- Hey guys, I have some exciting news for you,
as you can tell from the title of this video.
The Brilliant home controller, now works with HomeKit.
Yes, it's been over a year,
it's probably been a year and a half,
I've been waiting for this feature.
And it's finally here,
but might not be everything that you think it is.
Lemme explain why.
Welcome back, if you're new here, my name is Eric.
And if you're into smart home, home automation,
and especially HomeKit,
you're definitely in the right place.
So for full disclosure, Brilliant did send
these out to me for a full honest review
couple of years ago, over a year and a half ago.
But in all honesty, if something is wrong,
I'm definitely gonna let you know.
I'm also gonna leave a full link down below
where you can pick this up and a list
to my full Pros and Cons list on my website.
So if you wanna get more information or update
on this, definitely check out that link down below.
So recently Brilliant released an update
for all their current customers,
that includes this HomeKit integration.
Now this is a public Beta integration
which means that they're could be issues,
but they're trying it out in big scale
to see what would happen
and they want you to report back any issues.
Now the big thing with this is not that it's in Beta,
rather it's about the integration and how it controls,
and what you can control with this HomeKit integration.
Now unfortunately, the big thing
is that it is not gonna show any HomeKit
enabled accessory on screen, it does not go that way.
Rather, it goes the opposite way,
is any hard wired Brilliant control
that's hardwired like this is in my dining room,
I can now go into HomeKit and control that light.
If you have a double gang switch,
or a triple, or a four gang switch,
all four of those will be exposed to HomeKit,
but it does not work in reverse,
and nothing's gonna be on screen
and you can not control your HomeKit home
from the Brilliant screen unfortunately.
Now this is still exciting to me because these devices
I love so much, are now exposed to my HomeKit.
Now of course having HomeKit on the screen
would be the holy grail of having a smart home.
But unfortunately, I'd never see Apple
allowing a third party company
to integrate HomeKit into a screen like this.
Who knows, maybe I just don't see it.
Lemme know down in the comments below what you think.
A nice thing though is that Brilliant works
with a lot of major third party manufacturers that do allow
you to control the devices from the screen.
Some of those devices include Philips Hue, WEMO,
TP link, LIFX, Lutron Cassette, Leviton,
Nest thermostat, Ecobee, Honeywell, ring,
august, Sonos, and of course it works
with Lady A, Google Home and smart things.
By the way, it also has Lady A built right into it,
so you can talk to Lady A, it's a third party Alexa,
is not as good as having a Echo Dot,
but it's really nice to have it have in the room,
where you don't have to have an Echo Dot
sitting out on the table.
To set this up is super easy,
all you need to do is go into your settings
and click on works with brilliant,
in there you will see the apple HomeKit Beta,
click on that, it'll give you the QR code,
go into your home app and on your iPhone,
go ahead scan that QR code,
and it will do what it needs to do,
you can assign it to a room, and that is it,
you're done and it's all in there.
If you have a multiple gang switch,
all your devices will be added as one,
you can simply go into the tile,
separate them all out as individual tiles,
and now you can add them to different rooms
if you want to, it is simply that easy.
By the way, I met up with Brilliant at CES 2020
just a couple months ago,
and they showed off their brand new
dimmer switch and smart plug.
Unfortunately, these new devices
will not be exposed to HomeKit.
Hopefully in their future they will,
but currently they will not.
But guys, I'm still super excited
about this HomeKit integration, with one my favorite
smart home devices, the Brilliant home controller.
If you guys wanna see the full review
that I did last year, click this card right there.
And I hope you are subscribing
for more smart home automation
and the home kit devices right here on ModernDayTech.
See you next time, thanks for watching.
♪ No nothing can break me ♪