Today marks the first anniversary of the release of OnHub, the home router that aimed at making Wi-Fi connectivity easy. Beyond this though, OnHub was positioned with its antenna array and other features as being a potential hub for home automation and Internet of Things (IoT) integration. To date, that promise has gone largely unfulfilled with the exception of IFTTT support a few months ago. That is changing today with an announcement from the team at Google that OnHub is now partnered with Phillips so you can control your Hue lights with your OnHub.
Today, we’re celebrating OnHub’s first birthday and announcing a new partnership with Philips Lighting, the first connected home device you can control directly with OnHub. We know people don’t like having too many apps on their phones, so we made it possible to control your home’s Philips Hue lights without downloading an app. Now anyone connected to your OnHub can type “On.Here” in a computer, tablet, or mobile browser and control the most popular features of your Philips Hue lights from there. Crank up the party lights!
It’s is a great addition to see to the router and hopefully is a sign of things to come.
To help with this new feature, the OnHub app for Android and iOS has been updated and the router itself has had a firmware update. The router will update itself and may take a day or two to happen while you can get the updated app for your device in the Play Store or App Store. Once you get the new app, in the Settings, you will see a new Connected Home section where you can
Connect Home Section in OnHub Settings
manage devices that are connected to your router.
In addition to the new Connected Home section, the OnHub app has improved data usage numbers to show only WAN usage and some other general stability and improvements. Even if you don’t have a Hue lighting system, the app update should be one to pick up for this reason alone.
Hopefully the future is bright for OnHub and it is great to see this new addition to the platform. Now it is just a matter of seeing what else gets added – and hopefully soon.
If you haven’t read my review of the router, you can do that here. If you want to pick one up for yourself, you can do that at Amazon and now through September 30th you’ll save $20 on the TP-Link model. Right now you can pick up the Blue model for just $167
