Review: NuBryte Touchpoint home assistant by Lucis Technologies

With so many smart home options on the market, it can be difficult to determine which one you should invest your time and money into. From full house solutions that control everything tech from ground to ceiling to more simplistic solutions that focus on specific points, to simply having a camera that you can remote access and speak through and that is all. It all depends on personality, budget, and wants vs needs. What we are going to focus on today, is the simpler approach that focuses on key areas–lighting, temperature, motion detection, family interaction and security. Factor in a slick ultra modern-looking design, and you have the NuBryte Touchpoint system by Lucis Technologies.

The NuBryte system features touch screen panels that replace light switches on the walls throughout your house. They function as a slick replacement for that light switch but feature a long list of other features, enabling you to smarten up your home, while also providing a nice design element to the room.

Currently, Lucis offers two models to choose from, a single and a double (2) gang. What this refers to, is the number of switches on the plate you are replacing. Light switches are usually by themselves, or accompanied by 2-4 switches in a plate. These would be referred to as 1, 2, 3 or 4-gang light switches and are self-explanatory for the most part. Lucis does plan on offering additional models in the future to cover those 3 and 4-gang locations as well. We can hope to see those models enter the market sometime later this year.

The screen rests perfectly against the wall and offers a very simple design to it with, as I said, a very ultra modern feel to it. Curved corners, touch sensitive buttons/shortcuts to the sides of the screen, a front-facing camera with privacy slider and a built-in microphone that listens via a small hole on the side. The bottom-side of the screen features small speakers so that you can hear the various sounds from the screen, including the alarm if it were to go off. The capacitive touch screen itself is smooth and quite responsive, just like today’s smartphones and tablets. Your fingers slide flawlessly over the surface area and the features respond just as you would expect, without noticeable lag or funny business. The screen even automatically turns on when you get close enough to it.

You are able to remove the screen from the wall easily by carefully grabbing it with your hand and pulling outward. In case you want to store it for whatever reason(s) (let’s say you don’t want the kids playing with it). If you do this, the smart features are taken away, but it will still function as a light switch as there is a control on the plate behind it. From that control, you can trigger the on/off state of the light as well as dimming up or down.

We will go into how you install the screen in great detail in a few moments, but before we do, let’s talk about what it all it does!

You can begin with just one screen attached to one single or dual light switch location. From there, you can build out your collection of NuBryte Touchpoints as far as you’d like to go depending on budget. They can control each other from anywhere in the house as long as each unit has access to the WiFi network. WiFi is everything as they are all wireless when it comes to accessing them remotely or making use of their smart features. So you are going to want to make sure that you have a reliable wireless router that doesn’t drop out on you. Thankfully most of the reputable brands on the market within the last 2-4 years can accomplish this fine. This wasn’t always the case in the years before that, where consumers had to continuously reboot their routers once a week or so by pulling their plug for 5-10 seconds every time they lost connection to everything. If you stick to a good router from companies like Netgear, Linksys or Asus (there are others of course)–and spend a good $70 or more–you should be fine.

Once installed, it will walk you through setting it up by configuring the type of light it is controlling, it’s location, naming of the light itself and so forth. You will connect it to the WiFi network, and then go through some demonstrations on how control works.

You will then want to download the NuBryte app on an iOS device…

NOTE: In our main/unboxing video, we did mention the app was available for both Android and iOS devices. This is incorrect as an Android app has not *yet* been developed. At this moment, it is iOS-only, but make sure to keep tabs on NuBryte to see when they announce the Android app, as you know it is coming. The Android graphic is on the box, but we missed the small print underneath that says coming soon.

UPDATE: As of 06/14/2016, an Android App is now available on the Google Play app market. The new app requires the June firmware update that your unit should download automatically. This update may take a few days to trigger.

Now, once you have the app downloaded to your *iOS* device, it will walk you through registering with a NuBryte account using your email and creating a password. The magic starts to happen from there as you add any NuBryte units it sees on your network. These can now be accessed from anywhere, and they can access you for notifications–yay.

We will start by talking about the screen itself and its features.

There are 4 shortcut icons, 2 on each side of the screen. The left-top one is used to speak with the other Touchpoints on the network. You now have an intercom system in your home. If you have kids and they figure out to use this feature, this might be why you have the option of removing the screen from the wall–just a thought. The left-bottom icon brings you to your security screen where you can arm the screen and use your NuBryte panels as a security system. You can have it do things like flash all of your (connected) lights, and communicate imagery to your phone letting you know what is happening. It relies on motion detection using the front-facing camera that has a 120-degree view of the area it is facing. The right-top button brings you straight to the control for the light(s) it is directly connected to and the right-bottom icon brings you back to the home screen.

The security feature of the Touchpoint uses the front camera to detect motion that occurs within the 120-degree view of the area it is facing (or areas, if you have multiple units). If motion is detected, the alarm is triggered, all connected lights can flash on and off as all panels emit an alarm sound to help thwart the intruder’s actions and alert anyone that could see or hear what’s going on. The sound of it may not travel too far if the outside doors of your house aren’t open, but you should be able to get the attention of your neighbors if all of your lights are flashing on and off in such an odd manor. It also triggers a feed from the camera that sends to your phone so that you have an image of what happened (or who happened).

Currently, the only way to see what the camera sees is when such an event happens. There isn’t an option to tap into a live feed of the camera whenever you want from the app (or anything else for that matter). Lucis said they are looking into this as a feature in the future, but no information is available just yet.

It would also be nice if they could introduce a separate siren solution into the product line that can be placed in a more noticeable location so that others around can hear when something is happening. Maybe hidden outside of the house somewhere and operated via battery power, assuming you don’t have to swap out those batteries for quite a long time of course.

From the home screen, you have a vertical menu of options that partially slide left to right revealing the settings screen slightly tucked away to the right of the other options.

The first of the menu options is your lighting control. This will control the light that it is directly connected to as well as the other lights that are (if you have them) connected to other units in your house. The direct light(s) will be featured immediately on the screen. The control of them will appear based on how you set it up initially, let it be a simple on-off touch button, or a fading control that you can control by sliding your finger away and towards the center of the circle. The lower-right corner will include a text link that reads “Other lights >”, which will obviously take you to a screen that lists the other lights around the house that you can control.

You can configure your smart lighting modes for the light(s) connected to the NuBryte(s) via the settings screen or app, where they can adapt and respond to various scenarios. You can trick burglars while you’re away into thinking that someone is home by simulating occupancy by flipping lights on and off, help guide you in the dark as you walk by at night, gradually fade lights out as the day begins to end or the opposite for when you are ready to wake up (and so on). It can do most of this by making use of the camera on the front to detect motion. The following images give a breakdown of these modes and how they work:

If you were following our CES coverage this year, you might have noticed that we spoke to Lucis Technologies at their NuBryte booth about the Touchpoint and its exciting features. If you payed close attention to the video, you may have noticed that the option on the home screen for the lighting control also included an icon for a fan. This is something Lucis is working on for the future and you should expect to see it later on as they update their firmware or devices (there could always be a case where it will require a different Touchpoint unit due to related hardware change, if any). This is something that the NuBryte system will support eventually though, and you might even see it before the year ends. At the moment however, the Touchpoint cannot control a fan and shouldn’t be installed on a switch that is connected to one. We will go into more detail about this during our notes on installation.

The next option in the home menu leads you to your weather screen. From here, you can view the weather both inside and out, along with conditions. You can determine the indoor temperature and humidity and then switch to outside’s information to see what it looks like as well as a multiple hour or day forecast of what to expect.

This information will remain updated as long as you have an active WiFi connection.

Next up, you have your time and utility screen where you can see what the current time is, set an alarm for something or start a timer (let’s say you were cooking something and the Touchpoint was right next to the kitchen–or in it).

Finally, you have your energy monitoring screen that will give you a rundown on how much energy the connected light(s) are consuming. This way you can monitor your usage and determine if it results badly on your monthly bill. You will have to know what the cost per kWh (kilowatt hour) is, which can typically be found on you utility statement or by searching online (ours is 0.1293 cents) for your city.

The only other option in the home menu is your settings screen. The settings link is slightly off-screen to the right, so from the home screen, you will want to slide your finger to the left to get to it. From here, you can configure all the various things that you did when you initially set it up (after installing it), as well as some other configurable items such as screen saver actions, security, lighting modes and so forth.

Installation

Before we start, I have to explain that if you are not familiar with working with electrical work like swapping light switches, outlets and so on, you will want to consult an electrician for safety reasons. You don’t want to hurt yourself and there are many ways to do that or worse when it comes to playing with electricity.

There are a few things to point out that are available in the instructions that the Touchpoint comes with when it comes to what types of switches the screens can replace. This is important to know as you don’t want to waste your time during install just to find out that you need to select a different location for the switch.

1. The Touchpoint can only be installed on a switch that controls a light fixture.
   • It cannot be installed on a switch that controls an outlet on the wall.
   • It cannot be installed on a switch that controls a fan or other type of motorized appliances.
     • We tried this to see exactly what happens when you do (why not, right?). When turning it on, the switch made an odd yet quick buzz noise and the fan began to turn. However, it turned slowly and emitted a loud moaning sound until we turned it off. So yeah, make sure to keep to just lighting fixtures for now! (thankfully, no fans were harmed during our test).
2. It cannot be installed on a multi-way switch
   • This means lights that have more than one switch that can control them. Usually, they come with 2-way (two switches that control the same light) or 3-way (three switches that control the same light) scenarios.
   • Technically, you could still pull off an installation, but you would have to know the power distribution of all the switches controlling the light, find the switch you want to use the Touchpoint on and disable the other switch(es) into a force on or off position depending on the switch you chose for the Touchpoint. If this doesn’t make sense, you would have to either consult an electrician or simply stick to the instructions and avoid multi-way switches.

You also have to make sure that you have a neutral (usually a white wire) wire available in the wall where the switch is located. If you don’t have one, you will have to consult an electrician to see what your options are. Unless of course, you are an electrician, in which case you will know what to do from there.

With all of that covered, the following video features a quick yet detailed 20-minute installation walkthrough on swapping out a single light switch (just one) with a single-gang Touchpoint model. To see what the 2-gang model looks like, you can check it out in our galleries down below at the end of this review.

The *iOS* App

The app, as mentioned, allows you to control your NuBryte Touchpoints remotely. Again, there is no support for Android or other OS options just yet, but Android is at least on the timeline of things to come in the near future. Hopefully, they will set their eyes on Windows 10 as well since the OS is so consistent and universal (responsive) across the board between all Windows devices now.

UPDATE: As of 06/14/2016, an Android App is now available on the Google Play app market. The new app requires the June firmware update that your unit should download automatically. This update may take a few days to trigger.

It features a horizontal presentation of the same menu you get on the Touchpoint, making everything consistent and user-friendly. You can see all the same information you get in the various screens of the unit itself and you can also manage members who have access to the app outside of yourself, control your various lighting modes and even upload pictures to the units for use as a screensaver.

There is an additional screen in the Home menu on the app that doesn’t appear on the Touchpoints. This is a calendar/schedule that can be used to create event reminders that can be triggered on the screens to help keep family members in the loop and not forgetting important happenings.

Subscription-free

We love to hear the term “subscription-free”. There are a lot of smart home solutions that charge you to use their own networks to deliver related material through, let it be just the delivery itself, or storage as well for the images and video taken. However, there is also a lot of other solutions that offer similar options or alternative workarounds, without costing you a single monthly bill. Like Z-wave for example, that places everything into your hands to determine how you want to do everything, with most of your options not costing you anything as you can use your own network or an external service that is free. So when Lucis highlights the fact that they aren’t going to charge you anything monthly to make use of their system, they instantly gain brownie points with us.

Everything is handled mostly directly between the units and the app, so minimal resources are being taxed on Lucis’ side (at least that’s how it sounds). This allows them to keep their costs down so that they don’t have to pass anything on to the buyers of their products. No monthly or yearly fees. Just the cost to buy the Touchpoints and you are up and running and ready to go.

What’s inside

Inside the box, you have your Touchpoint screen and the switch that replaces your old switch. They both connect to each other when the installation is finished. You also have your wire nuts, screws, instruction manual and a few cautionary items to point out in other small papers inside. Beyond that, there is a window decal and a few stickers to wrap around your wires to help identify them with in the future.

Where to find it all!

The NuBryte Touchpoints are currently only available via the NuBryte website here. You can probably expect to see them expand out towards other markets like Amazon in the future.

Some final points!

The NuBryte Touchpoints are a self-sustainable system that does not function with any 3rd party applications, devices or networks. So it works best for those looking for a stand-alone solution and not for those looking to integrate the screen into a network of other devices.

For example, we have Z-wave running all throughout the building here, and the two systems (for now) cannot talk to each other. There is no word yet if Lucis plans on adding support for such networks to their devices just yet, but you never know what might come down the road. Extending itself to something like Z-wave compatibility would bring the NuBryte products to an unstoppable level of usage and demand.

Of course, before they do that they are going to want to wait until they iron out whatever plans they have for their own firmware and feature enhancements (ie, live access to the camera). There is no point to offering API access to something they don’t even offer to themselves just yet (most likely because it hasn’t been developed yet).

Where Lucis goes from here can really define the future of the NuBryte products and offer so much promise (especially when it already has a lot of promise).

Our Conclusion

The Nubryte Touchpoint is a wonderful smart home solution for those looking for a stand-alone system (not integrating something into a network of automation features they already have) that is both visually appealing and user-friendly. The features all work so fluidly and offer so much flexibility for anything new to come as they work to enhance the products with new support and features. The price-point seems to be comfortable compared to gadgets that touch on similar areas when you consider advanced smart cameras themselves range from around $99-$250. There is a need for non-screen equipped switches so that as many lights can be added as possible without costing $199-229 per switch location. This would deeply increase the customizable options a consumer would have if they have a lot of switches running around their home, and many of them they’d like to automate. We definitely look forward to seeing where Lucis goes from here with the NuBryte line.

Our Rating 8 / 10 stars

Average Price* $199.99-$229.99

*Average price is based on the time this article was published

Downloads:

Download NuBryte App (link expired)
Download the Mobile App User Guide (link expired)
Download the Quick Start Guide (link expired)
Download the Master User Guide – Installation & NuBryte Account Setup (link expired)

Unboxing:

Additional Images:

Single-Gang Unit:

Double-Gang Unit:

Touchpoint UI:

NuBryte App UI:

Specifications:

Height:    4.77” (121.16 mm)
Width:     5.24” (133.10 mm)
Depth:     2.31” (58.67 mm)

Packaging dimensions:

Height:    6.69” (170.0 mm)
Width:     6.69” (170.0 mm)
Depth:     3.74” (95.00 mm)
Net Weight: 820 g

Are you a manufacturer or distributor that would like us to test something out for review? Contact us and we can let you know where to send the product and we will try it out.