Brilliant today introduced the Brilliant Control, designed to replace an existing light switch and provide homeowners with a range of smart home controls.
Brilliant Control has a 5-inch touchscreen with swipe-based lighting, music, and climate controls, and homeowners can interact directly with other smart home devices, such as the Nest thermostat, Sonos speakers, Philips Hue lights, Ring doorbells, and the Honeywell Lyric. It also works with IFTTT and SmartThings and Wink hubs.
In addition to touch capabilities, the Brilliant Control has both a built-in microphone and speaker for native voice control and Amazon Alexa services. The idea is that users can control their smart homes without taking out their smartphone, which Brilliant co-founder Aaron Emigh described as "clumsy."
"While renovating my house, it was important to me that anyone in any room could adjust lighting, music, and climate control as easily as flipping a light switch," said Emigh. "Requiring a mobile phone and apps to adjust your environment is clumsy, and for guests or children, it's impossible."
Nevertheless, Brilliant said it will offer a free companion app for iOS and Android.
The control features 720x1,280 resolution, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to interact with other smart home devices, a video camera with a physical cover for added security, motion detection, and compatibility with existing security systems. Brilliant told MacRumors that HomeKit support could be added later if consumer demand is strong enough.
Brilliant Controls cost $199 each and are available for pre-order beginning today. The first 1,000 customers will receive an early-bird price of $149. Two, three, and four switch models are also available for $249, $299, and $349 respectively. Shipping is expected to begin in late summer 2017.
Alternatively: Best Buy has the iPad mini 2 on sale for $215. MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Best Buy.
Top Rated Comments
Deal breaker.
Up/down light switches with dimmer is just fine, reliably work and have zero compatibility issues have have been around for decades. Don't have to be concerned with technology needing to be updated or outdated and replaced.
Saving money and keeping things simple is not a crime.
It does not make sense!
I really don't need or want a complicated wifi enabled network just to turn the light on! I'll bet a lot if people will be ripping these our in s few years time when they start going wrong and putting back in regular switches!
I'm not a Luddite, I have 2 macs? iPhone, 2 iPads but technology should serve a real purpose (other than creating income for tech companies)