Firestorm for Hue

Why does it always feel like no one uses their own products?? You can only set one light or group of lights at a time. So if you want different colors to flicker at the same time don’t use this app. All I want to do is set up dark purple and dark orange to flicker for Halloween. Why is this so hard to accomplish??

Original: I access the app from my iPhone 10 and control Philips Hue lights. It works until the auto lock on the phone comes on after two minutes than the flickering stops. I can’t find a setting in the app to prevent it from stopping after the phone’s auto lock activates. I guess I could change the auto lock setting from two minutes to never, but it seems odd that I need to have my phone on for this to work. Update: We use this app nearly every day with our Hue lights and per the developer recommendation, it works fine after I cycled my phone off and on. Five Stars.

This is one of the better Hue applications I’ve tried. The app design is very clean and the interface is intuitive and easy to use. The three light modes: candle, fireplace, and campfire are nice relaxing light modes that I use when taking a nap or just relaxing. That said, I only gave this app 3 stars because I believe there are some things that could be improved. The first is with the light speeds for the fireplace and campfire modes. The slow, medium, and fast settings are like a notch too fast. I would expect the slow setting to be more like a fire when it is dying down and and is mostly red coals, so the light would be primary at the red end of the color with only occasional yellow and pulsing very slowly. As it is, slow is more like a regular fire speed. Fast is way too fast. I think the designer may have been imagining a roaring bonfire, but to me if feels more like being in a house that is on fire. My second issue with this app is my biggest complaint, the audio needs some work. The first problem with the audio is that it is that the audio is the same no matter what speed the fireplace or campfire are set to. Yes, the audio is different for the fireplace and campfire, but when you can the fire speed the audio is the exact same whether it is slow, medium, or fast. My second complain is that their is a “tape hiss” type sound in the audio background. It sounds like the developer used a fairly cheap audio for the fireplace and campfire recordings. I use the app on my iPad Pro which has good speakers and I notice the hiss sound. I also connect the audio to my Bose Wave bookshelf audio system and there the hiss sound is really noticeable. All-in-all I like the Firestorm app and with some improvements to the speed modes and audio I think this could be a 5-star app.