Anker is launching the Eufy MindBase, a local AI hub for its security cameras that runs an on-device, Anker-developed LLM, which the company says can process your footage without it ever leaving your home. It’s also announcing a handful of other smart home security products at the IFA tech show in Berlin this week, including the TrackLight Cam S1, the S4 video doorbell, and a window camera.

Pitched as the “central brain for the home,” the MindBase is not just for Eufy security cameras; Anker is positioning it as a whole-home connectivity solution with on-device compute and local storage. Security is the first use case, but the company plans to add an energy agent for your home’s power, a clean agent for your robot vacuums, and more. Anker hasn’t revealed the price or release date yet.

Eufy got into trouble a few years back for claiming its cameras were end-to-end encrypted when they weren’t always. It has since overhauled its systems, focusing on local storage and end-to-end encryption.

Anker says the MindBase will be a Matter controller, running Matter 1.5, and will support over 40 Matter device categories, including lights, sensors, and HVAC systems. Eufy Security spokesperson Janet Jin told The Verge they plan to integrate Matter-compatible third-party cameras.

The MindBase has dual-band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Thread, and Zigbee and will work with Apple’s HomeKit Secure Video, meaning connected cameras can work with Apple’s smart home system. It can also connect to Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and Home Assistant.

It will support 16 wireless cameras and four wired cameras, along with 34 sensors. This includes a new Smart Security Shield sensor that uses 180-degree dual radar to detect movement. Anker says it will work with a digital credential stored on household members’ phones to recognize friends and family and reduce unnecessary alerts.

With up to 48TB of expandable storage and a dedicated AI chip, the MindBase can process events directly for advanced AI features, including natural-language search across recordings and event summaries, without a monthly fee. It also supports smart alerts for facial recognition, people, car, pet, and stranger detection.

One of the first products designed to work with MindBase is the upcoming Anker Eufy TrackLight Cam S1, which will be part of an Anker MindBase Security Kit. Anker says this is an active-deterrence camera with an auto-tracking light, 180-degree dual-radar detection, and 4K resolution. Anker says Mindbase will also support a wide range of existing security cameras, such as eufyCam S4.

Anker’s new wired Eufy S4 video doorbell, launching this week, will be compatible with Mindbase. The S4’s other party trick is an “immersive virtual reality (VR)-inspired mobile experience,” according to the company. It shows panoramic footage in the Eufy app allowing you to look around the scene by moving your smartphone.

The S4 will cost $299.99 and features a 180-by-180 panoramic field of view, AI-powered tracking and auto-zoom, and 3K-capable recording. It has 64GB of onboard storage, supports Wi-Fi 6, uses a combination of radar and PIR for motion detection.

A $70 window camera arrives later this year. The E10 is designed for people who can’t install security cameras outside and sticks to the inside of a window to record in full-color night vision. It has on-device person and sound detection.

The company also has a new mmWave fall detection sensor. The Eufy Fall Detection Sensor (no price or release date) can be mounted on a wall or ceiling to detect falls and will automatically initiate a voice check after a detected fall or prolonged inactivity. It supports two-way communication and its self-monitoring features don’t require a subscription.

Philips Hue is finally adding wall panels into its smart lighting portfolio. But instead of developing its own, it’s partnered with longtime rival Nanoleaf, the company that invented the smart modular wall panel category.

Starting today, September 3rd, if you own Nanoleaf Hexagon, Triangle, or Mini Triangle wall panels, you can integrate them into your Philips Hue ecosystem using a Philips Hue x Nanoleaf Wall Light Module. The $39.99 device has a full Hue connectivity stack inside, running Bluetooth, Zigbee, and Thread concurrently — meaning you can use the Hue app and a Matter app like Apple Home simultaneously.

Once in the Hue app, the module turns the panels into a full Hue light, capable of gradient light and compatible with Hue scenes, automations, switches, and entertainment experiences. They will also integrate with the new MotionAware and Spatial Aware features on the Bridge Pro.

The module snaps onto the panels the same way Nanoleaf’s controller does, but today you have to use one or the other. George Yianni, founder and head of technology at Philips Hue, tells The Verge that the option to use both modules will be coming in the next couple of months.

Until then, if you attach the Hue module, you’ll lose access to Nanoleaf’s dynamic scenes, screen mirroring, and music-reactive features. You also won’t have any physical controls for the light, something the Nanoleaf controller does offer. When dual control arrives, you can use both apps and the most recent software command will take priority, allowing you to switch between the functions of each ecosystem.

However, you can only control the Nanoleaf panels in the Hue app, not the other way around. “This is more for people wanting Nanoleaf in their Hue ecosystem than using Hue in Nanoleaf,” Nanoleaf CEO Gimmy Chu told The Verge.

Chu said he and Yianni have known each other for years and “dreamed about working together” (despite Hue’s parent company, Signify, recently suing Nanoleaf over patent infringement). Yianni said there is clear overlap in their customer base: “We often see our products installed together,” adding that wall panels have “been in our roadmap forever,” but were constantly pushed back in favor of more pressing products. ”They’re quite complicated,“ he said, and Nanoleaf had the best one out there and had “found a pretty good sweet spot” in terms of price and design. Hue could have gone more premium, said Yianni, but that would get expensive.

The two companies have been working on the integration for 18 months, choosing a collaboration over integration through Matter, because Matter doesn’t yet carry the dynamic/entertainment functionality Hue wanted. “We wanted it to behave with all of the functionality of a regular Hue product, and there’s a lot that’s not part of the standard yet,” said Yianni.

The integration is currently with the Nanoleaf Shapes products, not the Lines, Blocks, or Elements. Starting October 1, 2026, you’ll be able to buy Nanoleaf Hexagon and Triangle starter kits and extensions through www.philips-hue.com starting at $49.99.

Philips Hue is slashing the steep entry price of its entertainment sync offerings. The new stripped-down Sync Box 4K starts at $150, compared to $385 for the 8K model. The brand also launched its first camera-based solution, the Play Screen Sync, for $119.99. Both were on display this week at the IFA tech show in Berlin and are going on sale right away.

The sync systems connect to Philips Hue’s color-changing lighting to make your lights move along with the content on your TV, whether that’s games, movies, or cable news. The Sync Box models use HDMI to pull visuals from any device connected to the TV, such as a streaming box or game console, while the camera model works with any content on screen. The camera pairs a fish-eye lens placed at the top of the screen with automatic calibration and color-matching technology.

Signify, which makes Philips Hue, says the HDMI sync boxes are more accurate than the camera-based Screen Sync. But there are advantages to the camera version, too, since the HDMI models can’t sync with content played through apps and services built into your TV. The Sync Box 4K only supports one HDMI input, too, compared to the four on the 8K model. It also uses HDMI 2.0 instead of 2.1 and supports 4K at 60Hz.

Several competitors already have cheaper camera-based sync options; Govee’s start at $90. Philips Hue’s head of technology, George Yianni, says Hue’s solution is different because it’s simple to install. The team built algorithms that auto-detect the TV panel type, ambient room lighting, and white-balance correction — plus automatic detection of the screen corners, he said.

“With other devices you have to go through quite some steps to make it work well, and people don’t,” Yianni said. “So they don’t get a great experience out of the box. That’s not the case with ours.”

All three Hue Sync solutions now have a new option to work directly with one of the brand’s Play strip lights without requiring a Hue bridge. This lowers the cost of entry further and also makes setup easier. If you decide you want to add more lights, you can add a bridge later.

Signify also launched a new line of Hue Play gradient strip lights to go with the sync options, and it will sell starter kits with a bundled strip. The strip lights are now cuttable to fit more TV sizes, and there’s a new Pro version with black housing and Hue’s uniform OmniGlow technology that can fit TVs up to 100 inches. It starts at $179.99 for 65 inches and is available September 15.

Philips Hue’s AI assistant can now build automations based on natural language, letting you describe what you want your lights to do. The feature, called Custom AI Behaviors, goes beyond simply changing colors or creating a scene and lets users orchestrate complex automations that weren’t previously achievable in the Hue app.

Announced at a press event at the IFA tech show this week, Custom AI Behaviors joins a new integration with Sonos speakers. Users can control Sonos speakers with select Hue switches, including the Hue Tap Dial Switch, to trigger Favorites, play or pause audio, adjust the volume, and move to the next or previous song in a playlist. It will be available via a software update in November.

Many advanced Hue users probably already have sophisticated automations to control their lights, but they didn’t set them up in the Hue app, which is fairly limited beyond basic automations based around time of day. Hue’s head of technology, George Yianni, said this was mostly due to the UI complexity required to present these more advanced automations, not limitations in the technology.

With Custom AI Behaviors, you’ll be able to tell the Hue AI Assistant in the app what you want. For example, when I’m asleep, turn on any lights triggered at nightlight setting; when I’m awake, use normal time-based color temperature. The system requires an input to know whether you’re awake or asleep (such as pressing a button to trigger a sleep or wake routine), but it can figure out the rest from there.

You can also use Custom AI Behaviors to program Hue’s switches, which can be a fiddly process. One scenario demoed included asking the system to program button 4 on the Hue dimmer switch to disable the dining room motion sensor. This sounds like a great way to stop your lights turning on every five minutes while you’re watching TV because your dog is pacing, speaking from experience.

Custom AI Behaviors are currently in beta and will roll out next month. The automation engine that runs them will be available to third-party developers.

Yianni said the capabilities are vast, as every resource the bridge knows about is available as both input and output, including light color, every button press, every sensor event, and time. “It would have been hard to build a UI for this, but now LLMs provide a solution to the problem — they are able to expose richness of capability in an easy way,” he said. “This is not AI for the sake of AI; it’s a practical application of the technology.”

Custom AI Behaviors are exclusive to Hue’s latest bridge, the Bridge Pro, where the engine and automation run locally, while the AI assistant runs in the cloud. “We designed a domain-specific language, a simplified programming language specifically to interact with the AI assistant in the cloud,” Yianni says. The feature was built on the open-weight GLM family of models. “Closed-source models sometimes just change in the background, and can quite significantly change the behavior of your use case,” says Yianni. “With the open-source ones you control what actually runs.”

Finally, the company teased a much-wanted feature launching early next year: Back-up & Restore will allow users to back up their bridge settings to the Hue cloud.

Photography by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge

I love smart lighting, but I don’t love many of the form factors it comes in. With a few exceptions, most smart, color-changing lamps and fixtures fit better in my teenage son’s dorm room than my living room. So, I was pleasantly surprised to see Philips Hue’s new line of architecturally focused smart lights, launched at IFA this week and now available to buy at Philips-Hue.com.

I was very impressed by the Liane 360-degree Rope Lights, which I saw displayed in a trendy Berlin loft. Its versatility, range of brightness, rich colors, and infinite design possibilities really put the smart into smart lighting.

Using Hue’s OmniGlow technology, the Liane offers a 360-degree tube of diffuse light that emits in every direction without harsh pinpricks of light. This makes it capable of being a focal point in a room — both decor and illumination.

A flexible rope light, the Liane can be hung from a wall or ceiling and shaped into organic forms, using clear clips and mounts, or draped around furniture or architectural features.

This type of light is common in modern interior design, integrating the light source as an architectural feature, but it’s almost always just white light. Hue’s innovation here is bringing smart, color-changing lighting.

The catch is that Liane Rope Lights are expensive, starting at $399.99 for 3 meters, with the 5-meter model costing a whopping $549.99.

Along with the Liane, Hue has added three new lights to its popular Signe line, also designed to be used as interior design features. The Signe pendant, Signe pendulum, and Signe pole feature a slim black housing that can be hung from the ceiling, propped against a wall, or used in other strategic ways to incorporate both design and light. They start at $319.99 beginning in October.

Hue also showed off new entries in the popular Festavia indoor/outdoor line, including curtains, nets, and icicle lights.

Photos by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge