Hands-on with the Mui Board: a wooden smart home controller

One of the fun parts of being a tech journalist for over a decade is that sometimes you get to see a unique gadget go from concept to reality — and, ultimately, into your living room. This is the case with the Mui Board, which is a smart home controller made in a piece of wood.

The Mui was first demonstrated at CES in 2019, and I’ve seen it at several shows over the years, in various iterations, always with the promise that it would ship soon. Well, it happened this year (in limited quantities!), and I finally got a chance to try it in my living room.

You can call Mui Board an anti-smart display. A Raspberry Pi-based smart home controller with Matter support, it’s just a piece of wood on your wall when not in use. But when you touch its capacitive surface, bright dot-matrix icons appear, letting you control your music and lighting, set timers, view messages, and access other information for which you can use the smart display.

The idea is that technology should blend into your home – cool, accessible and integrated, not annoying or distracting. Mui is a Japanese word for harmony with nature, and this device is certified by the Calm Tech Institute. As someone who lives surrounded by screens and smart displays in my home, I’ve long been interested in Mui’s alternative approach and was excited to try it.

The second generation of the Mui board has been in my house for the past few days, and although I haven’t had a chance to play it to its fullest, I’m impressed by its responsiveness, thoughtful design, and ambitious scope.

The second-generation model debuts in 2023 but only became available for purchase on Mui and Indiegogo earlier this year. At $999 (on sale for $799), the Mui Board still feels closer to a beautifully realized concept than a mass-market product. It’s hard to imagine many people spending a thousand dollars on a smart home controller – but for the right person, it’s undeniably enjoyable.

A simple smart home controller

Made by Japan-based Mui Labs, the Mui Board comes in two colors: natural maple or dark cherry. I’ve been testing the maple version and have it mounted on the wall in my living room, right above my couch.

From there, I can reach up and tap on it to see the time or weather, see what’s playing on my Sonos system, control my Hue lights, set timers, and check out the latest headlines The Verge Through a neat RSS feed feature.

It’s a simple interface with minimal icons that offers more controls than you might expect at first glance. You can dim and turn lights on and off (can’t change colors), adjust the thermostat’s temperature, mode, and fan speed, open and close curtains and locks, and turn smart plugs on and off. What sets it apart from other smart home controllers with touch interfaces is that there are no ads, no talkative voice assistant, and no bright, distracting display to grab my attention.

Out of the box, the Mui Board connects to Wi-Fi and can display the time and weather. You can set timers, alarms and reminders and send messages to other Mui boards or the Mui app. It has two small built-in speakers and a microphone for recording messages, and it’s powered by an included AC adapter.

The best feature of the Mui Board is to touch it and draw on it. It’s responsive and easy to use, and has some delightful features. A little cat moves around the board and changes direction when you tap on it. It has a piano/drum mode that turns the board into a music machine, and you write messages on it not with a keyboard, but by hand. It feels like you can play with technology.

For smart home control, Mui supports Board Matter and integrates with several Japanese services, including Sonos, Philips Hue, LIFX, Switchbot, Ecobee, and Google Calendar APIs, as well as Radico and Econet smart home protocols.

Using the fairly simple Mui app, I connected the board to my Sonos system, and it displayed the title of the currently playing track, volume and playback controls, and I could go forward or backward in my playlist.

As a Matter controller, it can set up and control supported Matter devices directly without using Amazon, Google, Apple, or similar services. It works with lighting, plugs and thermostats, with locks next on the roadmap.

It currently supports Matter over Wi-Fi with plans for Thread support. There are no Thread radios onboard, so you’ll need a third-party border router. Lighting works the best so far, while other categories are still in limited testing.

I successfully added the Meros Matter Wi-Fi Smart Plug directly to the board, but struggled to add some Matter devices, such as my Nest Thermostat, using Matter’s Multi-Admin feature. I plan to do more testing here.

I was able to connect my Hue lighting setup and turn all the lights on and off or control each light on the board individually. However, it was quite slow, probably because I had a larger Hue setup, and it was using the cloud API instead of a local connection. I really liked the Veil of Night feature that lets you draw a line on the board to set a timer that gradually dims the light.

Ultimately, the Mui Board is a big button/switch to control your smart home, with the benefit of icons letting you know what you’re doing without a bright screen. Like any icon-based control, it takes a little learning to remember which icon does what, but you can customize the layout to put your most-used controls on the first screen and scroll to additional screens for more options.

While I like the natural, furniture-like feel, when the board is off, it looks like a two-by-four mounted on the wall—like something my husband abandoned midway through a DIY project. A rounded edge, more sculpted profile, or small shelf accessory will go a long way to soften the look. Plus, there’s also the issue of what to do with the cable.

I installed the Mui in my living room, but after using it for a few days, I think the ideal place for it is in the bedroom, above the bedside table or headboard. This is the room where most people want to keep screens away, yet they still want to control lights, locks, music, etc. without reaching for the phone or using voice.

I don’t see the Mui board being used exclusively as a smart home controller; Its software is not yet suitable for creating visualizations and automation. But as an interface to your smart home, it’s a breath of fresh air. And as a fun tool for controlling music, setting timers, and playing the piano, it’s successful, even if it’s very expensive.

It’s taken a lot of hard work to get Mui Boards to where they are today and I look forward to seeing where this thoughtful company takes their cool tech concept next. Mui Labs will be at CES again this year, where the company plans to debut a new wellness-focused sleep experience and “movement-based lighting controls” for the Mui board.

Photos and video by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy/The Verge