A:Answer Well first and most important is you need the strip driver which is only included with the with the version that starts at a price-point of $70 ish. This $24 item is only an extension for a light strip with the driver included. The $70 light strip that has the driver will work "generally any hub" but, will give you a limited number of options. The hubs are used to deploy and apply the full configuration options for the hue lights that are aired to it. So this extension item will NOT work by iteself because it lacks the LED driver for the strip lights (which retails for $60-$75 depending on the manufacturer, HUE, LIFX, Etc.) This will allow you to pair it with a supported hub, but without the mfr bridge the options are going to be basic. (roughly 10 base colors, a few brightness levels, but little else) The mfr device bridge is what houses all the "customization"and "advanced functions" With the mfr bridge that I have from Phillips Hue, it has a few thousand options for color choices, and brightness settings as well as syncing the light responses to audio sources, scheduled functions (like on at sunset off at sunrise based on your location) the bridge then queries the weather to retrieve the times for those events. It can also do things like change the light color based on the weather (green for rain, orange for thunder, blue for snow, purple for sleet, etc)
