah you'd have to
then either get a cassex back to the the house or be reliant on a wi-fi signal back to the property
whereas with this system when the mesh network you can mesh back to the point where you want to
be you're not governed by the wi-fi signal of the house yeah it's a real problem solve the product
isn't it yeah yeah really good so you've really taken a lot of the fear out of the app there for
us matt which is really good but if someone feels they do need a little bit more support in terms
of setting up and programming and commissioning yeah is there help available online easily there
is yeah phillips you have got a load of videos on youtube how-to tutorials etc yeah so yeah there's
always guided help available that's brilliant i'll leave some links in the description uh to those
series of videos because again it's short content it's really helpful and it's really good for
getting systems up and running okay matt we really appreciate your help with this install and the
commission and everything that's going to shoot off now and we're going to go and have a look at
some of these lights functioning in the dark and have a look at how that app behaves and some of
the interesting functions that they've got thanks again matt good to see you take care this is where
the fun really begins because now we get to play with the system if you remember the old lighting
looked like this a bit flat uninspiring massively over lit in some places blinding glare in others
and incredibly dark patches elsewhere but now with the philips hue we can tinker adjust and
generally make everything look awesome each light we've put in here can be individually adjusted for
colour giving you a choice from 16 million colors so definitely enough to be going on with and then
you can switch over to white control and change the color temperature from the coolest of cool
right the way up to the very warmest of warm whites now all of this can start to get a little
bit overwhelming and so if you're struggling to know where to begin with a large installation
like this you can simply dive into the hue scene gallery here you've got a pane of default settings
which adjusts the color temperature and brightness to preset values meaning that you can quickly
reset everything to the same colors without having to do each light individually so here we've got it
on dimmed and then we can bring all of the fittings up to bright altogether and i'm sure
you'll agree that that makes for a really nice display moving out into more adventurous schemes
there's this great selection of palettes from various themes such as refreshing romantic cozy
party vibes and so on what i really love though is the recommended section at the top here the
name of the space in this case back garden has generated some palettes such as orange fields
which looks a little bit like this or painted sky which looks like this or my personal favorite
forest adventure you can see there that a range of colors are being used across the fittings leading
to a really great and effortless effect we can even take it one step further by creating a
palette from one of our own pictures all you do is click this little plus symbol and then use photo
i'm going to use this one here that i took earlier in the making of this video the hue app then takes
the picture and selects a palette based on the colors in that image so it's produced some greens
and blues there we'll call this one daytime vibes and that is what it looks like when we select it
now there is so much depth to this app and system and this is actually the third in a series of
videos on philips hue lighting that we've made we overhauled our studio lighting with it and gordon
took a deep dive into the setup and commissioning process along with looking at some other great
features in the app including how to link it to your spotify account to make the colors change in
time to the music that you might be listening to maybe using this cool rock speaker from life audio
and so for more information please check out these videos here and thank you very much for watching