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You also can't adjust simple things on the screen like brightness, or the order in which the various control icons appear. The only real setting you can change on the Relay itself is whether it comes on based on your proximity, or via a tap on the screen. It also doesn't live up to its full potential out of the box.
With a zencontrol system, wired and wireless systems work together seamlessly to create a fully functioning building with no compromises. The zc-smart-relay only draws 2mA from the DALI line and can act as a wireless bridge. If you are unsure if your light switch is compatible with Relay, send a mail to wink. "The quick and simple way to connect you and your smart products." The Relay, and the Wink network in general is hardly the first tech product with that kind of a problem, of course. They show up as large icons on the Relay in the same way they appear on your phone.
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You can mount the Relay in a single or double switch box, and two mechanical buttons on the Relay panel can act as replacements for the light switches you're taking out. The also provide the added bonus of bringing the lights connected to those switches online. For a not-insignificant $300, the Wink Relay will bring controls for all your Wink network-compatible smart home products to a single, hard-wired touchscreen mounted on your wall. This isn't novel to home automation, even old systems from the 1980s had in-wall control screens. The Wink Relay is just one of the first for this new era of the off-the-shelf, generally mobile device-dependent, smart home.
Now you, your family, or guests can access your entire smart home all in one place. Relay keeps you aware of what's going on by playing convenient notification sounds. You can even sync up multiple units to take advantage of its intercom functionality . Professional installation by a qualified electrician is recommended. If you are unsure if your light switch is compatible with Relay, visit pro.wink to get help from a professional electrician. Relay keeps you aware of what’s going on by playing convenient notification sounds.
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Shop your favorite products and we’ll find the best deal with a single click. If you did it all right, the Relay's screen should power on automatically. Getting the Relay online, your next step, is as simple as selecting your WiFi network and entering any password you have via the onscreen keyboard. It worked for me on my home network on the first try. You can call, but you'll still need that neutral wire. The potential is there for Wink's Relay smart-home control panel, but with too little user control and too many unrealized features it's hard to stomach the high price.
Finally, you snap on the touchscreen portion of the Relay, along with a filler plate on the back to provide further support against any open socket behind it. An electrical contact transfers power between the wired piece and the touchscreen plate. The buttons to the side of the Relay control the attached light loads. Alternatively, the Relay can be used in ‘Smart Mode’ where each button can be programmed individually to control a smart light or smart product. These buttons also have the ability to control Wink Shortcuts, allowing you to control many different products from a single button.
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That might soon be hugely important to the smart home. Anticipation is building aroundApple's HomeKit smart home API for iOS 8, particularly because of its tie-in with Apple's Siri voice recognition system. Worthington was cagey when I asked whether the Relay's Android-based design would leave Wink customers using the iOS version of the app feeling left out. "It's going to be an exciting fourth quarter," is all he would say. If it works as advertised, the Wink Relay in-wall control panel might just deliver the convenience and ease of use we've been hoping to see in the DIY connected home.
After snapping the faceplate into place, Relay will begin to boot up. You can then choose your Wi-Fi network from the list of available networks. Enter your password and tap "Done" in the upper right corner. That button can remain unconnected without interfering with your Relay setup.It can also still be programmed for action in the Wink app.
A lack of control
One problem with Relay is that by putting controls in one place, anyone in your home can interact with the smart devices you have installed. A lack of customization options means you don't get enough say over what appears on the Relay's screen. Relay runs the Wink app so you can connect to and interact with smart products in the Wink app universe.
Built-in sensors can give you information about temperature, and humidity in the Relay's immediate surroundings. A built-in speaker and microphone will eventually let you use multiple Relays as an intercom system. The microphone also offers the promise of future voice control support. Two mechanical buttons can act as replacement light switches or be customized to turn other smart products in your home on or off with a single click. Single or double light load gangbox with neutral wires that is not wired to an AC outlet, Wi-Fi® network, 2.4GHz router broadcasting with a 20 MHz bandwidth. This wall-mountable controller runs the Wink app, giving you instant access to your smart products.
It looks easy to use, and I like the idea of centralizing a smart home control scheme. My reservations come from the fact that too many Quirky/Wink products have shown up for review lacking software polish. If I'm going to go to the trouble of hardwiring the $300 Relay into my wall, it has to be near-flawless.
Wink provides some basic instruction in its small paper manual, but what it doesn't spell out explicitly is that wiring must include a neutral wire in addition to the line and load wires. The manual instead instructs you to call Wink's help line if you don't have a neutral wire, which seems to leave open the possibility of a workaround. Talking with a Wink support tech revealed only that the neutral wire is indeed required. The built-in speaker and microphone don't do anything right now, and both the Wink app and the Relay's own control options are overly simplistic.
Monitor and control locks, security cameras, or sensors to keep tabs on every room in the house. Knowing what’s going on at home at a glance means peace of mind for you and your family. A proximity sensor reacts to your presence while a temperature and humidity sensor keeps tabs on your environment. The Relay also has a speaker and a microphone built into it. Although the audio hardware won't be enabled at launch, Wink VP and general manager Brett Worthington stated that they did indeed have voice control in mind for the future. A single point of control, visible to all, will hopefully minimize that confusion.
Relay is a touchscreen controller that’s tailored to you. It runs the Wink app, so you can manage all your favorite smart products from one central location. That mobile device-dependency is one of the issues the Relay wants to address. It also wants to be more than just a glorified on/off switch.
It's hard not to feel like Wink and its parent company Quirky pushed the Relay out to market to hit a pre-Holiday 2014 release date. The potential is there for the Relay to become a robust smart home control center. The likelihood of something better coming along in the next six months is simply too great. Wink says all of these limitations are mandated by the device makers. Those limits could change over time, and Wink also says similar devices from its own product line and those from other manufacturers will have expanded capabilities. Still, the fact remains that if you buy Relay , you won't be able to control some smart home devices with it as well as you might expect or want.
If you want to add any new devices to your network, you'll need to add them to the app, not to Relay directly. There's also no way to customize which devices show up on the Relay and which don't. In-wall control screens seem like an obvious, inevitable component in the smart home, and the Relay may mature into a worthwhile investment. I just can't recommend that you buy one right now, given its price and the fact that it has some growing up to do. A wall-mounted touchscreen seems like an obvious addition to any smart home, but the Wink Relay suffers from high cost and underutliized potential.
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