Brilliant is out of money, lays off all staff, shuts down
theverge.comBrilliant was a Smart Home company who made light switches you could install, replacing your existing ones.
They only offered cloud control and APIs were private — they actively rebuffed any attempt by the community around Home Assistant to better support their product.
No Matter, nor ZigBee or Zwave, so with the shut down they are another IOT device you essentially need to rip out and throw away, this is painful since they were approximately $350 USD each.
This is the worst part of the hell that is IoT - dead devices that are just waste.
At least HomeKit saves you a bit from that - my Best Buy switches keep working via HomeKit long after Best Buy gave me gift cards for them and shut down their servers.
But it's all really a crock, so much smart home stuff is just not needed.
Not the teaching company at brilliant.org, a smart home lighting company.
I think the condo my mom bought might have these. The previous owner was very gung-ho about all of this, and kept telling us how much we're going to love it, do we want the logins, do we want the documentation?
We told him we're almost certainly ripping it all out, because my mother does not need a smart light switch that costs $300 and will eventually go out of business. She needs a switch she can hit with one hand to turn on the kitchen lights.
The primary test for smart home shit for me now, is how does it revert to a dumb device?
If it keeps working when the Internet is down, at least somewhat, maybe it can be considered. Otherwise, nah, ain't nobody got time for that.