Brilliant uses voice and touch commands to control your smart home

Is the smartphone on its way out?

San Mateo, Calif.-based Brilliant Home Technology announced that it has created the Brilliant Control, a smart lighting solution that gives anyone in the house the ability to access music, climate control, and other common smart home devices with just a simple touch or voice command. No smartphone is required.

The Brilliant Control aims to replace existing light switches with a device that responds to both touchscreen and voice commands. Brilliant Control is available for preorder starting at under $200 at www.brilliant.tech. The device has a 5-inch touchscreen with 720×1280 resolution.

Brilliant Control is one of the new products to be featured at the reopening of the newly remodeled Target Open House, a first-of-its-kind connected products concept store in San Francisco. The house opens to the public on February 10.

“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. Requiring a mobile phone and apps to adjust your environment is clumsy, and for guests or children, it’s impossible. But every available system in the market costs tens of thousands of dollars and takes weeks to install, and still doesn’t bring control to every room. We knew there had to be a better solution,” said Aaron Emigh, cofounder and CEO of Brilliant, in a statement. “That’s why we invented the Brilliant Control. It is affordable, can be installed in minutes by replacing an existing light switch, and provides a beautiful and intuitive solution that everyone in the home can use throughout the home.”

Above: Brilliant Controls can replace light switches in your home.

Image Credit: Brilliant

In addition to touch, motion, and voice control capabilities, each Brilliant Control comes with a built-in camera, privacy cover, and microphone, making it easy to add video or voice intercom to a house. When not in use, the Brilliant Control invites users to personalize their home, displaying motion art or family photos to add a touch of fun and relaxation. New seasonal nature scenes and theme packs are available monthly for fresh, updated options.

Brilliant Controls also come with Amazon Alexa built-in, making it easy to get weather forecasts and sports scores, or to quickly add items to your Amazon shopping list. You can also create favorite “scenes” to instantly set the mood in each room for waking up, eating dinner, or relaxing.

Brilliant Controls work with dozens of smart home services and devices, including Nest, Sonos, Philips Hue, Ring, SmartThings, Honeywell, security systems, and others. It is compatible with light switches that have up to four switches.

Anyone in the household can swipe up/down on the screen or use the touch sliders to adjust lights, similar to flipping on a light switch. The Brilliant Control is also enabled with voice and motion control for hands-free operation.

Brilliant was started in 2016 by Aaron Emigh, Steven Stanek, and Jeremy Hiatt, all of whom are experienced technology entrepreneurs from the mobile industry. Emigh began renovating his house and went looking for a product he was sure existed — an easy-to-use control panel that goes where your light switch is to control everything in the house. When he couldn’t find one, they got together and built one. They are still baffled as to why it hadn’t been done before.

Brilliant has less than 20 employees. The company has raised $3 million to date from investors that include SV Tech, The Box Group, and Miramar Ventures. Rivals include Control4, Savant, and Crestron.