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Nanoleaf Lines Threads Together a Stronger Smart Home Network

04.04.22 | By
Nanoleaf Lines Threads Together a Stronger Smart Home Network

Nanoleaf specializes in LED products existing somewhere between smart lighting and customizable wall art – arrangements of panel-based LEDs that operates similarly to other smart color adjustable bulbs like Philips Hue, but in a wall-hugging form factor. The fun associated with these types of lighting panels is their ability to be arranged into a variety of designs and the near endless rainbow palette of colors they can be customized to glow. The company’s latest effort Lines is a stripped down linear iteration of Nanoleaf’s customizable lighting system, strips of light bars designed to interconnect into wireframe-like arrangements capable of glowing from a palette of over 16-million hues. And it also might make your smart home devices more reliable…but more about that later.

The lighting element is integrated into lightweight light bars designed to connect at 60-degree angle increments and attach onto the wall using removable mounting tape, allowing for all sorts of geometric shapes to be arranged onto walls or any surface. And because these bars are lightweight, then can even be applied onto the ceiling to extend into overhead mood lighting.

Lighting options are a tap and swipe away via app, with 19 preset dynamic Scenes and 7 Rhythm Scenes engineered to pulse and change in response to rhythm and music. Nanoleaf’s built-in Rhythm Music Visualizer syncs with music in real-time, turning staid lighting into a generative light show that follows along to beats and melodies. The visual response to music built into Lines is not just random, but designed to match specific genres with complementary colors. This means your Dua Lipa won’t share the same palette or pulsing energy as a composition from Debussy (though, why not?).

And of course, users always have the option to color mix their own formulation of colors and animation sequences to save as their own pre-set, with Apple HomeKit, Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, Samsung SmartThings, and IFTTT integrations all available.

Where Line becomes a bit more of an interesting proposition for those who lean a bit more conservatively when it comes to lighting is Nanoleaf’s integration of Thread, the emergent low-power mesh networking technology for Internet of Things which in theory should fortify a home mesh network of interconnected smart home devices. The analogy of lines, threads, and mesh seems particularly appropriate with a system designed to operate sans hub, a mesh network that becomes more robust and stable with every additional Thread capable device added (the inverse of traditional home wi-fi networks). In the case of any Thread protocol capable device, including Lines, the more the merrier.

Nanoleaf Lines Smarter Kit starts at $179.99, with add-on kits offered for $59.99, both available over at nanoleaf.me.

Gregory Han is a Senior Editor at Design Milk. A Los Angeles native with a profound love and curiosity for design, hiking, tide pools, and road trips, a selection of his adventures and musings can be found at gregoryhan.com.