from Hacker News

Brilliant is out of money, lays off all staff, shuts down

by ceinewydd on 5/8/24, 2:24 PM with 5 comments

• by ceinewydd on 5/8/24, 2:32 PM

  Brilliant 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.

• by sp332 on 5/8/24, 2:29 PM

  Not the teaching company at brilliant.org, a smart home lighting company.

• by pavel_lishin on 5/8/24, 2:37 PM

  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.