Getting started - Hue-topia - Philips Hue home lights controller for Mac

This tutorial is now out of date, and has been superseded by this newer version of the same tutorial.

After following these steps which will only take a couple of minutes, you’ll know how to make and use presets, set your lamps to turn on and off on schedule and set it to listen 

The latest version of Huetopia is available here

1.  If you’ve not already done so, make sure your Bridge and some bulbs are switched on and start Hue-topia. The first time that you start the app it will try to find your bridge and attempt to log in. Finding the bridge requires an internet connection. 

Make and try two presets

2. turn the brightness and the whiteness of all of your lamps all the way up and make sure all are on.

3. Click the [+] button (Save preset) and type ‘All white’ for the name of the new preset. OK that.

4. Turn the brightness and also the whiteness of all of your lamps to three quarters of the way up.

5. Click the [+] button (Save preset) and type ‘All warm’ for the name of the new preset. OK that.

6. You now have two presets and can use these from the Presets button in the toolbar and also from the status bar. Try this.

Set your lamps to turn on and off on schedule

7. Press the Schedules button or ‘Show schedules’ from the View menu (command-2 also shows this window).

8. Press the [+] button at the bottom-left of the Schedules window. 

9. Type ‘Daily’ for the name, select ‘On & Off’, select ‘group: all’, type 17:00 for on and 23:00 for off. Leave all days selected. Click somewhere outside of the small window to save and close those settings.

All lamps are now set to switch on at 5pm and off at 11pm.

Set your computer to listen for sound while you are out and respond by switching on the lights

10. Select t’he All warm’  preset and make sure that the ‘Listen’ button isn’t pressed in.

10. Click the Settings button in the toolbar or ‘Hue-topia > Preferences from the menu bar (command - comma is the standard keyboard shortcut for Preferences)

11. If you make a noise, you should see flashing lights in the level indicator. This uses your sound input source set in System Preferences > Sound > Input, so check there if you can’t see a sound level being indicated.

12. Adjust the slider so that you see red lights if you walk around the room or open a door.

13. Choose ‘All white’ 

14. Close that window

15. Return to the manual control window and click ‘Listen’ in the main toolbar. You’ll see that there’s a delay of 60 seconds which you can use if you are leaving the room or the house.

16 Click ’Start now’. The computer is now listening for sound and will respond by turning up all of the lights if it hears a sound. if there’s silence for 5 minutes, the lights should go back down again.