One ring to rule them all: meet Nuimo the omnicontroller
One ring to bring them all, and in the darkness, change the ambient lighting
This isn’t really a ring, it’s more of a flat cylinder.
A) That’s pedantic and B) it’s also wrong; the grey outer area of Nuimo is a spinnable dial, aka a ‘ring’.
Hmmph. So this ring lets me control other rings in order to dominate all life on Middle Earth?
Yes, if you replace ‘other rings’ with ‘a wide variety of apps and devices’ and ‘all life in Middle Earth’ with ‘my sophisticated 21st century home’. Nuimo is designed to replace the huge array of buttons, switches, screens and dials around the home with an ergonomically sound and unobtrusive alternative. The general idea is to spare you time and energy as well as make you feel less overwhelmed by the internet of things.
OK, but I’ve got a lot of things. I hoard like a dwarf.
Wow, really running with the Lord Of The Rings theme aren’t we? Well, sir dwarf, Nuimo is capable of controlling everything from smart home devices such as Nest Thermostats and Hue Smart Lights to apps on your computer and TV including Spotify and Netflix. At the moment it’s able to communicate with over 30 other apps and devices, and the team are looking to expand that number even further. This means that from anywhere in the home you’ll be able to adjust your lights, switch track, or crank up the central heating.
Sounds great but all those devices have very different user interfaces. Things could get messy.
In some ways you’re right, but in many other ways you’re completely wrong. Nuimo itself only has four input methods: clicking, turning, touch-swipe and air-swipe.
The white circle is a clickable button with a touch-sensitive surface and LED background, allowing you to input as well as see which app you’re currently controlling. Meanwhile the outer section is a turnable dial for interactions which require discrete control such as light intensity and speaker volume.
The tricky part is using Nuimo’s configuration utility to decide contexual actions for each input. So you could configure a right swipe to change tracks forward if you’re connected to Spotify or pause the show you’re watching on Neflix. The choice is yours.
I guess I’ll be upgrading the Wi-Fi then.
No need, Nuimo actually connects to all the other devices via Bluetooth. For obvious reasons, linking the likes of your central heating and door-locking mechanisms on a Wi-Fi router isn’t the most secure option. But if your device (like your computer for instance) isn’t Bluetooth-enabled then it’s a simple matter of buying a cheap adapter and boom, you’re in business.
Can I gets my hands on the precious right nowses?
*Sigh*, no, not right away because the product itself isn’t yet being manufactured. The controller is the brainchild of hardware startup Senic, based in Berlin, and while this means they’re German and therefore awesome at making things, the fact they’re a startup also means they’re a bit short on cash.
The team recently launched a Kickstarter to get the manufacturing process started and within two days it’s almost doubled its minimum funding pledge of €55,000, so it’s definitely on its way. But you won’t be seeing one until October
At the moment you can get one for around £79 by backing their Kickstarter project, but that offer only applied to a limited amount of units. If you wait until it hits retail it’s likely to set you back around £150. So if you’ve got too many knobs in your life (chortle chortle), best to get in there early and grab the discount.
Justin Mahboubian-Jones
Contributor 
