Philips is offering an Apple iOS iPhone-based software development kit to enable those who'd like to, to tinker with its connected lightbulb system, Hue.

As the name suggests Hue is mostly about colour changes. Being an LED system and therefore already digital and silicon chipped, the bulbs can be developed to be programmable (which naturally Philips has done).

Using Hue with the SDK will enable developers to come up with mobile apps that can turn off and on the lighting (either close up or at a distance), dim particular bulbs and, of course, change their colours. All sorts of security and recreational uses suggest themselves.

The system uses M2M radio technology, Zigbee.