New Inovelli switch

Haven't seen anything about quantifies.

The delays are unfortunate. But between the functionality and the price, I don't want/need anything else. I can be patient. I am fairly certain it will be worth the wait. So much so I'm planning on redoing my whole house.

Sounds like you've had a bad experience or two.

Yep I have. If it's anything like their previous product line, and never in stock, it doesn't really matter how cool it is.

I tried many different times to buy the original series of inovelli switches, with very little success. Although I did manage to get one to play with.

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Totally agree. I've been trying to get myself off of my Wemo switches. However, I'm trying to spread the cost across time by trying to buy a few at a time. This method sucks because eventually the switches change. The new innovelli took too different to everything else.

I've been trying to stick with the more generic looking switches, like new new GE/old innovelli so even if its a different brand they at least look the same.

The other issue is trying to get these switches on sale. :frowning:

I also pre-ordered some of their switches.
However, in looking at the new GE line, I'm really interested in how they have made their new switches 21% less deep!
I don't know about anyone else, but my work sometimes looks like crap when I try and cram a switch into a box that already has many wires! It's just downright embarrassing... I hope those GE switches are for real...

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Do you have a link for the new GE switches please? They make so many I'm not sure which to look at.

I've signed up to the Inovelli mailing list forever, and not once had an email from them. I do have 5 of the 1st gen dimmers waiting to install...

This is the new version that is smaller in size.

Yes to that!

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Looks very nice, but of course not available in Canada yet. Going to wait for Eric to launch the Inovelli switches up here: they did really well on Amazon.ca (if I remember correctly 500 units sold in just 24 hours). We're starved for mainstream choice up here.

Hey all -- I first just wanted to say sorry it's taken me so long to get over to this community. I can see @ericm has been representing us well and I'm excited to provide him some air cover as well as help out in any way I can. As he mentioned above, Hubitat is one of our top priorities for integration and it's his personal HA system, so there will be no expenses spared!

Ok, on to some responses here -- my goal is to be as transparent as possible, so feel free to ask any follow up questions, I'm happy to help.

Yes, we're super excited about these new switches and they've been one heck of a journey to say the least. Our prior business model from last year was to take an existing switch (aka: white-label) and put our own spin on it in terms of firmware, which @ericm worked on with the manufacturer. Long story short (I'll spare you the drama), we had to switch manufacturers and start over from scratch. The bad news is that it takes a lot more resources and effort to start from scratch, but the great news is that we get to take the feedback from all of you, feedback on improvements from our prior switches, as well as our wants/wishes and roll it up into a new switch that has just about everything.

As with every new relationship, there is a learning curve between both teams. Pair that with extremely complex hardware (3-Way solution, Neutral or Non-Neutral) and firmware that is literally too powerful for Z-Wave (more on that below) and you get delays :confused:

Now enough of me crying... the good news is that the switches are currently at UL, Z-Wave, FCC, and IC for certifications and should be on track for the latest estimate of late July.

Alright, now to answer some specific questions/comments -- again, Eric M. did a great job, I'll just try to fill in the gaps as best as I can.

I'll take official specs tomorrow when I'm at the office, but they should be about 17% smaller in depth than our prior switches. I believe Caseta will still likely be shallower, but I'll confirm tomorrow as we're getting the final version of the switches.

EDIT: I took a picture of our old switch (far left) our new switch (middle) and GE's new switch (right) and as you can see, there's maybe 1mm or so difference between the new GE's and ours.

Yes, great question -- there will be an option for both a neutral and non-neutral. In other words, there is a neutral terminal on the switch that you can connect your neutral wire to if you'd like. I'd actually recommend you connect it as some of the functionality with no-neutral is not there (power monitoring, 3-Way setup with dumb/aux switch, and if you want an LED bulb, you'll likely have to purchase a separate bypass as without one, you'll need the load to be 25W). With the neutral wire you will receive power monitoring, be able to use the switch in all 3-Way settings (dumb, aux, smart switch) and you won't need a bypass as the neutral wire powers the Z-Wave chip.

Yes, we will have normal (non-dimming) switches available too. They're actually being created at the same time. They will require a neutral, however.

Yes, this is the same with ours -- reason being is that the Z-Wave chip requires 25W to remain on and most LED's are around 8W. We have tested the Fibaro bypass and got the load requirement down to 5.5W.

Also, yes, the disable relay is on these switches :slight_smile: -- such a cool feature!

Lol -- I get it :slight_smile: -- just to clarify, you will be able to use your neutral wire if you'd like!

Yeah, definitely -- the Red Series line (the one mentioned in the original thread) will have this feature on it for sure. I use it all the time with the old switches we have in my daughters room. Disable the relay, and then use Z-Wave scenes to turn her Hue bulbs different colors and dim levels. Ex: Tap up/down = Hue light (or any light if you want) is turned on/off. Tap up 2x = light turns on Purple, Tap up 3x = Light turns Pink, Tap up 4x = Green, etc. We're working on a line of bulbs that will make this a more direct integration as Hue is ZigBee and our switches are Z-Wave. More to come on that.

Lol, yeah... @agnes.zooz was supposed to come out with one -- not sure what happened to it though. I was pretty excited about it too. Any update @agnes.zooz?

Yeah I get it... Zooz is great though, we were manufactured in the same facility so that would explain them looking the same :slight_smile: -- they're new switches are pretty sweet too and we like supporting them!

Ha, yeah -- as they say in professional sports (at least they do with all my Detroit teams)... it was a, "rebuilding year" last year. While this doesn't fix the track record, I can at least provide some context of what we were going through and where we are now.

Last year, it was literally Eric M. and I for a while... yes, a two man team. We made a deal with the manufacturer to where we'd partner with them and split profits 50/50. This worked out great for a while, but things got too big too fast and they simply couldn't keep up (as their primary business is Christmas LED lights) from a production standpoint as well as financing standpoint. Then, to top it off, in August they decided, "hey, what the heck, let's change the payment terms from Net 30-60 to you pay 50% down up front and 50% upon delivery... oh AND prices just went up". Pretty sweet when your cash flow can't support that. This caused major disruptions in product ordering as well as we just finally had to call it a day and start from scratch. Especially when we just hired customer service personnel and had people working for free, putting in their blood, sweat and tears. Also, no sales = no income for us full timers = ramen and potatoes for dinner lol.

Anyway, flash forward to about November when we signed a deal with the largest IOT manufacturer who came highly recommended from the Z-Wave Alliance (they actually sit on the board). This is where we started focusing on getting our foundation corrected and started looking for Series A funding.

It took us three months, but we finally closed our funding and thus kicked off the new projects, hired on the executive team and have been cranking on these products ever since. Originally, we were told it would be a 3.5mo project. I now know to add 3 months to whatever is promised due to unforeseen circumstances.

So, hopefully that helped a bit -- I feel confident this year that we're in a much better place and I sincerely appreciate everyone who stuck with us and cheered us on while we were down. There was nothing quite like the feeling of watching your dreams and goals come to a screeching halt, literally days away from shutting down, only to have a breath of life given to you and someone who believes in you invest -- all the while receiving emails, texts and even snail-mail from you guys cheering us on. So thank you!

Oh @agnes.zooz... you know I'm a marketer by heart, but there's definitely benefits in disabling the relay feature that far outweigh, "just connecting the load to line". For starters, who wants to take the switch out every time you want to turn the switch off? What if you only want your relay disabled for a certain period of time (we had a few people write in saying they wanted certain products disabled while they went on vacation so their automations wouldn't run...) I guess we could've told them to rip out their switches prior to leaving and just rewire them lol.

I'm sure we'll see this feature in future products of yours. I'm willing to bet a beer at CES on it :slight_smile:

Yes, this is correct!

Yeah, I agree -- happy to answer any questions as best as I can and what we've told the manufacturer to do, but until the final product is confirmed, things may change -- I don't want them to, but they may (and it's always fun having to put out those update emails :confused: )

We placed a substantial order about 4x what our pre-orders came in at. Based on our sales volume per month last year (when we were in stock... insert joke here...) it should last us until October, but as I also realized last year, it's very hard to predict. Fortunately, this new manufacturer has a dedicated line to IOT and we're a strategic partner brand, so we shouldn't be deprioritized like we were last year.

Yeah, they did an awesome job on these. I picked a few up to see and dang, they made them smaller for sure. When I get the final switches of ours tomorrow, I'll do a comparison. The other cool feature of their new switches is the fact that you can not worry about mixing up the line/load (I know, you guys are experienced here, but you'd be surprised how many ppl write in and have this messed up!). I also like the removal of the heat-sink tabs on the side.

Lol, yeah you guys went nuts. I had them in stock all year and the minute I put them on clearance, they were all gone within like 36hrs :laughing:!

Sorry for the novel everyone and hopefully this helps a tad. I'll be active here as well and seriously, I'm excited to shed any light (pun intended) on any questions you have.

Have an awesome night!

Eric H.
Founder | Inovelli

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Already added in the latest firmware exactly for the reason you described (temporarily disabling power as opposed to using that feature to control smart bulbs). Next round is on me :wink:

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It's coming :slight_smile: We're finalizing firmware and hope to have it out by the end of the summer. I'll keep you guys posted.

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Fantastic! Keep up the great work :slight_smile:

You going to be at the Z-Wave Summit? Definitely would love to catch up.

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YES! @JasonJoel

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Now you've got my attention. :slight_smile:

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Not sure yet but I'll look for you at the next event :slight_smile:

@ericm & @Eric_Inovelli:
Are the On/Off models really going to have just the small LED segment at the bottom right instead of the larger bar the Dimmer models have? I would really like a couple of the On/Offs to replace some other switches, but the tiny little LED would be a bit odd compared to the dimmer.

If you ever get to work on Gen 3, a multi-segment bar would be nice. I assume there could be patent issues with Homeseer... but there could be alternatives. Like incorporating the LEDs behind the switch itself and using lightguides though a translucent diffuser (turning the paddle itself into an indicator). I would REALLY like that one, especially for my girl's rooms, so it could be a nightlight also that can be dimmed as the night goes on (since you allow for intensity control).

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Hey @snell -- yeah, we went back and forth on this but ultimately landed on the smaller LED for the On/Off switch based on feedback.

I could honestly go both ways on it. On one hand, you can have consistency between the two (Dimmer & On/Off) by leaving the large LED bar. On the other hand, the reason for the larger LED bar is to indicate the level of dimness and since you don't need that on the On/Off switches, we opted for a smaller LED bar (instead of having this large LED bar lit up for just an On/Off -- seemed like overkill).

It seems like half the population can't stand the LED bar (or any LED for that matter -- we had a tiny one on our Gen 1 switches) and disables it, whereas the other half prefer to have the LED bar on. It's hard to win sometimes!

If we determine that people prefer to have the larger LED bar, we can definitely add it in for our Gen 3 and we're always looking to improve.

When you talk about a, "multi-segment" bar, what do you mean by that? I think I get it, I just want to make sure -- like, part of the bar could light up Red, other part light up Green, other part light up Yellow, etc (instead of a solid bar). We opted against this simply because we didn't want to copy HomeSeer's design, but we could explore something if more people want this feature for sure. In theory, this should be possible with our switch as they're all independent LED's, but it would likely look funny and we didn't build this into our current firmware (ie: have different sections light up different colors) but it could be something we add in the future via an OTA update.

That's an interesting idea (turning the paddle into an indicator) -- now how do I sell this to people who are against LED's lol!? I'm on your side BTW, I have three girls (fourth on the way) that love any color lights in their rooms!

We're looking into the nightlight functionality on our in-wall outlets. I think it would be sweet.

Eric
Founder | Inovelli

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Yeah... I 100% would not buy that device. I don't want my paddles "lighting up" at all. So I'm glad you didn't do that.

Oh, and for the record, I like the small LED on the switch.

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