Wireless, self-powering smart switches like the Philips Hue Tap are an underrated smart home upgrade, and by the end of this year, we expect to see more of them. One such option in the “coming soon” category: the Nuimo Click, a new product from German tech startup Senic. With a wall-mountable design and four buttons that generate their own power each time you press on them, the Click promises to control not just Philips Hue smart lights, but also connected speakers from Sonos.
Nuimo’s self-powering smart switches come in white or black, and work with Philips Hue and Sonos gear.
Nuimo
Connect a Nuimo switch with your Philips Hue gear and with it you’ll be able to toggle lights on and off or cycle through your favorite preset lighting scenes. You also get dedicated buttons that bump the brightness of whatever light the switch is paired with up or down.
Sonos users can use those same buttons to adjust the volume, or press buttons that play and pause the music or cycle through their favorite stations. Pressing the two buttons on the left or right simultaneously will let you skip tracks.
As with the Philips Hue Tap, it’s those button presses that generate the energy needed for the Click to send its signal. That means you’ll never need to recharge it or change a battery, and you won’t need to wire it into your wall, either.
The problem with all of that? These switches don’t come cheap. A starter kit that includes two switches and the mandatory Nuimo hub that needs to stay plugged into your router will retail for $229 when it’s available this December, with additional Click switches costing $70 each (Nuimo ships to the US, Canada and Europe — if you’re in the UK, those prices convert to about £175 and £55).
That $70 is $20 more than you’ll need to spend for the Hue Tap, and unlike the Click, the Tap connects directly to the Hue Bridge itself. That makes it the much better bargain for anyone who’s just looking for an easy way to toggle their Hue lights on and off. With Nuimo, you’ll need a second hub in addition to your Hue Bridge.
Watch this: The Philips Hue Tap puts power in your fingertips
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Still, it’s good to see this tech making its way into more consumer-facing devices. Credit Senic, and also EnOcean, the German company that developed and patented the self-powering “energy harvesting” design years ago under the brands Dolphin and Easyfit.
With so many wireless smart home devices currently relying on battery power to send their signals, there’s definitely room in today’s connected living space for self-powering designs like this one. Now, let’s just hope that Senic and the other companies expected to bring self-powering smart switches to market in the coming months can find a way to lower the prices a bit.
In fact, the Nuimo Click Starter Kit is currently available at a 20 percent preorder discount that’ll save you almost $50. The Switches are set to ship out and hit the market this December — we’ll aim to test them out and give the full review treatment at the CNET Smart Home well before then.