HALO Home

The app needs to add a way that whenever you turn the lights on via a wall switch, the lights are at a color temperature that mimics natural outdoor light color for the current time of day. With this app now, scheduling the color temperature also inevitably controls whether the lights are on or off according to the schedule. Most people don’t want their bedroom lights coming on and off based on a schedule, they want their child to be able to use a wall switch. Cree Connected Max has a nice interface for this which they are calling “Follow the Sun”. I would love to see Halo Home add this to their app. Adding the ability to use Siri Shortcuts may be another solution as Apple has already set up routines to support circadian lighting control.

Having 2 in wall dimmers, I connected Halo Home app to them so I can at least control them from my phone and I can set up auto on abs off via app. It would be a lot more convenient if I could access these devices directly via Bluetooth but you have to connect to them via their Halo Home app. It takes awhile for this to occur. Bigger problem is if you have a glitch at home, like a power outage, the app will not connect to you devices. This has happened more than once. I had to delete the app, re-install, and re-register as a new client with an entirely different email address. I’m running out of email addresses 😉 I called tech support but the woman said I would get a call from them because my problem was beyond her realm. They never called. So my only viable option will be to delete the app and start over as a new customer with an email address that hasn’t been used previously. Wish me luck!

Overall, we are quite satisfied with this app, it does take a few seconds to connect to your lights when you first open it up, but we don’t mind since I’m sure that that saves a significant amount of battery life on my phone. We have all Halo smart lights, which you can dim as well as change the color temperature onto the app, so waiting a little bit to login is totally worth it to us. We also like the ability to set up scenes like, “cloudy Saturday morning“ “dinner party“ to coordinate multiple groups of lights with one button. Some suggestions: -These lights use a small amount of power already, but I think it would be very cool if when you are adjusting the settings on a light, group, or scene, if it would give you an approximate wattage that your set up is currently using. It doesn’t have to be exact, but I think it would be really neat to know that with 10 lights and three groups turned to various power levels and color temperatures approximately how much wattage I’m using. -Once you set up a scene, it takes a little bit of doing to modify the settings with in that scene, it would be nice if the interface was simplified for that. Every time I go to make changes it takes me to a screen to “take a photo“. I don’t even know what the heck that’s for or why I would want to do that. -The main symbols used to navigate within the settings for a light or also not very intuitive, it seems like some more intuitive symbols could be found. -my wife and I are both signed into the same account on different phones to control the app, which has already created one instance of us getting locked out of being able to control our lights. I think it would be useful if whoever is the primary account user that sets up the connections to the lights, if they can send invites to other users to create their own account that also has access to the lights. Overall, this is a useful and easy to control app.