Apps for Philips’s Hue Light Bulbs

How many apps does it take to screw in a light bulb For Philips, apparently, there can never be too many.

The company’s Web-enabled Hue - an LED bulb customers can control from a smartphone, setting its brightness or its colors across a broad spectrum - has already been a big hit with independent software developers who have been hacking the system and creating apps of their own. Some of them allow users to sync the lights to music to “really create a party disco feeling in your home,” said George Yianni, the Hue system architect. Others let users set the lights to coordinate with the colors in a scene on television using a smartphone camera, creating “kind of a surround-lighting experience,” he said.

The outside interest in adding new functions has been so strong that Philips plans to announce on Monday that it is opening up its software and publishing guides and libraries as part of an official developer’s kit. The company hopes to attract even more people to create new ways to se its product, including companies that want to make devices to work with it, like universal remotes, thermostats and home automation systems that might also control heat, ventilation and blinds.

“It’s something that’s a bit unusual, unconventional for hardware companies to do,” Mr. Yianni said. But, he added, there were pockets of people with specific lighting needs, like photographers, “which you can only really tap into if you make it a more inclusive developer program.”

Philips is not the only company taking this approach. A start-up called SmartThings, which makes kits that can help connect home appliances to the Internet so they can be monitored and adjusted through a computer or smartphone, is also making its software free to developers.

That product, along with the Nest thermostat, which automatically adjusts to consumer heating and cooling patterns, and the handful of smart LEDs either on the market or soon to come, signal what may finally be the beginning of t! he long-promised connected home. Hue bulbs, which come with preprogrammed settings that can, say, mimic the rising sun or, according to Philips’ research, bolster the energy of people in the room, can coordinate with one other as well as with appliances and gadgets in the home.

The Hue bulbs have been selling well despite their $199.95 price for a starter kit of three bulbs and their controls. Mr. Yianni estimated that home automation products and universal remotes that could work with the bulbs would be available this year.