It’s easy to understand why someone will make a smart door lock, a smart doorbell or a smart light bulb. A smart light switch, however, sounds like taking the whole connected home a little too far. At least that’s what I thought before I saw the Goldee Light Controller.
A full-time replacement for existing light switches, it can control the flow of power to and from your existing lighting units. Instead of a simple panel with switches for toggling specific bulbs, however, it trades up for a touchscreen console that doubles as a message center for displaying a whole host of other information. Even better, it comes with motion sensors that allow for touch-free gestures (swipe up to turn on, swipe down to turn off, sideways to change to a new light scene).
Aside from controlling current to the sockets, the Goldee Light Controller can also control the programming for the current-generation of smart lights, with support for Philips Hue, LIFX, and iLumi. You can, for instance, pick out colors from photographs and compose unique light effects straight from the console, as well as set alarms that incorporate the lighting (e.g. very bright light to help wake you up in the morning). More significant, though, are the device’s onboard sensors (proximity, ambient, motion, and sound) and intelligent features that allow it to predict when and how you use specific lighting units around the home.
All sensor readings are passed off to Goldee’s cloud servers, where they are put through the company’s proprietary algorithms, which then convert it into intelligent behavior. For instance, it can automatically turn on the lights inside a room once it detects light outside begins to run low, dim the lights along hallways when everyone goes to bed, shut the lights off in the living room when no one’s around, and more. Basically, it can learn how you prefer to use lighting units around the home and program them accordingly.
The Goldee Light Controller measures 4.72 x 4.72 x 0.39 inches, with each one able to control an infinite amount of light bulbs, provided they’re in the same room. The company is currently crowdfunding a production run directly from their website, with prices starting at $249.