Northern Ireland is not an issue as it is part of the UK. Mainland Ireland would be the same as import from the EU to the UK, which is a contentious issue but it is what it is.
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Yes for England, Wales and Scotland, but Northern Ireland (NI) is a unique case to preserve the Good Friday Agreement.
Goods from Republic of Ireland (RoI) and the rest of Europe are allowed to enter NI without border checks or customs, but onward shipping to the rest of the UK is then subject to customs.
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Could we get a mockup picture of those two options? For visualization.
I’m not fully sure what the difference in practice would be.
Let’s say the first option where the whole LED is one light only, not divided. How would that work compared to the US switches?
As I understand it the US switches has one switch and one LED per light it controls. So if Button 1 is lit 80% you can have the LED dimmed to 80% for example. Where it dims vertically from the top representing 100% and down to the bottom of the LED representing 1%.
So in practice you could make the LED for button 1 red and LED for button 2 blue and if button 1 light is 50% and button 2 light is 20% you still have a red LED at 50% and a blue LED at 20% at the same time.
I’m not sure how that situation would work with the EU Switch. How would the single undivided LED represent that? It can’t be a purple LED at 35% obviously. And a LED that switches from 50% red to 20% blue in an intervall would not get a very high Spousal Approval Factor since it’s distracting with blinking lights.
Maybe I’m not understanding the two options fully. But it seems a bit challenging to reach a good solution. A visualization of the options would be great.
Yeah, keep it simple.
Do a single button switch for the first batch. Those are the most common ones in Europe I’d say. At least in Sweden I’ve seen more places that have two single-button switches next to each other rather than a double-switch. If the project is successful I’d look into expanding into 2-button switches fairly fast though since they are also fairly common still and having one new smart switch next to an old double-switch would probalby be a bit offputting for some/most.
Again. Keep it simple in the beginning.
In Sweden I’d say 70% of the switches are white. 25% are black and the last 5% are different colors (mostly silver/grey I think).
I’d launch with White and Black as colors. I’m not sure about others in EU but to me the Light Almond colored ones is something I associate with old sun-bleached switches.
Yeah, that makes it tough.
I’m all for Matter over Thread like I’ve mentioned, it’s the future of smart home devices. If I’d make a case for it a new pair of light switches that are based on the new protocol before anyone else would probably gain some traction of attention. I remember reaching out to Schneider and asking them about their light switches probably a year ago and asked if they would firmware update them to Thread and their support said it wasn’t even on their roadmap and they even have a bit of a Smart Home division and their own gateway for Zigbee and their App.
The other good thing about it is that it will work for Apple Homekit, Samsung SmartThings, Google Home and Alexa Echo with many of the devices someone have as a Thread Border Router. And for us with Home Assistant all one would need is a Home Assistant Green with a SkyConnect adapter to get started.
Personally I’ve heard that Inovelli and Lutron switches is the go-to in US and we have neither in Europe. Word of mouth have told me that you at Inovelli have the by far best US switches. So that is one reason I found this forum post. I’m not sure how strong that word of mouth is outside these communities but I think Inovelli could be a disruptor in the EU-market and entering with the latest and shiniest protocol would be quite the way to do so.
I just counted. I have 11 single switches around my apartment. And I have two additional single switches that are housed together with a dimmer, which I’m unsure about how it’d look to mix switches. 0 double switches and 0 triple switches.
If the project goes well and I don’t have to buy most of my switches up-front I’d most likely buy three Thread switches in my first order to test them out in three places around the apartment.
If the general consumer thinks similarly to how I think that’s probably 1500 homes around Europe that needs to buy 2-3 switches. It doesn’t sound like that many homes to get the MOQ over the edge.
Question is how strong word of mouth is about this project or how a little news/marketing could get it going. Exciting 
If the votes were 48/52 I’m willing to change my vote from Zigbee to thread. I just gotta figure out how to put thread into my HA green. 
I think he means that if there’s a strip of 6 RGB LEDs behind the diffuser, then those can be divided up nicely between 2 and 3 buttons in firmware, so it animates just the left side for left button, and right side for right button. Problem with this vs. a hard divider is light bleeding and lack of precision when there’s just fewer LEDs per button to show brightness levels.
I think option 1 makes most sense because of that, to just show each button’s load separately. It can have a nice fade between colours if interacting with a different button, the question is then what to display the rest of the time. That would have to be a new parameter to let you select which load to display after 5 or 6 seconds – 1, 2, 3, brightest, most recently used, system defined.
Personally, I would want the LED bar to turn off after a few seconds, and not always be on. I bet that would get the most spousal approval here.
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Yeah basically what @john.bob.duck said and they bring up a great point. Light bleeding would be a challenge. We’d have to solve for that somehow - maybe a separate light bar that can be popped in that has a physical divider underneath (ie: so the top still looks fluid, but underneath has the hard divider that blocks the light. I’m not sure. A tough challenge for sure.
Yeah I think you’re right - it’s a little harder bc there are 7x LED’s and 7 doesn’t go into 100 (as in 100% brightness) evenly so there’s an algorithm that has x number of LED’s light up at 100% and y LED (a single LED after all the 100% lit up LED’s) light up at z%. So for example, if the light is at 80%, then maybe it would be something like this:
LED #'s 1-6 light up at 100% and LED 7 lights up at 30% (it’s probably more that 1-5 are 100%, 6 is at 60%, 7 is at 30% so there’s not such a hard line between #6 and #7).
Regardless, it will be the same algorithm for the EU single button switch since it will have dimming capabilities, whereas if we had a 2 or 3 button, we’d have to make it an On/Off for all of them since there are overheating concerns, so in that case the bar would do the following:
- If Button #1 (Load #1) is on => LED #1-2 = 100% (LED’s 3-6 = Off)
- If Button #2 (Load #2) ie on => LED #3-4 = 100% (LED’s 1-2, 5-6 = Off)
- If Button #3 (Load #3) ie on => LED #5-6 = 100% (LED’s 1-4 = Off)
Of course you’d also have the ability to adjust the brightness of the LED’s when the load is on/off, but the above is an example.
Phew, yes, glad this is acceptable bc it seems to be a challenge once we introduce multiple loads, so maybe we can cross that LED bridge discussed above when we start working on the multi-load switch lol
Nice, ok that makes sense. I’m surprised at how many Light Almond paddles we sell here. That one was surprisingly the hardest to create, so I’m glad to hear that’s not really a consideration in the EU.
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Regarding Matter and Zigbee - I think we’ve made the decision to go Matter but I’ll explain further down the rationale.
I appreciate the compliment about having the best switches - we work really hard with you guys on them, so that means a lot! Glad you found us
Well this is what I’m counting on, so hopefully you guys can help haha!
Oh yeah definitely - I’m the same. We have a timeout parameter you can set to determine whether or not you want the LED Bar to be always on when the load is on or have it on for a specified time and then go off (or to your favorite intensity level - I usually keep mine around 5% so I can still see the bar at night. So, 100% intensity while I’m dimming and then it times out after 5 seconds and the bar goes to 5%)
Alright, so we talked a lot internally as well as reached out to a few contacts of hub manufacturers that support Zigbee/Z-Wave/Matter in the EU to understand what they’re seeing in terms of protocol usage and ultimately, while Zigbee is still the most popular on their hubs, they both said that Thread/Matter adaptation is skyrocketing and if they were us, they’d go with Thread/Matter.
This is what we’re also seeing here in the US. I ran the sales data the other day and in the Latest 26 weeks, our Zigbee dimmer was still our top seller by $100k USD over Matter/Thread. However, when I switched to latest 12, latest 4 and latest week, the Thread/Matter switch took the lead, which was a surprise to me since it’s still a pre-order item whereas the Zigbee version has been in market for 2+ years.
So, with the sales data and the fact that, IMO, Thread/Matter allows us to reach more customers (giving us the best chance to hit MOQ’s) by reaching the Apple, Amazon, Google and existing, “power users” using Home Assistant and Homey (and maybe SmartThings? Idk it it’s that popular out there), we decided to start with Thread/Matter.
In addition the Thread/Matter switch has 80% or so of the features of our Zigbee switch + Thread/Matter allows for OTA updates (which work great) and not all Zigbee hubs allow Zigbee OTA, so we feel like by the time the Thread/Matter switch is in-market, it should be on par with our Zigbee switch and if there is an issue (knock on wood) once launched, we can easily OTA a fix.
Sorry for all the run-on sentences, I’m typing on my phone as I am riding in the car to the water park lol
Next steps are to lock down the distributor and put up the product page. I think we should be able to start pre-orders within the next couple of weeks!
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I totally agree with this too.
Once you add the 2nd and 3rd switches the vertical LED starts looking weird.
The left hand side of those mockup images looks much better.
I’m super pleased with this, glad that the data is showing it too.
I cannot overstate how important it is for both my partner and I (running iOS and Android phones respectively) to be able to both control our devices without laying out money and time on managing an array of third party hubs.
I want a product I can just buy, plug in and it works instantly for both of us.
So exciting!
That’s a guaranteed order of at least 5 from me, maybe more.
Yeah this was a deciding factor as well - it sounds like from what I’ve been reading in this thread is that most Zigbee hubs (aside from Homey and HA) seem to be proprietary and would require new users to purchase another hub which I know is overkill if you just want something simple.
In addition, the EU sounds similar to the US in that most people have some sort of voice assistant and the big three (Apple, Amazon, Google) all support Thread/Matter so that helps to reach people with our switch.
Overall, while I love Zigbee, I am excited about launching Matter over there and think it’s the best decision. Hopefully, I’m not wrong lol. I believe in you guys though!
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Lovely stuff. Both Matter over Thread and a few weeks away to pre-order reality. I did not expect it to go this fast when I first found the thread
Will you make the smart dimmer available only or will you make the On/Off switch as well in the first batch? Or are they different so it would change the MOQ?
I’m assuming the On/Off switch is more like a click down or up. And the smart dimmer pushes back into the default position so if you press down it bounces back and to dim it you have to keep pushing.
Just thinking about non-dimmable lights and how they would work with the dimmer switch, if they would bail out and go blinking and such, which sometimes happen.
(I’m gonna have to do a deep dive in your documentation more to learn about this stuff. But asking in this open thread for now, for visibility)
Yeah we’re lucky our current manufacturer won the bid bc they’re fast and we have a good relationship with them! They do an awesome job too, do I’m really looking forward to it.
It will be a dimmer by default, but you’ll be able to simulate an On/Off switch (there’s a setting you can quickly change). The caveat is that it will only be available to do On/Off on lighting only (ie: no fans, outlets or inductive loads/transformers).
But yes, if we had a dedicated On/Off switch that can handle all loads, it would have to be a different SKU and require not only a separate MOQ, but new certifications and possibly a little bit of tooling costs (assuming the PCB changes a tad).
Yeah good question/comment. The dimmer will be able to handle most non-dimmable bulbs as they’ll be a setting that will convert it to an on/off (basically it speeds up the ramp rate and disables dimming). I say most bc it can’t handle transformers or low voltage lights (even as a dimmer, it can’t).
Check out our Dimmer documentation. Well literally be using the same firmware with a slight adaptation since you will have two configuration buttons instead of one.
Here’s the link to the US White Series one: White Series 2-1 Switch | Inovelli Help Center
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Will there be any ‘aux’ switch equivalent at a similar time?
I believe the the initial release will be just the switch, with multi-gang switches and an aux to follow presuming that sales go well.
At one point during development discussions, the thought was that you could use two Zigbee switches and bind them to accomodate a 3-way. However, the decision was made to move forward with a Thread/Matter switch and AFAIK, Inovelli has not yet explored the matter binding command class.
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I just checked the documentation and also a few in-depth videos on youtube and got a greater understanding of the way the switch works.
A normal dumb switch here in Sweden stays in the up position when light is on and stays in the down position when the light is off. Only if you buy a impulse spring for a switch to makes the switch self-returning you can use a regular switch as a dimmer switch. That way the up-position is on/off or dim up while holding down.
So I was thinking “How would I as a guest know the switch has a light with or without dimmer function”.
But I understand the switch now that it always bounce back and you can use double or triple press and hold and all sorts of combinations (pretty dope) to set up so many different behaviors. So it wouldn’t make sense to make it like dumb switches because that would remove all the options.
In Sweden most normal dimmer switches (as far as I’m aware) always have a round button so pressing the button is the on/off part and turning the button left is dim down and right is dim up. I believe the UK has dimmers where the off part is the furthest scroll to the left and you don’t need to press the button for on/off. Only the ones with an impulse spring I mentioned before are different.
So I’ll have to figure out the “Guest approval Factor” for making sure they can realise it’s a dimmer switch I suppose just not configuring the hold down button is the way to go with the switches I want as normal on/off switches but keep double or triple presses for scenarios.
Looking forward to the pre-orders. I’m probably gonna check this forum thread every day lol 
And then getting them in hand so I can experiment and make my home even more smart and intuitive hopefully
Hmmm yeah that is an interesting question. Some anecdotal data points for you - it’s very similar here. Our Dimmer switches typically look the same as our On/Off switches with the exception that there is typically a slider in the side that indicates it’s dimmable. I thought initially that this would cause some confusion with people, but in the 6+ years of this design, I don’t think I’ve ever seen any tickets that have people complaining and/or asking for a physical dimmer slider, so hopefully this stands true for EU.
It could be that we overthink this and guests typically don’t touch the light switches or they just turn the lights on/off and don’t use the dimming function, I’m not sure. I try to put myself in their shoes and think to myself that I usually don’t try to dim lights unless I see the slider but I guess idk.
I suppose you could put a very small etching on the switch that indicates it’s a dimmer, but I haven’t really thought through this if I’m being honest.
Yeah for me personally, guests have just said, "wow, that’s a cool switch, I love the LED bar, what is this? And then I can explain to them what it is and how it works. Luckily, I haven’t had much in the sense that people get confused, but I guess I also don’t have a ton of friends so there’s that lol
Me too! I definitely would love your feedback when it comes to beta testing!
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Could you expand on this and possibly explain why? Is it all transformers or just some?
I currently have 5 dimmable sets of ceiling lights (two sets in in the kitchen, an entry hallway, and two bathrooms) that use transformers and low voltage hallogen (some now replaced with led) lights. If this means that the Inovelli dimmers and not usable in these cases, that would unfortunately be a major setback for my plans to buy into this system, which would be as shame given everything else to like about these dimmers.
I think that this is the right choice. Most common Zigbee systems sold here in Sweden (like Hue, Ikea, Aqara) are build around a brand specific hub and do not always play well with generic Zigbee devices. I was initially leaning towards Zigbee myself as I use Home Assistant and liked the more easily configurable settings with Zigbee, but the customer base for something that works with the Apple, Google, and Amazon hubs would be much much larger.
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I think it’s a good move. There’s definitely an appetite for Thread from HomeKit users, before considering other ecosystems. I’ve no doubt there’s plenty of people holding out like I have been, or would consider switching tech when moving house.
Yeah, don’t overthink it. What do you do when walking into a hotel room (especially a dark hotel room) for the first time? 99% of people will just expect instant on with one click, and go from there.
You’ll only interrogate how a switch works if it doesn’t give that first time 80-100% brightness light, if it feels different under finger (as a retractive/impulse spring switch would), or if it looks different like a UK dimmer knob. Scenes, dimming and anything beyond on/off is really for people that live in that space.
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A post was split to a new topic: UAE Switch Idea
If you buy the Connect ZBT-1 adapter (formerly SkyConnect) from Home Assistant and follow that guide from step 2 and forward you can flash it with a Thread firmware and then that adapter becomes your Thread Border Router.
Good take with the Hotel. I agree with you that most guests will presume it’s on/off until they play around with it and they usually don’t. My initial concern is pretty much a non-issue.
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