Nanoleaf Shapes Hexagons light up your life

Sometimes you buy tech because you desperately need it. At other times you buy it for fun.

Nanoleaf Shapes Hexagons.

Sometimes you buy tech because you desperately need it. At other times you buy it for fun. Nanoleaf’s light panels are definitely in the second category.

You may have a blank wall at home that needs spicing up. You might want to add atmosphere to your dining room, or place a Nanoleaf set in your kids bedroom.

Nanoleaf’s panels can be arranged anyway you like. You can choose solid colours, or multi-coloured themes such as the shades of green in ‘jungle’, the reds of ‘sundown’, or the cool colours of ‘cocoa beach’. Nanoleaf says you can choose between 16 million colours.

Lighting can be static, or gently undulate between colours, or gyrate to the beat of music nearby. The world is your oyster. You can use the screen mirror feature to reflect your on screen activity onto your lights.

Nanoleaf Shapes Hexagons feature tiles.

The Canadian firm’s original Nanoleaf panels were triangular, then they produced square ones. This third iteration of Nanoleaf comprises hexagonal (six-sided) panels that you arrange to suit your artistic flare. You can buy packs of nine panels locally.

I like this third iteration known as Nanoleaf Shapes Hexagons the best. First, you can make attractive designs with fewer panels. Secondly, Nanoleaf has made it easier to install and remove panels from the wall. It has modernised the little link modules used to connect panels electrically.

Set-up is relatively easy. You first decide on the arrangement you want. Nanoleaf supplies examples if you can’t think of your own. I laid my arrangement out on the carpet, and added panels to the wall one-by-one to make sure I added them in position. You need to work out where to place the electrical linkers so that every tile is powered.

You remove the mounting tape backing, and press the tile firmly on the wall one by one.

These hexagonal panels are just six millimetres thick and offer 100 lumens of light per tile. Nine together is very bright so you might find, say, 40 per cent brightness is more than adequate.

Nanoleaf Shapes Hexagons feature tiles.

The panels have a small carousel attached to their back that lets you rotate a panel and finetune its orientation. If you need to change things around, you can pull the panels off the wall, and then carefully remove the carousel and mounting tape separately. You are less likely to damage the wall paint work with this two-step process, although this depends on the robustness of your wall paint.

Lastly, you connect the power cable to one of the panels, and add a little touch sensitive control unit adjacent to it. You can use it to control Nanoleaf from the wall.

You can turn Nanoleaf on and off, adjust brightness, and switch between colour and rhythm scenes. The power cable supports up to 21 panels.

There are other ways to control Nanoleaf. You can use its comprehensive app to choose colours, scenes, and devise your own colour arrangements. Nanoleaf says hundreds of pre-saved scenes are available. The app includes tutorials that help you learn its functionality.

The fun way to control your panel array is with a personal assistant. Nanoleaf works with Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa and Apple Siri

Nanoleaf Shapes Hexagons feature tiles.

You can use voice commands to turn Nanoleaf shapes on and off, vary the brightness, or set a predefined scene with a multi-coloured array. You can set schedules to trigger particular light arrangements at particular times, Including on an hourly, daily and weekly basis.

I tested the voice commands with Google Assistant and Alexa. Both allowed me to turn shapes on and off, and vary brightness and choose solid colours. Only the Google Assistant let me choose scenes.

It amused me that Google Assistant spoke a very long list of hexadecimal digits whenever I used it to set a scene. It sounded like the navigator on USS Enterprise in Star Trek.

However I found it took time to get the personal assistants working with Nanoleaf.

You can install third party apps to further broaden Nanoleaf’s functionality. One app that I saw on Reddit lets you create a video-like light display sequence.

You can buy a starter kit of nine panels of Nanoleaf Shapes for $349 from JB Hi-Fi and the Nanoleaf Australian store. JB Hi-Fi also sells a five-panel kit for $229.

Nanoleaf Shapes Hexagons feature tiles.