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

[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.