Over the past few years, we’ve had to deal with a multitude of other smart home hubs to get all of our other devices to work. Fortunately, the Matter protocol allows us to temporarily bring all of our smart home technologies together under one central hub. These hubs can be an app on your phone, like Google Home, HomeKit, or Alexa, but brick-and-mortar hubs make it easier for everyone in your house to get things done. Brilliant Home Control, a physical hub that can operate independently or upgrade a wall switch, gives us a glimpse of what’s to come, and while there’s still room to grow, it’s a pretty impressive array.
Bright is a good-looking queen. It divides the center into two parts: a virtual touchscreen on the left and touch sliders on the right. You can decide how many sliders you have, depending on the type of transfer you’re replacing. In the stressed version, you can decide between one and four transfers, and in the plugin version, you get two sliders. (Since they’re not directly stressed, you’ll be able to decide what they control. )When there is no activity around it, the screen goes to sleep and then uses motion sensors to wake up when other people approach, displaying the images of its selection as the background of the screen. It’s so conscious that I didn’t even realize I was sleeping until I read it in the specs. And I tried it. Most of the time, it interacts with the sliders to control nearby lights.
While the Home Control plugin installs anywhere you want, the stressed-out edition requires a little more work. Still, the innovations inspired me. As with smarter devices, installation requires an unbiased line (usually the white wire). Although the instructional videos do not correspond to the existing edition of the wiring panel, it has proven to be much simpler than the usual installations. . That’s because Brilliant detects which is the charging cable and which is the line cable, and it doesn’t matter in what order you connect them. This solves the challenge with the vast majority of self-installed switches. Although I live in an old space with horrible wiring, the installation was simple and the center itself clicked into place.
Once you touch the touch screen, you will be able to access the first of many interface screens. While this elegant panel comprises many functions, the user interface is blank and well designed, and I never felt overwhelmed. The orders offered may not jam you like other centers and you are never more than two strokes away from home. From there, you can set up shortcuts for the moves you choose, whether they’re full routines or unique, undeniable features. is a row of icons that let you access other screens, add scenes, and let you configure presets similar to Google Home and HomeKit. Maybe you need a series of movements first thing in the morning or before bed, or a “party mode. ” ” when visitors are done. From here, you can access “rooms,” which separate your devices by room, music, cameras, intercom, or alarms.
Almost without delay, after setting up my Home Control, it started locating integrations and alerting me that Sonos was nearby. Moments later, I had limited access to my Sonos devices. (In almost all cases, the hubs don’t offer full functionality (it’s offered through local apps. ) I can control all of my Sonos and, for music, open recently used queues. While I can’t search for new music, Brilliant will offer a link to open the local Sonos app and perform the moves it did. Not having in its own hub. It then discovered my SmartThings devices without me having to do anything and walked me through integrating those devices. It discovered my Ring doorbell and blew me away by streaming video from the doorbell to Home Control. Additionally, Brilliant has a camera and intercom on board. If more than one Home Controls are installed, you can access video feeds between them or alternatively use them as an intercom system.
You can use the app for many of the things Home Control allows you to do, add organization rooms, add gadgets or integrations, as well as add images to your “screensaver” on the Brilliant’s screen.
When you love a camera as much as I love the Brilliant, it hurts when you hit a wall. That wall here is integrations. For a hub to serve as the only major smart system, you want to integrate with everything. While Brilliant supports Matter, the popular one that will make this possible, its existing integration list is woefully short. Of course, the major players are there: Philips, August, Schlage, Sonos, Ring, and Nest, as well as hubs like Google, HomeKit, and Alexa. But many of us have a circus of devices at home, such as Meross, Sylvania, SmartLife, Rachio, Midea, LG, and Samsung. Without a way to integrate those devices, those shortcuts, scenes, and rooms aren’t living up to their potential.
Speaking of Alexa, this brings up my current problem: Brilliant only works with Google Home and HomeKit to a limited extent, and obviously favors Alexa. In fact, Alexa gets a position in the bottom row of icons, with no way to remove or reposition them. it. If you have Alexa, great. But if you have Google or HomeKit, all you get from the integration is the ability to use the slider-operated stressed lights via Google Assistant or HomeKit. We need triggers and automations, so it’s imperative to be able to import them from Google and HomeKit. While this is by no means my favorite long-term solution, I was hoping for at least an IFTTT integration to fix some of this problem, and you deserve to be able to choose the voice assistant of your choice. to reposition this icon.
Are those integrations coming? Yes, and even without them, Matter is rolling out to more platforms every year. But if your home is built on a foundation of Meross plugs or Levoit switches, now may not be the time to get a Brilliant just yet.
Even with those flaws, Brilliant Home Control is a feature-rich and aesthetically pleasing technology. Over time, I’m sure Brilliant will integrate more products and lines. Once again, Matter. Brilliant has committed itself on paper to the standard. But with costs starting at $399 for the plug-in or single-switch version, it’s an expensive option. If most of your smart home technologies are on your integration list, wait until the next one. year. Otherwise, it’s a worthy center that will blend into your home like no pill has yet.