Your Garmin Is a Light Switch: Control Philips Hue and Your Smart Home
Yes, you can control your smart home from your Garmin. Lumicoe puts your Philips Hue lights on your wrist, and there are apps for Home Assistant and Google Home too.
Turn off your lights with your Garmin
Can you control your smart home with your Garmin? Of course you can. There's no Garmin smart home app built in, but the Connect IQ Store has apps for the most popular systems. Here's the one I use, and the best options for the others.
Philips Hue: Lumicoe
I only use Philips Hue, and Lumicoe is a dedicated app for it. Setting it up takes a minute:
- Install Lumicoe and open it on your watch
- Press start, then sign in with your Hue account on your phone and approve Lumicoe
- It finds your Hue bridge on its own
Now every room and zone is in one list, each showing its current colour and brightness. There's one switch for every light in the house, and you dim a room by dragging along the edge of the screen. It's so convenient that I reach for my wrist before my phone now.
You can also pick white tones from warm to cool, choose a colour, use Hue's light recipes like Relax and Concentrate, and control single lights within a room. Because it goes through the Hue cloud, it even works when you're not home.
You need a Hue Bridge connected to your Hue account, and your phone nearby with Garmin Connect and an internet connection. Scenes you saved in the Hue app aren't available.
Install Lumicoe →Home Assistant
If you run Home Assistant, you can control far more than lights: climate, switches, sensors and anything else you've connected. There are two good apps:
Home Assistant is the simpler one. Add a "garmin" group with the devices you want in your Home Assistant configuration, enter your Home Assistant address and an access token on the watch, and tap devices to control them. Group them by room if you have a lot.
Install Home Assistant →GarminHomeAssistant is the most popular one, with over 10,000 downloads. It gives you a fully configurable dashboard of menus on your watch, but it takes more setup, so read its documentation before you start.
Install GarminHomeAssistant →Google Home
Assistant for Google Home lets you create commands for your Google Home devices: lights on or off, curtains open or closed, doors locked, automations started. Your rooms and devices need the same names, in the same language, as in the Google Home app.
Install Assistant for Google Home →Good to know
These apps send their commands through your phone, so your phone needs to be nearby with Garmin Connect running and an internet connection. Check the app's page in the Connect IQ Store to make sure your watch is supported.
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