Equipping entire home with Inovelli switches? Am I crazy?

Switches General Discussion
#1

We’re remodeling our home and have the opportunity to upgrade all of our switches and electrical outlets. I’m considering replacing all of our switches with Inovelli red series (on/off, dimmers, and fan+light), and I have a few questions before taking the plunge.

  1. I have to buy 60+ switches to retrofit my house. Am I crazy for this? I’m keeping the attic switch and a couple closets “dumb” but otherwise replacing everything else with an Inovelli switch. Any reason I shouldn’t do this? Any unforeseen problems?

  2. I’m defaulting to a dimmer switch instead of on/off for nearly every switch. For a couple dollars more, I figured I might as well upgrade. Any reason to choose on/off instead of a dimmer switch?

  3. I have one area that has 2 boxes of 4 switches (8 total). 4 control inside lights; 4 control outdoor lights. Any reason I couldn’t put 8 switches close together? Any overheating issues?

  4. Can there be any network or lag issues with this many switches? I’ve read and seen criticisms about a slight delay, but after seeing examples of this, it doesn’t seem like that significant. Should I have any concerns?

  5. Any concerns with going all Inovelli? Any reason I should use another brand for any specific switch or lighting scenario?

If anyone else has retrofitted all of their switches with Inovelli, I’d love to hear how it’s going. Any unexpected issues? Anything I should prepare myself for?

Any and all advice is greatly appreciated!

P.S. - I’ll be using a Hubitat hub as well.

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#2

I’ll start here, I do recall that the dimmer switches aren’t designed to support fans or appliances, etc, so I’d suggest an LZW36 in those situations where you have a ceiling fan instead (know you mentioned a mix of them, just to make sure). I believe that would be the only potential concern here.

This depends on the size of your box, but you’ll likely have to break off the heatsink tabs. That’s fine, and I believe all of them are designed to be able to run with the tabs being removed, but it will impact the max supported wattage (if you’re using LED’s, I don’t see it likely that you’ll hit this, but it’s worth noting) so double check that (400W > 200W if you have to take off all 6).

I wouldn’t expect that you would see any negative issues with this many switches. I’d suggest pairing the ones closest to the hub first and working your way out from there. May possibly be best to do them in a staggered timeframe so the hub has time to ‘catch up’ and figure out the mesh as well. I’m not finding a hard recommendation on that but I feel like it was something I came across when I started.

Personally, I’m a fan of sticking with the same vendor where possible and at least in my experience over the past few months between the switches I’ve ordered and being on the community forums here, Inovelli is excellent and has grade A support. This is also what they do, and they’re focused on smart switches/devices and have a good track record and other products in development so I wouldn’t be concerned about sticking with them.

C-7? Right there with you :slight_smile:

I didn’t have the option to do it all in one go like you’re doing, but I’ve done it more in phases or targeting individual switches mixed in with dumb switches in 3-ways to get the widest impact and using voice control and I’ve been very happy with the Hubitat/Inovelli combination.

Not to talk you out of replacing everything at once, but you also can consider doing at least one in every 3-way etc, and then taking advantage of their auxiliary switches when those come out, but then you’ll be waiting and I don’t believe there’s any release date publicly listed. Or if you had a reason to prefer Zigbee over Zwave, they have new dimmers planned to focus on that if you want to leave a few as dumb switches and swap those over to have a stronger Zigbee mesh as well. In both of those cases though, you don’t have the shorter timeframe and unless there’s a strong demand for one of them I don’t believe there’s any need to wait either.

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#3

IMO it’s definitely worth converting everything over to Inovelli, I did this roughly a year ago and I couldn’t go back to switches that don’t display notifications. I love these switches more than I ever expected.

I defaulted to dimmers everywhere I could as well and glad I did. Definitely don’t do dimmers attached to ceiling fans, exhaust fans, or outlets, light fixtures only. And just a warning if the bulbs in the fixture are not dimmable they may put off a low level buzzing sound. Even with ramp rate and all settings set to zero, the switch is still a dimmer at heart. I only notice when I’m directly next to the light fixture but I do plan to convert everything to dimmable bulbs.

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#4

Good comments by @chack and @flipontheradio. Following up with a couple more.

For any box where you have 2 Inovelli devices side-by-side you will have to remove tabs, but that’s generally not an issue. The limiting of the load only pertains to the dimmer. You can pull all the tabs from the switch without affecting the load.

Since you’re doing a remodel, test the LED bulbs you’re going to use before going all in. It’s a fact of life that not all LED bulbs work equally well. Inovelli has been updating the bulb compatibility charts, so that’s a plus. Take a look there. Obviously, this isn’t as big an issue where you can swap bulbs, but be careful where the bulbs are fixed, such as in certain ceiling fans and some can-type wafer lights.

The dimmers aren’t designed for a motor load, so for small motor loads like a bathroom exhaust, use a switch.

#5

If you’re crazy @JohnnyFootball, I’ll be crazy with you :slight_smile:

I decked out my entire house with Inovelli switches and haven’t looked back! I also use Hubitat.

Kidding aside, there’s a lot of good advice from @Bry, @chack and @flipontheradio. Plus the one thing that I’ll say that is often overlooked and underrated is this amazing community. Everyone is happy to help and we can typically help with anything.

Thanks so much for considering us!

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#6

@chack and others (I can only tag two people), thank you for addressing all my questions and sharing your experiences! This is all very reassuring and refined my plan.

I’m looking at Philips Hue for our recessed lights where we want to sync colors with tv and music. They aren’t cheap though, so are there better alternatives that match the same quality (white and color), reliability, and smart features?

I’m interested in the Ilumin lights, but they appear out of stock. I’m not sure how these compare with Philips either.

@Eric_Inovelli What’s the best way to order in bulk? I noticed the 10 packs, but I need to buy 60+. Is there a larger discount for going all in at once? Could I work with someone on the sales team?

Thanks for building an amazing product that seemed like science fiction only a few years ago.

#7

Yeah unfortunately the ilumin lights are still out of stock. I know some people use sengled for a cheaper alternative but I don’t know on their color lights and personally only have a single one. I lean towards the switches for controlling my lights so far and haven’t messed with colors yet aside from watching the light strips by inovelli but I’m waiting on redoing my kitchen so I can organize it better :slight_smile:

I know Hue is generally considered very good and while you’re paying a premium they’re supposed to work very well. One thought offhand is depending on your floorplan you may need some zigbee repeaters. (I know ikea has some decent cheap plug-in options but they’re a bit bulky, or you’ve got Inovelli’s blue series dimmers planned too)

#8

I don’t use Hue bulbs, but hopefully Hue users will comment here.

When you have smart bulbs that you want to control with smart dimmers, there are some considerations. When you have a dimmable smart bulb physically wired to a smart dimmer, you have to configure the dimmer to put out full brightness. (Innovelli has a smart bulb mode for this.) The reason for this is that smart bulbs are not designed to be DIRECTLY dimmed by a dimmer.

Smart bulbs are designed to be dimmed via the hub or via direct association. Direct association is a Zwave to Zwave thing, so you cannot use that as Hue uses Zigbee. You can set the dim level of the bulbs via scenes triggered by the Inovelli dimmer, but that might not be what you want. Some people want the dimmer to work like a dimmer when you press the paddle, but when you have smart bulbs connected to smart dimmers, it’s not that easy.

There are a number of Hue users here, so hopefully they’ll expound . . .

I only use smart bulbs in lamps that are not connected to switched outlets. I control the level via scenes or voice command.

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#9

I would include the Garbage Disposal in that list of keeping on a dumb switch. :crazy_face:

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#10

Staying with one vendor is probably a good idea. I’ve split between inovelli and one other vendor for my switches, mostly depending on sales/prices/deals. I think everyone else (not knowing what we know) would say a rocker switch is a rocker… I always flinch a bit at the LED differences.

Only pause I would have (btw, hubitat here also) is do the switches you’re going to buy have the 500 or 700 chip?

#11

Gen 2 dimmers and switches are 500 series. The fan/light and the light strip is 700 series.

Then there is the Zigbee series coming up . . .

#12

Why does 500 vs 700 chip matter? I’m buying all three variations of the red series depending on situation.

Zigbee would be ideal, but there’s always something new on the horizon and now is my opportunity to upgrade.

#13

700 series could support Zwave LR with a firmware update. Means longer range, more devices per a hub, and some other advantages. 500 series and zwave/zwave plus go up to 232 devices connected to a hub.

#14

Not to be the bearer of bad news but 10 packs and singles are sold out for most of the red series. I think singles are back in stock per Eric, in a small limited quantity, in a couple of weeks and 10 packs in July
Out of Stock Item Thread w/ETA's. Hopefully that doesn’t mess up your timeline

#15

Oh no! You’re right. Well that throws a wrench into everything.

#16

I am in the process of doing my whole home with Inovelli switches, nothing excluded. I chose mostly LZW30-SN switches, instead of dimmers, partly because I don’t have much interest in dim lighting in most areas, and partly due to stock issues when I started. However, the switches are noisier than the dimmers (relay click). The only issue you may have is some WAF (wife acceptance factor) if everything doesn’t work exactly as planned. My wife is having some trouble with double tapping when she meant to single tap.

I’ve also chosen Phillips Hue for some locations. Rather than buying lamp modules, I fitted some bedside lamps with Hue Color bulbs, and my kids like playing with the different colors. I also put Hue 100W equivalents throughout my unfinished basement where everything has pull cords.

Mixing Inovelli and Hue has worked well here. I was able to program the basement stair switch to process scenes, turning on different sets of basement bulbs depending on how many taps.

#17

Yea it definitely sucks, world shortage of semi-conductors is about to mess a LOT of things up. I definitely feel bad for Inovelli as they’ve gotta be able to move product and the last year has already been filled with challenges for them.

#18

I replaced all the switches in my new home with red dimmers. 30 in total. No issues related to the number of switches I have.

#19

If you are going hue, I would install dumb for now and move into blue series once they are released. It will give you a leg up on strength of network and direct connection (does zigbee have an association equivalent?).

I plan to swap over for the rooms that I have zigbee RGBW cans (Sylvania/Osram).

#20

Check to make sure you have a neutral wire in all switch boxes and not just 2 wires controlling the hot connection of the circuit. The Red series will work with no neutral, but depending on the load type you might need to also add a bypass (search for bypass on this page: [HOW-TO] LZW31-SN Red Series Dimmer Switch Setup | SmartThings )