Manage your smart home with Wink’s Relay, a touchscreen control panel

By Malarie Gokey September 23, 2014

wink partners with pro com relay — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Quirky has a vision for the smart home that’s affordable and accessible to everyone. Just a few months after it debuted its smart home Wink Hub and scads of compatible products at the Home Depot, the company announced a new touchscreen control panel called Wink Relay.

Wink’s Relay is a wall mounted touchscreen panel that fits easily into a light switch socket. Just like the Wink app on your smartphone, Relay automatically connects to every Wink app ready product in your home, allowing you to control and program everything from light bulbs and stoves, to garage openers and your water heater. The control panel can also connect to Wink compatible products, so long as you have the Wink Hub in your home.

The Relay has a 4.3-inch LCD touchscreen on one side, where you can control all your smart appliances. The other half of the contraption is a manual light switch for when you just want to turn on the lights the old-fashioned way. It can fit into most standard light switch sockets. The interface looks very similar to the Wink app on your smartphone, so those who’ve used it before won’t have to learn a whole new interface.

Relay also has infrared proximity sensors that light up when someone walks by to show the temperature and humidity. The control panel comes with a microphone and speaker, too, so you can even record messages and play them. Quirky says that Relay will receive software updates automatically and may one day learn to respond to commands from specific users only. The tech isn’t that far along now, but Quirky says its Wink products are ready for the future, no matter how smart the home gets.

The Wink Relay costs $300 on Amazon.com and should ship by Thanksgiving, just in time for Christmas.

Introducing Relay from Wink App on Vimeo.

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Topics

Internet of Things (IoT)

Former Digital Trends Contributor

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