Ah darn. I currently have a set of Eve Smart light switches, all UL certified, but 11 out of the 20 I’ve purchased (over several months) have burned out. I’m beginning to suspect there might be an issue with my home’s electrical system, though multiple electricians haven’t been able to identify any problems. Whatever the cause, it seems the UL specifications didn’t account for it.
I guess I’ll have to cross my fingers and hope the Inovelli switches fare better. Interestingly, all other smart switches I’ve used (Lutron, Leviton, Wemo, and Wyze) have worked fine.
I don’t think it’s possible to know what those other brands do to test their products. It’s possible they go above and beyond UL, but it’s also possible they don’t. Unless you either know what those other products do, or know what’s going on in your home, the only path forward I can see is to simply buy and install a few and see how they work out, and that would apply to any previously-unused brand.
Yeah I think @Sky320 summed it up in that we run our products through either ETL or UL for certification and they do a rigorous test on the products for us.
What could be happening (outside of any anomalies in your electrical) is the physical parts are different between the brands (ie: resistors, capacitors, etc) and one brand may use cheaper parts that will technically pass UL/ETL testing, but may fail after repeated usage or maybe some of the parts are more prone to failure with any electrical anomalies. Just a theory.
In terms of what our team actually does, we have 25ish beta testers that have these installed in their homes over the course of 4-5 months in different scenarios, but we don’t have any sort of, “stress testing” we do.
But, the good news is with this particular switch (and the White Series in general) is that it’s the same hardware that has been used on our Blue and Red Series switch and we haven’t seen any sort of quality issues (aside from the first Blue Series batch that had a mis-soldered antenna) in the 3+ years we’ve been testing it and it’s been in market, so we have a good feel for quality.
We usually lead our new innovation with our Blue Series and then once it’s been in market for a bit, we’ll come out with a White and/or Red Series switch.
Yes, pending Customs doesn’t pull any shenanigans, I definitely anticipate them to be delivered in July. To be safe, I would count on near the end of July, but maybe we’ll be pleasantly surprised!
I have also had an abnormal number of failures with Eve switches. I have one circuit in particular that has killed like 3. I have inspected ever part of the circuit multiple times and everything seems fine.
I believe the Eve switches will perma-fail in certain conditions and there seems to be no software function to reverse it. There’s like a blown fuse or something inside. I hate it.
Perhaps I’m wrong, but I thought UL/ETL etc were mostly about safety. ie: answering questions like “Will this thing try to burn your house down when sufficiently provoked?” or “Is it likely to fail into a safe state when it eventually fails.” etc.
That is correct. UL only ensures that the product will do no harm to your home. Stress testing to make sure the product doesn’t fail under abnormal line conditions (brown outs, interruptions, over voltage, etc.) is another matter.
I’ve been waiting on a new White Series switch. I got a notice from UPS that there is a shipment coming from DMS Holdings. Could that be my switch? It’s been days and all UPS has is a shipment order and tracking number. They still don’t have possession of the package.
