Cheap Smart Lights and Home Assistant Highlights from IFA

Installer No. 96 lands with a mix of IFA reveals, gaming drops, and smart-home notes. The big consumer headline: Philips Hue rolled out a cheaper Essentials line that cuts the price of getting into color lighting. Around the show, we also saw hardware updates, a notable Home Assistant interview, and a few neat gadgets worth bookmarking.

Highlights

• Philips Hue Essentials: color bulbs from $25 each ($15 in four-packs), plus a new bridge and more entry-level lights.
• Hollow Knight: Silksong finally launched — early impressions suggest a worthy sequel.
• Instagram comes to iPad with a Reels-forward layout; Android tablets to follow.
• Peacock’s The Paper, a spinoff of The Office, debuted and earned a second season.
• New hardware: Samsung’s S25 FE and refreshed tablets, Remarkable’s pocket-friendly Paper Pro Move, Chipolo’s rechargeable trackers, and a Mophie charging stand for AirPods Max.

Smart-home angle

Cheaper Hue bulbs lower the barrier for whole-home color lighting, but the practical gain depends on compatibility and control. Signify’s new bridge and devices show the vendor steering buyers toward an ecosystem purchase — which is great for simplicity, but raises the usual questions about interoperability, firmware updates, and long-term support.

That’s why the Home Assistant conversation matters. Founder Paulus Schoutsen shared a homescreen tour and pragmatic choices: using open systems like Obsidian for notes, leveraging Claude Code for automations, and building a new big-antenna Z-Wave module to reach every device. It’s a reminder that hobbyist platforms increasingly shape mainstream smart-home expectations.

Why it matters

More affordable bulbs spark adoption, but real value comes from reliable control, privacy, and maintainability. Organizations and advanced users should ask: will new devices play with my hub? Who gets firmware updates? And how do AI tools like Claude Code fit into automation workflows?

Practical steps for teams and integrators

• Audit your current hub and protocol mix (Matter, Zigbee, Z-Wave, vendor hubs).
• Pilot cheaper bulbs in controlled zones to measure latency, power use, and update behavior.
• Test integrations with platforms like Home Assistant and include security and privacy checks before wide rollout.
• Plan for lifecycle operations: OTA firmware, replacement options, and network reach (Paulus’ ZWA-2 antenna is a case in point).

Across gaming, apps, and gadgets, the theme is practical evolution: devices that are cheaper, AI that makes automations smoother, and communities turning hobby projects into de facto standards. Installer signs off after a busy IFA week — we’ll be watching how these cheaper devices actually behave in real homes.