Brighten your kitchen counter with the Philips Downlamp Lights

DownlampActivity

Sometimes, your Activities don’t need to be complicated. They just need to do something well.

Today, we’re going to make an Activity featuring the newest member of our Staples Connect system, the Philips Hue Downlamp Light (BR30) bulbs. We’ve got a perfect use for them in our kitchen, where their directional focus will come in very handy as we light our countertop.

The Downlamp Light Bulbs are specialized lighting tools. They’re not for every situation but are perfect in some places that regular bulbs aren’t.

Lighting a kitchen countertop is one of these places. We want to brightly illuminate the countertop but not to completely change the lighting of the entire room.

A Downlamp Light bulb isn’t like your typical light. If you were to open up a traditional LED light bulb, you’d often see something like this. The block of LEDs in the center points out in all directions, casting the light in a circular pattern.

But the inside of a Downlight Lamp looks more like this. The light is focused in a single direction. And because we don’t have to spread our LEDs in a 360-degree pattern, the light can get VERY bright. You don’t want to look into this light but it’s perfect for illuminating our workspace.

In our kitchen, we’ve added a couple Downlight Lamp bulbs over the countertop. We’ve also got a motion sensor on the counter that we’ll use to turn on these lights. We’ll turn on the lights to 75% brightness and a yellow-orange color.

To create this Activity:

  1. Click Activities.
  2. Click New Activity, then enter a name for your Activity.
  3. We need to tell your Staples Connect system that the motion sensor will start the Activity. Choose “The Activity will be started by one of my devices,” then select the kitchen motion sensor.
  4. Now we need to tell your system when to turn the lights on. Click the Reason dropdown, then choose “When the device detects motion.”
  5. With our conditions in place, we can now choose the lights we want to turn on. Choose the Downlight Lamp bulbs, then click Next.
  6. Now we need to set the correct color and brightness for the bulbs. Click Choose, then set the color to a yellow-orange, the saturation to about three-quarters yellow, and the brightness to 75. You’ll probably want to play with these levels a few times until you’re sure the lights are the way you want them.
  7. You can make your Activity send you an email or push notification each time it runs. We’re guessing that you probably won’t want to do that (if so, click Skip) but if you do, enter your message and select the Users who should receive the notification.
  8. Review your Activity, then click Finish.

Great! Now we’ve got good task lighting in the kitchen that comes on automatically. We hope you enjoy your new lights and yes, we’d love a dinner invite.

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