Philips Hue Mimic Presence feature is exactly what Kevin McCallister needed

Philips Hue announced a number of products at technology show IFA in Berlin, as well as some software updates including an automation feature called Mimic Presence. 

The feature – as the name suggets – will automatically make it appear as though someone is home when turned on, rather than you having to set up various schedues and routines to come on when you are out of your house.

The Mimic Presence feature requires you to select rooms and specific lights when you set it up, as well as Scenes if you want to, and then it will do everything else automatically, with lights turning on and off in various rooms throughout the period you are away.

You can choose whether to have the lights turn on or off continuously throughout the day or only when it’s dark. If you have other automations setup, the Mimic Presence feature will work alongside those too. It would have saved Kevin McCallister a lot of time and energy if this feature existed back in 1990. 

Alongside the Mimic Presence feature, Philips Hue also announced it would merge its Hue Sync app into the main Philips Hue app, which anyone with the Philips Hue Play Gradient Strip will be thrilled about. Users will be able to control their Play Gradient Strip from the Sync tab of the app when the feature launches later in Q4. 

The Mimic Presence feature will arrive in September as a software update, though no specific timeline has been offered as yet.