Sorry, meant to post an update when I was tagged… ugh, my bad.
The update is that I think we will honestly just start refunding everyone. I’m still waiting on confirmation on a few things, but tbh, things do not look good from a Z-Wave standpoint, so I’d rather just refund everyone and then open the project back up when we have a more definitive answer.
Here’s where we’re at in terms of options:
- Z-Wave 700 Series (original scope): It’s been confirmed to us by Silicon Labs and our manufacturer that 700 Series is not an option for us in 2022. This also includes our fan/light switch, which is a huge blow to us. We’re told that if we want to go 700 Series, it will be a very limited batch and even so, they are recommending we just scrap the idea of using 700 Series.
- Z-Wave 500 Series: We’re told that 500 Series chips will become available to us starting in mid-Q2, with more supply opening up in Q3/Q4. We don’t really think this is a feasible solution for this product as it’s older technology and we likely wouldn’t be able to put everything we want on the product. In other words, we’d be releasing a product we don’t really believe in, which is a non-starter.
- Z-Wave 800 Series: We’re being sold heavily on moving to 800 Series, which will begin Q4 of this year or Q1 2023. This is definitely something we’re considering as we planned on updating our 500 Series to 800 Series when the chips are ready. However, there is no confirmed date from SiLabs on when this will launch and if it’s anything like 700 Series, I don’t really want to be a beta for this technology given the issues we’ve had with 700 Series hubs
- ZigBee 3.0: We were planning on launching a ZigBee version of this switch once the Z-Wave version was completed, but given the Z-Wave version likely isn’t going to kick off now until end of the year or beginning of next year, we may have an opportunity to fast track it via ZigBee. This is where the negotiations are right now.
The initial company preferred ZigBee, but was convinced to do Z-Wave by a former employee. If this converts to ZigBee, we may be able to convince them to partially fund this project. In addition, there has been another company that’s approached us that wants this to be WiFi or ZigBee.
Long story short, if I don’t get any traction by March 1st, I’m just going to refund everyone as it’ll have been almost a year at that point and I’m already embarrassed enough lol.
Edit: On a positive note, at least we provided some inspiration for Lutron:
In fact, their entire new line looks pretty familiar:
