 Separated by loved ones through quarantine or the distance of a different city or even a different country, then this romantic or friendly tech trick of reaching out to them is more convenient than a zoom or phone call, cheaper than an airline ticket and less time consuming than composing an email. Hi, I'm Rafael from Agro Sugar, the only PC shop in the Philippines with no BS warranty and this is how my girlfriend tells me she's thinking of me from a Continental way. I don't need windows, but where can I get legit windows? A lot of options, a lot of prices, here it is. They have CD keyovers.com. It's easy to order. Search for the software you need. Add to cart. Send to their payment options. There's no more five minutes. Finished. There's a legit working CD key card for your windows. Use it on your own to get discounts. So if you're looking for legit, cheap and original software, check out CDKEOVERS.COM. If you guys just want to skip to how my girlfriend can poke or torment me through my Hue lights, I placed a timestamp in the video. But before all that, I have a message to Philips. You didn't make this option obvious to your customers who all have loved ones they can't be with right now during the global pandemic. You guys should really consider marketing this workaround as a romantic idea for Valentine's, especially since it's a free yet hidden feature. So this trick requires that you already have Hue already set up, and while they are in cheap, they're definitely worth it. This is just an added bonus to an already great product. I've always been somewhat of an old school romantic. I hand write letters on postcards and snail mail them to my girlfriend every time I'm traveling. In fact, I collect postcards in general, just in case I feel like giving one in person for no apparent reason. However, because my girlfriend and I have been physically separated from each other since March 10, 2020, for a year and a half due to the pandemic, and because she's studying in a different country which doesn't presently allow visitors from the Philippines, I began thinking about other ways for us to keep our relationship strong without it interfering with our busy schedules. Video calls play an important role in keeping us together. However, our busy schedule often requires us to schedule calls days in advance, thus having WhatsApp or Viber fill in the gap until then. But even instant messaging conversations are best when you have at least 15 minutes of on-allocated time to have a relatively meaningful conversation rather than isolated messages every other hour. Sometimes even that is something to forget the schedule in advance or which a busy schedule robs us off. And that's when it hit me. Philips Hue are smart lights and I have them in my room. Surely if there was a way I could control them through my phone, my iPad or my stream deck, then there might be a way for her to control them to wherever she is in the world because they are tethered to the internet in one way or another. Even though I was an original hater, I can't ignore the fact that Hue truly does create an immersive atmosphere within my room at any moment. I even have the bars on during the day. There's lighting for every sort of moon, from the nightlife of Tokyo to glacier white, a variety of party colors or just your standard daylight or warm white. Philips Hue has an exhaustive amount of color customization and if you are working from home, I highly recommend them in order to disrupt the monotony of your workspace and to help you relax. It took a few failed experiments but I got it down so that when she uses the magic word to summon me, all my Hue lights begin blinking 10 times. All she needs to do is send me a telegram message with the keyword. In fact, she has so much control over my room that even if my phone is off on flight mode or even if I fail to receive the message altogether, my lights will still blink because it isn't my cell phone which is sending the trigger. I'll talk about the how in a second. Depending on how you position your Philips Hue and how many lights you have invested, the effect can be as subtle as a light going off next to your bed or the whole room turning into a rave party. Each time she sends the keyword, my lights will blink 10 times even if they're already off. Right now, they are set so that they blink with whatever color I last left them on. To be honest, it's a lot of power for a person to have and so I only recommend slaving your lighting system to partners or loved ones you are comfortable with and who you know won't abuse it. In actuality, products meant to do this single thing already exist such as the friendship lamps in which each person has a lamp in their house and when one touches it, the other one goes off. These however are infinitely less versatile and are also pretty costly. The best thing about it is that it gives an option for her to reach out to me during times when she can, such as when she's listening to a lecture in class, studying the library or cooking dinner for herself. It's a subtle and sometimes not so subtle way for me to know she's thinking of us and it is also done without the need for any of us to stop what we are doing right then and there. Life is busy and ours is a relationship in which we are content with one video call a week and daily text messages. Since I work from home for the most part, I'm always in my room and when the lights go off, I'll definitely see them at my desk because that's where my Philips U bars are. She gets the satisfaction of being able to mess with my environment whenever she wants to at her convenience and I get the satisfaction of visually seeing that she's thinking of me in real time. While video calls and messages have a chance to carry more information, they're also less tangible. I don't know how else to explain it, but it's freaky and cool at the same time for someone to turn a completely pitch black room into a throbbing art piece. In a way, it reminds me of a subdued version of a light exhibit we went to in Tokyo before the pandemic. In order to set it up, you need the following. First, the Philips U bridge. Second, any Philips U light which connects with the bridge. I have the light bars and the LED strip. You can start off small, which is what I did by buying just one light and then just add over time. I recommend this so that you don't feel the impact of your wallet so heavily. This also works with the Philips U bulbs. Third, you need to link up the lights of your Philips U bridge which I won't discuss here, but it's pretty seamless with the Philips U application. Fourth, download and install the messaging app Telegram. Fifth, download the IFTTT app to your phone. It's also free. Now for the programming part. In Telegram, make a group chat with you and your partner or any loved one you wish. Technically, anyone within the group can activate the lights, even you yourself if you type in the keyword. Alright, now open up the IFTTT app and select create. I'm using the Android version of the application for this demonstration, but it should be quite similar on iOS. After create, select if this. Type in Telegram and then press it. After which, press new message with key phrase in a group. From there, select the group chat you made earlier. Type in the key phrase you want for the lights to go off. Then type in a message you want the automated system to send to show proof that the lights did indeed blink as instructed. Feel free to be as creative and insider joke friendly as you want to be here. It's all part of the fun. Then press continue. From there, press then and type in Philips U. From here, you have a whole host of options which you can choose for it to do other than just blinking the lights. However, for our purpose of this being a high-tech poking mechanism, the blink lights option is the best choice for the job. From there, you can choose the limit what lights they have control over to blink. Theoretically, if you have the house wired up with Philips U all around, then they could turn the whole house into an epileptic party. For my purpose, since I only have you in my room, I just selected all the lights in my room. What the light options would show up here must be configured with the Philips U app beforehand. Otherwise, these options won't show up. And with that, you're all set to go. To test it out, go to the group chat you made and type in the following slash IFTTT and the code word, which in my case is manservant. If everything goes according to plan, the IFTTT bot will reply back the automated messaging program and the lights will begin blinking immediately. Originally, I tried to configure it so that anyone who messaged me with the code word would make the lights blink, but it didn't work. You really need to make a telegram group chat. There is presently no way to do this with Viber or WhatsApp, but telegram is quite popular now and it doesn't cause anything to have it on your phone as a backup messaging service. If you have ever wanted Philips U lights and just needed one more good reason to get them, this might be that reason. However, if illuminating your room with RGB lights never really turned you on to begin with, then I would advise you don't get them simply for this trick alone. Hue lights are pretty expensive. In my experience though, they are built pretty well and they will probably last you a great amount of time because they are LED. I was quite satisfied with just having one pair of Philips Hue bars for a while. The only reason why I got another set and a light strip is simply because I'm honestly having a very hard time coping with all this solitude and decorating my room is one of my outlets. They're pretty expensive, but I'm happy I got them nevertheless. The Hue poke bridges the spatial divide between me and my girlfriend and it gives me a big smile each time it goes off. While this isn't a replacement to writing hundreds of letters or talking on the phone, I consider it an additional tool others can use to keep the foundation of an already good relationship stronger. We want to give an extremely special thanks to our top fans who helped make all of our work possible. It's good seeing all of you so regularly during our streams and again, thank you so much for the support.