Hive Antenna – Precise Control for Your Hive Lights

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by Graham SheldonJune 25^th, 2020

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The newly announced Hive Antenna from Hive Lighting promises to be a great way of controlling your arsenal of Hive lights anywhere – and the company means anywhere. You can even control your lights from other cities as long as they are connected to WIFI. It’s part tablet, part remote and it’s shipping soon. Details below:

Image Credit: Hive Lighting

Hive Lighting, makers of the popular Hornet 200-C and Wasp 100-C (among other fixtures), are known primarily for their Omni-Color hard light sources that are compatible with a whole host of useful of accessories. In a lighting market rife with RGB panels Hive Lighting has stood out by making portable color capable hard lights.

The Hive Antenna is billed as being a smart tablet and uses Bluetooth for on-set control. You can use the Antenna as an interface between Wi-Fi and Bluetooth signals which allows you to remotely control your hive lights from anywhere (Wi-Fi connection required). You can see a quick mockup of how this connection works below:

Image Credit: Graham Sheldon

The below video goes into additional detail, but this appears from afar to be tablet hardware from a 3rd party that Hive Lighting has used as a platform to pre-install their Hive Shot software and include additional capabilities on the software side. Hive Lighting says the product was born out of their experience helping with remote production for the at-home version of NBC’s The Voice.

As an owner of both the 200-C and 100-C, I’m often controlling both fixtures through the excellent Hive Shot app available for both iOS and Android devices. While, given the circumstances, the Hive Antenna seems like an excellent solution for maintaining production quality with small crews staying physically distant, I wonder if the need is there for controlling lighting setups from other cities. I do see the Hive Antenna as being a superb companion for owner/ops with a large collection of Hive Lights or rental houses wishing to provide a truly turn-key kit.

We’ll reserve judgment until we’ve been able to secure a Hive Antenna for review, but this seems like an excellent addition to an accessory ecosystem that is already filled with a bunch of useful add-ons. 

Image Credit: Hive Lighting

What do you think? Will you be adding the Hive Antenna to your kit? Comment below!