Cancel your pre-order then, no one is forcing you to wait. It’s obviously a product that people want or everyone would have canceled by now. I’m sure Inovelli and every other company that release road-maps and new product releases without dates get “eta when” spam each and every day. Its unfortunate that dates were given and issues arose, but at least they are giving updates and notices about it. I’ve seen some that just go silent for weeks after “expected” dates. I for one am excited about the products on the roadmap for this space and unless another quality brand beats them to market…I’ll wait.
@cocyclist, @dan1282, @2vanger, and to all the other pre-order folks who have waited patiently and been disappointed repeatedly by all the delays - I just wanted to reach out and emphasize the fact that we hear you and don’t take your experience and feelings lightly. As a customer who invested your hard-earned money into a product with certain expectations (and excitement) about when you’d receive it, only to hear time after time the the product has been delayed, I get it, I would be fed up too.
We are a company built on three key principles. Offering people: 1) the most innovative products, 2) at the best value (the price / feature-set equation), 3) with the best customer service. And this entire dimmer switch debacle is not how we want to run a business nor how we want to be known by our customers. The customer’s experience is EXTREMELY important to us as a company (which is one reason we developed this forum) and the dimmer delays have put us in a very big hole in that regard.
Like you, we have been extremely frustrated with all the delays. After we have done what we can to mitigate the delays communicated to us, we then have had to pass on that information to folks that are waiting for the products they’ve already paid for. These delays have not only cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost sales, they have also cost us “equity” with our customers. And we don’t take that lightly.
Not to excuse in any way, but rather in an effort to provide further clarity, I just wanted to reiterate what @Eric_Inovelli has said before in previous communications on the dimmers… These products were placed on preorder based on timelines communicated to us at the time. We were excited about these next-level products which were going to be produced in conjunction with a new manufacturer and wanted to offer them up for preorder. We set an expected ship-date of about 3.5 months from the initial offering, which was within the timelines provided us. Looking back on what we know now, we obviously wouldn’t have done that. We would have waited.
Obviously, when a product launch is delayed as much as this one has been, it is never just ONE thing that causes it. @Eric_Inovelli has already provided insight into many of them, but it boils down to the complexity of the product. I know that doesn’t mean much to those of you sitting with “holes in your walls” waiting on these products. But, they have been complex, and that is illustrated by the fact that On/Offs launched first, as @GilbertDrive mentioned in his comment. The on/offs and dimmers were being co-developed and the firmware complexities of the dimmers caused the on/offs to launch first. The silver lining on the complexity issues is that we now have an amazing firmware base from which to launch off for future products.
I know this reply is long, but I felt like your frustrations were worthy of the length. From us here at Inovelli, “thank you”. Thank you for your patience. Repeatedly. Thank you for being part of this community. Thank you for caring enough to share your thoughts. We look forward to shipping your preorders personally within the next few weeks. And we look forward to the opportunity to regain your trust and earn your future business if you should allow.
-Micah
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I dunno. A basic GE at Home Depot is $45. Dimmer is $50. They close at 9:30, so you can get them now. They’re good. I put several of them in my brothers new house. Then I shopped for my house and I discovered Inovelli.
This company answers every question asked; even yours (with a 7 or 8 paragraph response). Though I’m not thrilled to wait several months, not only am I proud to support such a company, I’m confident that I will get a product superior to anything else available. Almost half the price of what I paid at Home Depot. So many more functions, I may never get to understand them all
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Any idea if the new dimmers with association will send dim commands from one switch to the other?
Thanks for taking the time to respond at length. I had high hopes to show the dimmers off to my house guests coming on 11/08. Well, @ffingers gave me a nice idea on the Tips & Tricks thread. So, implementing that idea is now going to occupy me til then. Still…
C’mon, dimmers!!!
According to this post, you should be able to send dim commands.
Group 2 association is basic on/off commands
Group 4 association is dimming commands
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@Eric_Inovelli will there be a way to flash/update the firmware once the switches leave the factory? Ideally while still installed.
Yes, great question. They do, in fact, have the OTA (Over-the-Air) capability and won’t have to be u installed from your wall.
The caveat is that your Hub will have to also support this capability. As of right now, not many do for Z-Wave.
So, you’ll likely have to purchase a Z-Stick (I like the Z-Wave.me UZB) and then download the Z-Wave PC Programmer to upgrade.
I’m happy to help when the time comes and rumor has it a large Hub company may be working with us on beta testing Z-Wave OTA on their platform, so that’s also encouraging. In other words, if they get this deployed you wouldn’t have to buy the Z-Stick.
Our goal is to release updated firmware a couple times a year and have started updating our projects with wishlist items and we’ll do our best to add them to existing firmware.
An example of what I’m talking about would be on this page: On/Off Switch (Red Series) | Project Lights Out (v2.0)
Long winded way of saying, “yes these will support OTA”.
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I understand everyone’s frustration. I first inquired about inventory on the old switches back in December last year. I received an email from Eric explaining the situation with their old manufacturer. When this project for new switches got started I received an email and I preorder. It’s been a long time waiting. I am really looking forward to these new switches and I keep reminding myself every time there is a delay that I will be more frustrated if these switches don’t work right.
Whenever you manufacture a new project there will be delays. It’s frustrating but it’s reality. Here’s hoping we are in the final stretch. Thank you Eric for keeping us up to date.
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Oh No!!! Not a rumor! I can’t handle the truth! LOL! Sorry for the Few Good Men Ref…
Actually, I hope this is a good sign that other hub manufacturers will soon follow and finally get OTA functioning as a standard feature on their hubs. I hate having to manually exclude, update the FW, re-include and then fix all of the rules that use these devices. Doing this one at a time on 20-30 switches could be monotonous 
I much prefer having a company not releasing faulty unit and pushing their deadline so they can release products with confidence that they work.
I know for sure that negative comments are moments would be worst about receiving 50 faulty dimmer than waiting longer than expected.
I bought few homeseer on/off switch when they were first released. I got a had batch that was cycling on/off randomly and had to power cycle the breaker to restart them.
They released a firmware update weeks later.
Now. I did not bought more of their switch after that even though I own a hs3 program license and I pre ordered the hs4 pro upgrade.
I found my new home when I stumbled on those inovelli switch. I’m hooked. The flash sale was pretty good. It’s been a year or two since I last bought smart switch. I just bought 5 inovelli (2 black and 3 red) because I believe in this product.
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Looking forward to getting these. I pre-ordered back in May and have been doing my best to follow this thread. I have high hope these will be worth the wait. I’m also in Toronto. Is there any update on when this will be shipped up here?
Neilestate, if you scroll up:
Thanks, much appreciated!
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While I didn’t preorder (I hadn’t ever heard of them until a few weeks ago), I understand the frustration. At least they keep everyone updated frequently. I bought one of the on/off switches because I didn’t want to wait for dimmers. I’m a home assistant user. They don’t currently support the advanced features of the Inovelli, but it sounds like they will eventually. Before I found out about the Inovelli’s I was planning on using the Jasco switches. The value proposition of the inovelli’s makes it worth the wait for me. I was really hoping they would be up on Amazon this week. Having to wait another 2+ weeks is frustrating, but in the end I think it will be worth it. I’m just hoping these switches have long term reliability. It seems a little risky to put my faith in a small company and the v1.0 of a product.
If it helps, Inovelli may be small and the current products considered v1 because of the loss of their previous manufacturing partner, but the company has been making Z-Wave Plus products for years (with a previous manufacturer) and have a great track record of caring about their customers and being open about issues and plans to fix them as they come up. It’s hard to find many hardware vendors where you can find a community forum to talk about difficulties or easily make improvement suggestions .
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Thanks, Terk for your input. I had read about the loss of the previous manufacturer. It seems to be a blessing in disguise. I also read about their struggles with having no product to sell. They had mentioned how that meant they had no revenue coming in and money flowing out. As a business owner, that’s never a pleasant situation to be in.
The community that has evolved around this company and their products is pretty amazing. I mean as of right now we are a community of light switch enthusiasts.
Eventually, I’ll need somewhere around 100 switches and as of right now, these are my #1 pick.
I don’t want to take this thread too far off track, so back to the topic at hand. Will it be possible to turn off the light bar? I’m thinking about dedicated theaters, where you don’t want any extra light during a movie. Doing it from the light switch wouldn’t really be necessary, nor preferred. Sending a z-wave command to disable them when the movie starts would be slick.
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First, it is EXTREMELY rare that I make reviews, suggestions, or any other commentary for a product. That said, here I am doing just that.
I am just one of many who have pre-ordered switches. I am not under any time constraints like some others, but do understand and sympathize with their situations. For me, waiting is not a problem. I’ll continue to do so like a kid waiting for Christmas morning to open his presents. It will come and I will be elated.
I know that there have been delays, but @Eric_Inovelli and the team have been open and responsive through the whole process. Who does that?? How many other companies do you know that would take the time to interact with us like this?? Not many. I am proud of Inovelli and the community that continues to grow around them. I have even taken the highly unusual step of recommending them to friends and family as they venture into the world of home automation.
I look forward to ordering more products after my initial order arrives and new products join the lineup.
So a BIG thanks and keep up the hard work!!
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It sounds like the dim level will be represented vertically in the notification bar (lights from bottom to top as brightness is increased).
But after reading a few comments, it sounds like we can’t address the individual LEDs?
In other words, with the relay disabled, will I be able to indicate the dim level for the smart bulbs it controls?
Yes, this is correct unfortunately for both comments. There wasn’t enough room on the Z-Wave chip to put in this functionality. I’ve talked it over with the team and it sounds like there is room for optimizing the code a bit further, so future updates can be sent through, but we’ll have to play it by ear when the time comes to see what we can/cannot fit on the chip.