Why can't smart switch act as Aux, and why doesn't Aux have LED strip?

[steve.marton]

I’m building a new house and trying to decide between smart switch options for recessed LED cans.

I bought two Red switches to test in my rental, but of course those don’t work in 3-way without automation. So I bought an Aux, and that does 3-way fine, but surprisingly there’s no LED strip.

Seems like a big miss. Why not?

One of the advantages of Inovelli is that you can see the switch in the dark, but you can’t with the Aux This is pretty important for me in a long hallway with a 5-way setup.

And why can’t a smart switch act as an Aux switch? What’s so special about an Aux that the smart switch firmware can’t emulate it?

My problem is that if I install all smart switches for multi-way, they won’t work until I can find the time to set up Home Assistant, which won’t necessarily happen before we move in.

If the smart switch could act as an Aux switch (and retain LED sync), or the aux had LED (cheaper), I’d be fine. Is either solution on the horizon, by chance?

If not, what’s my solution for finishing the electrical system for inspection, other than setting up HA and pairing all the multi-ways? It’s not easy before having mains power turned on. Any solution I can think of is a ton of extra work that I don’t have time for before final inspection.

What are my options?

Thannks!

[PJF]

Use 2 switches. Connect only power to one and control the load with the other. Associate them and then they work fine for 3-way use. No automatons required.

[cfoos1]

Someone else had asked and was told that adding an led that can sync to the aux switch would cost almost as much as the smart switch to make, so it is not likely to be offered any time soon if ever.

The smart switches can’t work as aux since they need always on power, but you could wire them as always powered and see if z-wave associations to bind them to the main switch would do what you want. Expensive way to do it, but they would all match and I think you can get them all to stay synced up without a hub that way. I think they have a button press sequence for setting that up. I have a hub so skipped over that stuff. You could also temp wire them to program and associate with a hub before install in the house.

[Bry]

@steve.marton

What are my options?

The responses you’ve gotten miss your predicament, which is somewhat of a Catch-22 with new home construction. You’d prefer to use all switches, not Auxs, but that takes setting up a hub, which you probably can’t do (especially without an Internet connection) prior to your final electrical or CO inspection.

I think the best approach is to install as many switches as you can, understanding that you’ll still have to come back and install others. Put Inovellis in all of the 2-ways, as they’ll work by default without a hub. (You can change basic settings, like on-off to dimmer, with a quick tap.)

For the multi-ways, put Inovellis in the primary box, leaving the dumb switches in the rest. You can change the switch type to multi-way w/dumb via a quick tap. Depending on the length of the run and the load, this isn’t always 100% reliable compared to an Aux or another Inovelli, but it should at least get you going. I know you don’t want Auxs, but you can install them and then adjust the switch type by a quick tap as well.

I think that’s about as far as you’re going to get, given your situation.

While having a switch-like Aux is a good idea, I don’t think that’s on the horizon, unfortunately.

[steve.marton]

If it’s expensive to add the LED strip to the Aux, even a dumb led to light up the switch a bit would solve my issue. I realize it wouldn’t be compatible with other ecosystems, but it would work with Inovelli. Also, for new construction, cost is less important than pain in the ass. People should have an option to pay more or work more.

The other altenative that would solve my issue is if smart switches could use the traveler wire for communication, without zwave associations.

My workaround right now is to use dumb switches, and replace with smart later, which is a bit of unnecessary work plus throwaway switches.

Or set up HA at my rental and wire up all the switches and associate them for their intended locations, then unwire, take them to the new house and rewire.

Or set up a generator at the new house, power up the whole house, hook up HA, wire up and associate all the switches.

All of these are extra work that could be avoided if a more expensive Aux would have LED strip or dumb LED, or smart switches could communicate on traveler wire without zwave association. Could be a selling point for new construction. My electrician has never heard of Inovelli, and stuff like this could be one reason for the lack of adoption. If it was a smooth experience on my job, he might use it on future jobs.

Another issue for adoption in new construction: there are almost no recessed can/canless LEDs listed as supported in the compatibility app. I have to do some work to wire up a switch and some lights to see if they work. It’s scary how many LEDs are not compatible. Why is that?? These lights don’t work correctly at all on any switch, or Inovelli’s electronics could be improved? Inovelli could spend a small amount of energy to test common lights, a decent selection in each category, so people have a few options to choose from.

I really want to love these switches, they check a lot of boxes, but also leave a bit to be desired.

[rohan]

Prefacing with the fact that I don’t work for Inovelli, but I’ve been around a long time…

Some general background to keep in mind: Inovelli is a really small company (~4-5 employees total). This limits the amount of available time/resources that they have available and forces them to prioritize products and solutions that meet the most needs with a single SKU.

@steve.marton

If it’s expensive to add the LED strip to the Aux, even a dumb led to light up the switch a bit would solve my issue. I realize it wouldn’t be compatible with other ecosystems, but it would work with Inovelli. Also, for new construction, cost is less important than pain in the ass. People should have an option to pay more or work more.

They looked into doing this as part of the Aux switch build. It added cost and complexity for the user that they decided didn’t make sense to pursue further.

@Eric_Inovelli

• We’d have to sell the LED aux switch for at least $28.50 to hit the bare minimum margins (and these are the minimum Inovelli margins, not the margins investors want us to hit) – whereas we could sell the non-LED aux switch for $17.50 and make acceptable margins).
• The switch still has to have some, “smarts” in it to communicate with the smart switch (to emulate the LED bar status level and also notifications) so there is room for failure here as it would require a hub that speaks ZigBee/Matter to work properly with our Z-Wave switches and we’re unsure of how good TouchLink works with ZigBee and how complicated it would make things in large houses
• We’re still unclear as to whether or not the LED bar would work (along with the secondary ZigBee chip) in a non-neutral setting
• Since this is targeted to mass market, their level of experience with technology is likely less than our current customer and we’ve found that our products can sometimes be too complicated for our current customers which are already tech savvy. Therefore coming out with an aux switch that has all these, “conditions” (ie: you have to buy a bypass in non-neutral, you have to bind it to the main switch via Touchlink, you have to setup an automation if you’re using our Z-Wave switches, etc) just doesn’t make sense and would likely lead to a bad initial experience with the brand.
• If you really want two matching switches, we would encourage you to purchase multiple smart switches as they will be able to detect another smart switch and would only be an extra $7 (I know it adds up, but in the grand scheme of things, it sounds like most people wouldn’t mind it).

For example, it would still requires a hub, so there’s no improvement for you from a setup perspective.

@steve.marton

The other altenative that would solve my issue is if smart switches could use the traveler wire for communication, without zwave associations.

That was also something else that they tried to get implemented and it didn’t work out across two different manufacturers and generations of switches. I’ve not seen another company that has this working as well, so my take is that it must be a hard problem to solve and that Z-Wave associations or Zigbee binding work well enough that it’s not worth the investment for Inovelli to pursue.

@steve.marton

My workaround right now is to use dumb switches, and replace with smart later, which is a bit of unnecessary work plus throwaway switches.

Or set up HA at my rental and wire up all the switches and associate them for their intended locations, then unwire, take them to the new house and rewire.

Or set up a generator at the new house, power up the whole house, hook up HA, wire up and associate all the switches.

Yep, those are your options. You could also use a “solar battery” like an Anker Solix or an Ecoflow unit instead of a generator, but same idea.

@steve.marton

Another issue for adoption in new construction: there are almost no recessed can/canless LEDs listed as supported in the compatibility app. I have to do some work to wire up a switch and some lights to see if they work. It’s scary how many LEDs are not compatible. Why is that?? These lights don’t work correctly at all on any switch, or Inovelli’s electronics could be improved? Inovelli could spend a small amount of energy to test common lights, a decent selection in each category, so people have a few options to choose from.

The compatibility list is all generated by users. With a small number of employees, it’s hard for Inovelli to invest their effort in testing bulb compatibility compared to other projects. That said, with the gen 3 switches (VZM/VZW/VTM), the switches are compatible with most LEDs since they can switch between leading edge and trailing edge mode. All of the recessed can/canless units I’ve tried have just worked. In the forums as well, I’ve seen very few reports of incompatibity between LED bulbs and Inovelli’s switches as long as there is a neutral present. Most issues come when users try to run an inductive load or something with a transformer or ballast which the dimmer switches are not rated for.

[steve.marton]

That’s good news about compatibility. But then why do I see so many recessed LEDs and others marked as incompatible?

And thanks a lot for the comprehensive answer!

[rohan]

I’d guess they’re from the older dimmers (Gen 2 was a lot worse at compatibility) or from people with non neutral setups (can’t use trailing edge mode).

[Bry]

@rohan

I’d guess they’re from the older dimmers (Gen 2 was a lot worse at compatibility) or from people with non neutral setups (can’t use trailing edge mode)

Also, a number of improvements were made the the Gen 3 dimmer after the production release, including single pole full sine wave and trailing edge tweaks. So it might be a matter of when the reports were submitted.

Also, early on, so called “wafer” lights tended to be problematic. I think manufacturers have made improvements as well.

[cfoos1]

Some companies gave up on a compatibility list since bulb manufacturers have a bad habit of changing the driver to whatever is available with no model change. Result is you could buy a bulb and it works, go buy more of the exact same bulb and have them not work.

[steve.marton]

Thanks for the insights, everyone!