'Brilliant' Aims to Replace Your Home's Light Switches With Touchscreens

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

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Robert.Walter

27 months ago

"It does not appear to support Apple HomeKit. "

Deal breaker.

Rating: 7 Votes

CrystalQuest76

27 months ago

Really neat technology that is not needed by anyone. I grew up in a house with intercom panels in each room connected to a central station that included AM/FM radio. It was almost never used beyond the novelty factor. Many houses in the neighborhood were built at the same time and had the same devices. None of my friends used them either. All the teenagers opened them up and disconnected the wires so that they knew that parents could not listen in. One friend told me that his parents removed wires from intercom panel in their room for the very same reason (Builders all put the central stations in a common room).
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.

Rating: 5 Votes

sidewinder3000

27 months ago

If Brilliant doesn't support HomeKit, I won't support Brilliant. This is one area Apple is getting right: tight protocols and emphasis on security & privacy. Without them, the Internet of Things will become the Internet of Things that Leer and Listen to You While You're at Home. No thank you.

Rating: 3 Votes

electric

27 months ago

It would be cheaper to buy a bunch of old smartphones and stick them on the wall.

Rating: 2 Votes

yegon

27 months ago

No thanks.

Rating: 2 Votes

ZolakJHS

27 months ago

Anything about homekit?

Also does it work with a 3 way switch? All the other "replacements" for light switches I've seen don't work with 3-way wiring, which makes them useless for me.

Rating: 2 Votes

groovyd

27 months ago

Finally, now we are getting somewhere... now it just needs to support homekit and give it another year to work out all the bugs and other issues every new product comes with.

Rating: 2 Votes

rkanaga

27 months ago

It's a hard sell when you can buy a regular switch for $1.97.

So we have smart switches everywhere so that we don't have to shift our butts from the couch and at the sane time our iPhones count our steps towards the mythical 10,000 mark and our watches tell us to get up every our (and don't forget to breathe!)

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)

Rating: 2 Votes

canny

27 months ago

Like a lot of the Home Automation stuff, this provides very little advantage to existing technology.

I really don't understand the video advert. Do the kids live in a separate house, so the parents can't communicate directly? Or do the parents just hate their children?

Rating: 1 Votes

CrystalQuest76

27 months ago

Now with touch-screen, light switches consumes ≅ 10W (assuming iPad-level power). And this energy is consumed whether the lights are on or not.

Excellent observation. These cool gadgets will increase the use of electricity which is generated through most of the US with fossil fuels. Its the perfect purchase for those that are into conspicuous consumption and too lazy to flip a switch.

Rating: 1 Votes

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