Control (Almost) All of Your Smart-Home Tech With the Brilliant … – Lifehacker

In recent years, we've had to deal with a multitude of different smart home hubs to run all our different devices. Thankfully, though, the Matter protocol is quickly allowing us to fold all of our smart-home tech under one central control hub. Those hubs can be an app in your phone, like Google Home, HomeKit, or Alexa, but physical hubs make it easier for everyone in your home to control things. The Brilliant Home Control, a physical hub that can stand alone or replace a wall switch, gives us a sense of whats comingand although theres still room for growth, its pretty awe-inspiring.

Brilliant is a beauty queen. It splits the hub into two parts: a digital touchscreen on the left, and touch sliders on the right. You can choose how many sliders you have, depending on what kind of switch youre replacing. In the wired version, you can choose from one to four switches, and in the plug-in version, you have two sliders. (Since these are not directly wired, youll get to choose what these control). When theres no activity around it, the screen goes to sleep, then uses motion sensors to wake up as people approach, displaying photos of your choice as the screen background. Its so aware that I didnt even realize it slept until I read it in the specs and tested it. Most of the time, youll interact with the sliders to control lights nearby.

While the plug-in Home Control mounts wherever you want it, the wired version takes a little more work. Evenstill, I was impressed with the innovations. As with most smart devices, installation requires a neutral line (the white wire, usually). While the instructional videos didnt match the current version of the wiring panel, it turned out to be much simpler than these installations usually are. That's because Brilliant actually senses which is the load wire and which is the line wire, and it doesnt matter which order you wire them up. This solves the issue with the vast majority of self-installed switches. Even though I live in an old house with terrible wiring, setting this up was easy, and the hub itself snapped right into place.

Once you tap the touchscreen, you can access the first of many interface screens. While theres a lot of functionality packed into this sleek panel, the UI is clean and well-designed, and I was never overwhelmed. The controls offered won't bog you down like other hubs, and youre never more than two swipes from home. From here, you can set up shortcuts to whatever actions you want, whether those are whole routines or simple one-off functions. Along the bottom is a row of icons that allow you to jump to other screens, including scenes, which lets you set up presets similar to Google Home and HomeKit. Perhaps you want a series of actions for first thing in the morning or before bed, or "party mode" for when guests are over. From here, you can jump to "rooms," which separates your devices by room, music, cameras, intercom, or alarms.

Almost immediately after I set up my Home Control, it started finding integrations, alerting me that Sonos was nearby. Moments later, I had limited access to my Sonos devices. (In almost all cases, hubs dont offer all the functions that native apps do.) I could control all my Sonos, and for music, pull from recently used queues. While I couldn't really search for new music, Brilliant did offer a link to open the native Sonos app to complete actions it didnt have in its own hub. It then found my SmartThings devices without me having to do anything, and guided me through integrating those devices. It found my Ring doorbell, and it blew me away by bringing the video from the doorbell to the Home Control.What's more, Brilliant has both a camera and intercom on board. If you have multiple Home Controls installed, you can access video feeds between them, or, alternatively, use them as an intercom system.

You can use the app to control many things the Home Control allows you to, including arranging rooms, adding devices or integrations,and also adding photos to your screensaver on the Brilliant's display.

When you like a device as much as I like the Brilliant, it hurts when you hit a wall. That wall here is integrations. For a hub to work as the only main smart system, it has to integrate with all the things. While Brilliant does support Matter, the standard thatll make that possible, their current integration list is woefully short. Sure, 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 in our homes, like Meross, Sylvania, SmartLife, Rachio, Midea, LG, and Samsung. Without a way to bring those devices in, those shortcuts, scenes, and rooms don't live up to their potential.

Speaking of Alexa brings up my second issue: Brilliant only works with Google Home and HomeKit in a limited way, and it clearly favors Alexa. In fact, Alexa gets a spot in the bottom row of icons, with no way to delete or edit it. If you have Alexa, great. But if you have Google or HomeKit, all youre getting from the integration is the ability to control the wired-in lights operated by the sliders via Google Assistant or HomeKit. We need triggers and automations, so being able to bring those in from Google and HomeKit are essential. Although its by no means my favorite long-term solution, Id have expected at least an IFTTT integration to get around part of that problem, and you should be able to choose the voice assistant of your liking to replace that icon.

Are those integrations coming? Yes, and even without them, Matter is being deployed to more platforms every year. But if your home is built on a foundation of Meross smart plugs or Levoit switches, this might not be the time to grab a Brilliant yet.

Even with these faults, the Brilliant Home Control is a feature-filled, aesthetically pleasing piece of tech. Over time, I have confidence Brilliant will integrate more products and lines. Again, Matter is coming. Brilliant has committed on paper to the standard. But with prices starting at $399 for the plug-in or one-switch wired version, its an expensive option. If the majority of smart tech in your home isnt on their integration list, wait until next year. Otherwise, this is a worthy hub that will integrate into your home in a way no tablet has yet.

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