Inovelli 2026: Our Priorities, Our Roadmap, and What's Ahead!

News & Announcements
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Inovelli 2026: Our Priorities, Our Roadmap, and What’s Ahead!

Hey everyone,

As we head into 2026, we wanted to step back and share a view of where Inovelli is headed, not just with individual project updates, but the bigger priorities guiding what we build, how we build it, and how we plan to support you this year.

This post is meant to complement our individual project threads by answering a broader question: What does 2026 look like for Inovelli?

Our Core Priorities for 2026

Continue the Innovation

In 2026, we are continuing to focus on solving smart home problems. Whether that’s better control, better automation, or better interoperability across ecosystems.

This means:

  • Continuing to push forward on innovative technologies (like mmWave and Matter)

  • Taking extra time where needed to get hardware details right

  • Ensuring every release meets our high standards for long-term quality, never sacrificing excellence for speed.

Building for What’s Next in Smart Homes

Smart homes are increasingly multi-platform, and that is not changing.

Our focus remains:

  • Dedicated support across Zigbee, Z-Wave, Thread, and Matter

  • Keeping existing products relevant as standards evolve

  • Improving feature parity where ecosystems allow

  • Further developing our Z-Wave product line to be consistent with the other lines

Better Communication & Support

As Inovelli grows, this year we are investing internally to improve:

  • How we communicate project status and timelines (you may have already seen this through our AI updates on some of our community project threads)

  • How knowledge is documented and shared (including a knowledge base refresh)

  • Incorporating AI into our internal systems to help us:

    • Respond more quickly and consistently to support questions

    • Keep documentation more accurate and up to date

    • Scale support without losing the personal, community-driven feel

  • Building a full-fledged ERP system that ties together all our internal programs, allowing us to have the most up-to-date knowledge at our finger-tips rather than fragmented across multiple systems. This will all be synced to our website and knowledge-base and what AI will derive its data from.

As part of this effort, we also plan to begin sharing quarterly community updates throughout 2026. These updates will provide a high-level snapshot of our priorities, progress, and upcoming focus areas. Meanwhile, individual project threads will continue to be the place for ongoing updates.

2026 Product Roadmap

Rather than repeating detailed project updates here, we are grouping things by ETA and linking to individual threads for those who want deeper dives.

Shipping Now / Early 2026 (Q1)

Zigbee mmWave Dimmers - First Batch

  • First batch (pre-October 2025) orders are being fulfilled in order

  • Orders may have an estimated 2-3 week wait

Z-Wave mmWave Dimmers and Zigbee mmWave Dimmers - Second Batch

  • This shipment is currently being held up in customers with an ETA of being released by the end of December

  • Orders will have an estimated 3–4 week wait based on how soon this shipment makes it through customs

  • Deliveries will extend into late January

See the dedicated project thread for ongoing discussion and updates: Zigbee Motion Switch | Z-Wave 800 Series Motion Switch

Coming Soon (Late Q1 - Early Q2)

Z-Wave On/Off Switch (VZW30):

Currently in beta testing and progressing smoothly.

  • Target release: Late February – Early March

  • No significant blockers at this time

Full beta details and updates are available in the project thread: Z-Wave On/Off Switch

In Progress (Q2 - Q3 Target)

Zigbee & Z-Wave Button Controller Dimmers (VZM33 / VZW33):

Currently in tooling, with a strong focus on reducing light leakage.

  • Extra time is being taken to ensure the final hardware meets expectations

  • We are confident and hopeful for a release this year

Ongoing tooling and design updates can be found in the project threads: Zigbee Button Controller + Dimmer Switch | Z-Wave 800 Series Button Controller + Dimmer Switch

Platform & Ecosystem Work (Throughout 2026)

Matter & Thread Firmware (SDK 1.5):

We are actively developing firmware using Matter SDK 1.5, with plans to bring this first to:

  • White Series Fan Switch

  • White Series Canopy Module

Our goal is to keep our Thread/Matter products current, stable, and aligned with evolving standards wherever possible.

Works with SmartThings & Works with Home Assistant:

In 2026, we are placing a stronger emphasis on official platform recognition and clearer platform support for the ecosystems many of you use every day.

This includes continuing to expand our participation in the Works with SmartThings program, as well as beginning work toward a Works with Home Assistant designation across our product lines.

Our goals include

  • Continuing to certify additional products under the Works with SmartThings program, including VZM31, VZW30, and VZM36

  • Laying the groundwork for Works with Home Assistant certification

  • Improving documentation and setup guidance for both platforms to make onboarding and day-to-day use easier and more consistent

  • Aligning firmware behavior more closely with platform best practices wherever possible

This effort is about setting clearer expectations and providing more consistent experiences across platforms.

Longer-Term & Regional Expansion (Q3 – Q4 Target)

European Switch Development:

The work continues toward the development and eventual release of an Inovelli European switch.

This is a longer-term effort due to regional standards and certifications, but it remains an important initiative for us.

See the dedicated project thread for ongoing discussion and updates: Project Europa • Zigbee + Thread/Matter Smart Dimmer

A Big Milestone for Us

Inovelli’s 10-Year Anniversary: April 2026

April marks 10 years of Inovelli, and we are incredibly grateful to still be here building products alongside such a passionate and engaged community.

We will have more to share as we get closer, but we wanted to take a moment now to say thank you! None of this happens without your support, feedback, and patience.

We Want Your Input

Lastly, looking ahead, the community continues to play a huge role in shaping what we do next.

What would you like to see from Inovelli in 2026 and beyond?

  • New devices?

  • Missing features in the smart home space?

  • Improvements to existing products or support?

  • Better tools, docs, or setup experiences?

Drop your thoughts below. We are listening, and your feedback always helps guide where we go next.

Thank you!
-The Inovelli Team

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VTM36 - White/Matter Fan/Canopy Module becomes unresponsive
Blue series MmWave Pre-orders
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Thanks for the roadmap! It looks pretty good, but the one question I have is what’s the timeframe for a Matter button controller? I’d imagine that is planned since Zigbee and ZWave are coming.

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Speed?! Could never be us! :snail: :nail_polish: :winking_face_with_tongue:

Looking forward to 2026!

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Has it been 10 years already? Wow time has flown by. It’s been so long that my Inovelli Dimmer NZW31 w/Scene switches are now going into the hand me down box for my daughters new home to go along with my retired Hubitat C7 hub. Those switches are built like tanks and still very reliable.

Here is to the next 10 years of Innovation! :tada::tada::tada::tada:

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Half Dozen Game | Page 428 | Talk Tennis

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I haven’t been tracking it that closely, but I don’t see the US Zigbee wall outlet on the roadmap for this year. It’s fine if it’s not a priority for this year, I just want to see if I’m reading things correctly. I have a bunch of flashed Sonoff S31s that I use to control outlets now, so this isn’t a “must have” for me, but it sure would be nice to clean things up and control the outlets directly at some point.

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I was curious what was happing with the outlet as well.

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+1 for the outlet.

I’ll throw in a plug for Z-Wave expansion, but definitely acknowledging @Eric_Inovelli‘s conversation around the Z-Wave market from earlier. Most important to me would be an in-wall fan switch/controller. Honorable mention for a Z-Wave outlet.

(Hopefully the Z-Wave on/off switch is a commercial success, but I also hope they find that backporting Zigbee and/or Thread devices to Z-Wave is easier with current technology.)

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It does seem odd that there is a real dirth of zigbee outlets out there. There’s really only one made by Lutron that I know of.

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I would like to see work on putting the smarts on a standardized controller board so that the difference between zigbee/z-wave is just which board is soldered in at production. Done right, they should be able to reduce the certifications needed for a different variation. If they can make it so the controller board is the same between products and just has a different firmware they could reduce work for new products. Kinda like zigbee/z-wave being different chips on an arduino and the device just being a different hat.

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Can you add to your priorities to have a parameter cross reference between parameters and the different platforms that you support. I am new to Inovelli and I have asked how to do something, and typically I get a fast answer saying to change parameter 110 for example. This leads me to do a search to convert it to what it is call in Home Assistant and to where to find it. I’m sure experienced users know, but I don’t.

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Yeah, a few different door locks have the radio chip on a swappable daughterboard and you (user) can often swap out the board to change the radio technology.

I sort of alluded to it in my post above, but I thought that they were doing some version of that with the Z-Wave on/off switch. Perhaps not a true pluggable board, but that something had changed to allow them to do (conceptually, at least) more of a ‘chip swap’ and less of a ‘full redesign.’ I could be off on that, though, but it’s rattling around in my head.

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Is Lutron Zigbee? (I don’t keep up with the Lutron stuff too closely.)

AFAIK, -excepting the possibility of Lutron- there are only 2 mainstream-brand Zigbee wall/installed outlets available at retail today: Leviton and legrand. (And I would consider neither ‘great,’ IMHO.)

Z-Wave is similarly dearth: Leviton (700) and Eaton (only 500, according to the specs I can find.)

(Jasco gets mentioned a lot for both Zigbee and Z-wave. The Zigbee models are definitely NLA, and I think the Z-wave models, are, too. Include them if they are indeed still making them.)

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I suspect this is for a few reasons.

  1. Every wall outlet I’ve seen only has one of the two outlets wired up for smart control.
  2. Any smart plug I’ve seen that could possibly fit inside of an electrical box has a limit of around 1800W and can’t support hard loads like motors that pull “infinite” amps during startup. I considered putting a wall outlet in the kitchen, but stepped back when I realized there were decent chances that small kitchen appliances could have issues.
  3. Normal smart plugs are such a common gateway into smart ecosystems, and so useful for fixing mesh issues (where you can just move the plug as needed), that by the time someone is considering installing wall units they already have extra plugs hanging around.

If a wall outlet could address #1 or #2, I think that’d be a pretty big development in the ecosystem that may have a market!

No, it’s a proprietary (900ish MHz?) protocol. But, it’s super solid, has no cloud dependencies (unless they go evil and patch it into the bridge), etc. I considered it for our basement lights, but they don’t have any way to do CCT so we ended up with Hue + Inovelli switches (well, when they’re out of backorder!).

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Its still on our mind, but I believe Eric mentioned in the project thread (but maybe not) that there are some legal issues surrounding the outlet that as of now keep us from moving forward with it. I’m purposely being vague so if we ever do move forward with the project we haven’t said too much.

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I didn’t suggest swap-able since since that would take more space, but if they could make future products have a swap-able radio chip I think that would be a huge selling point. Imagine z-wave/zigbee/matter releasing a new version that needs a new chip and being able to order chips flashed with your switches firmware to upgrade them without having to pull out and replace the entire switch. Or deciding you don’t want to use zigbee and being able to order the z-wave chip to swap into your switch.

This would be the deciding factor for me to get a smart wall outlet. I refuse to get any usb outlets since usb changes regularly and I’m not going to be swapping outlets every few years. Make the usb and smarts part swap-able so I can upgrade in a few years without having to replace the entire outlet and I am much more likely to get one.

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Sorry, I misspoke; its actually the Leviton zigbee receptical that you mentioned. Model ZSTLR-1HW, pretty much only available here:

I put one in about a month ago and its been working fine for me in an outdoor environment here in the frozen North. It is somewhat expensive and has no power monitoring options however which is what makes the Inovelli project interesting. Not sure if there’s a big demand for these though.

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Thank you for sharing the roadmap. Happy 2026!

My product suggestion would be a good solution for DC ceilings fans. I’m using a Bond right now for my Minka-Aire fans (the PinUp model is awesome). The Bond feels a bit clunky though and is another hub.

Perhaps a fan control switch with a small RF transmitter in it? Or a fancy new canopy module?

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Leaning into this: I’d love to see a mmWave Matter switch! Would also be interested in a Matter smart button controller.

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