William Gallagher
A bug that is cranking Philips Hue smart bulbs to 100% randomly appears to be related to Matter. A fix is coming, but there's a temporary work-around for the problem.
Signify, the company that owns Philips Hue, originally announced early support for the Matter standard, and then delayed adding it. Now an unknown number of users are saying that they are seeing this random increase in brightness.
"After extensive analysis, we have identified an interoperability issue with the Matter smart home standard," Signify spokesperson Kate Helander told The Verge, "in which random temporary radio traffic disruptions are incorrectly recognized as legacy switch power toggles, turning low brightness lights to full brightness."
It's not clear whether the issue lies with Signify, or with the Matter standards body, the Connectivity Standards Alliance. But Signify has now announced that it will ship a fix for the issue within a week.
In the meantime, Signify says users who are being affected by this problem should disconnect their Hue Bridge from Matter. The company notes that users may have to do this in both the Matter app, and in iPhone settings.
Matter is a comparatively new standard that aims to make it possible for users to buy smart home devices from multiple vendors, each of whom has their own proprietary technology. Apple, for instance, supports Matter so that its users are not constrained to only using HomeKit-enabled devices.
Back in August 2023, Signify announced Matter support across its range of smarthome products. Those include security cameras, but as yet there have been no reported bugs in anything but the lights.
Update: 7:20 AM Eastern: a spokesperson for the Connectivity Standards Alliance says testing has shown the bug was in Signify's implementation of Matter, not the Matter standard itself.
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3 Comments
I miss the days where lightbulbs were just lightbulbs and not mini-computers.
I had this issue a few months back, and even bought new bulbs, thinking the bulbs were the issue.
What solved it for me was to remove th Hue bridge from HomeKit (it had been there for ages) and re-add it.
My guess is that the way it integrates into HomeKit now is vastly different (and HomeKit is) from what it was a few years back.