I’m still in the wife-acceptance factor stage. You are living the dream, don’t screw it up lol.
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Same for me, harjms, always meant Wife Approval Factor. Wife Appreciation would be a bonus… 
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My wife approval factor says the smart home is great 95% of the time, but the 5% of the time it doesn’t work the way she wants, it’s the worst thing in the world, and it should be trashed. 
Usually, it is Alexa that is actually causing the frustration. “Ceiling” and “Sailor” sound too similar. lol.
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Would love an update if there is one. I just pre-ordered some of the Blue switches and the 5 button controller would finish up my basement build.
Yeah definitely! And apologies for the delay – legal seems to be moving slower than we’d like.
The big picture is this (and then I’ll break it down to the smaller picture, but it definitely helps to see things holistically):
- We are bringing on a COO in the next week or so – this is part of the overall larger announcement that I’m closing on
- The Letter of Intent has been signed and the final paperwork is on his desk for review. I’m sure there will be minor back and forth’s, but overall the LOI captured everything so I don’t anticipate much.
- I can’t disclose the company he is the CEO of, but just know it’s one you all have heard of and is heavily respected in the industry (which will help us tremendously – more on that below). He and his team will have dual-roles in that they will stay with their current company, but ours will work together with theirs and they will take on the operations and sales responsibilities.
- I will be able to focus on marketing/branding and Eric M will be able to focus on the tech side of things (as right now we’re having to manage everything and we’re way outside our expertise).
With that in mind as the big picture, how this helps the 5-Button is this:
- The company we’re partnering with has some major pull with manufacturers, our Z-Wave one included.
- We are no longer this, “small company” who they can man-handle and play games with. We’ve followed the rules set out by them after, “the incident” (described above in the thread) and they still held this project hostage (as well as some other things). Now we will have the negotiating power of the larger company and have many different paths to take if this manufacturer does not want to play ball (also, since you’ve pre-ordered the 2-1, I want to be clear these are different manufacturers we’re talking about – the 2-1 is made by someone else).
- Over the next couple weeks (I know I keep saying that – I’m trying my best to give the best estimates, but things seem to take longer than I anticipate), an investment group will be reaching out to the manufacturer to talk about a path forward. If it’s determined there is no path forward, then we will be moving over to the Zigbee manufacturer and discuss with them a timeframe on finishing this project. It may also mean we put this in front of the fan switch as this one has been out longer – I’m not entirely sure.
Hope this helps a tad?
At the very least, what I’m trying to say is that there’s a much bigger picture that we’re trying to work on to set us up to negotiate this project and get past a lot of the red tape that has been put in place. And that bigger picture is exciting, but also taking forever.
The 5-Button is one of the top priorities in the negotiation package. I’ve told them we have people who have been waiting over a year with no resolution and it’s extremely embarrassing for us and extremely frustrating for our customers.
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Awesome - thanks for the update! Looks like exciting times ahead for Inovelli - happy for you all!
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Trying our best lol – thank you for your continued patience and support!
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First post here and love your transparency! Have only 3 inovelli dimmers but they are my favorite. Bought 2 zooz 5 button scene controllers but hoping the third will be Inovelli 
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So ready for this chip shortage to be over. NEED TO BUY ME SOME SWITCHES! Tired of Zigbee buttons attached to the walls with command strips.
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So I ended up buying some Zooz ZEN32 a while back (really needed and couldn’t keep waiting) and these are my thoughts where Inovelli could be a better option.
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I don’t like the one large and 4 small buttons. The big button can get stuck if you don’t press it dead center, and the small buttons are just so small. The buttons also feel kind of cheap/flimsy, especially the big one. I prefer the Inovelli design.
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I disable and ignore the onboard relay to use it as a pure scene controller. I have wall locations that intentionally have a larger box just so I can have dedicated scene controllers. There are so few line powered scene controllers. I don’t want battery things. Give me line power. The Zooz is like literally the only modern line power wall mount scene controller out I can find.
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Multi tap kill option. I find myself wishing I could disable multi tap to increase response time when I press a button. There’s a bit of a a delay where it’s waiting to see if you’re going to press the button more or if you’re done. For me the all the multitap functions are largely useless. Nobody in my house is going to remember all the combinations of multi taps across 5 buttons. Everyone barely remembers which switches have double tap functions, let alone 3x, 4x, or 5x tap. So my wishlist has disabling multi tap as an option.
Still waiting to buy one though, especially if the button action has a better feel than the Zooz.
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I had to bite the bullet and buy a few of those too, and you’re right, you can’t disable the multi tap or reduce the amount of time the switch waits for multi taps before processing your single tap request. Additionally, it’s not a dimmer switch and can’t be used in 3 way configurations. The red series switches have an option to shorten this time or disable altogether, and I’m sure the blue series will as well. I don’t even think that’s a question that needs to be asked at this point since it’s been discussed on this forum at length and was implemented to alleviate the very problem you’re describing. Now’s just the waiting game for the inovelli 5 button to come to market.
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So it appears it’s too late for a feature suggestion but it may apply to other possible products so let me throw it out there ….
I just installed a 3 in 1 combo dumb switch and one of the limitations was how to communicate what each is for. I used a label maker but that’s ugly. There’s got to be a better way to crate arbitrary labels for multi-switches. Other companies are trying active displays but that is too expensive.
What about 3-d printing? Is it possible to create a multi switch with replaceable paddles, and release a template to 3-d print? Would that work reliably? Would it affect any certifications?
For any multi-switch, I’d like to 3-d print the paddles in my choice of color or with words or symbols embedded. Since I don’t actually do that, maybe there’s a small side business opportunity for someone in the community
Thanks WillCodeForCats and awinn002 for your reviews of the ZEN32! I am trying to find a suitable replacement for an INSTEON installation in my home and I was looking at that one too. But now I think I’ll wait for Inovelli’s 5-button Scene Controller! From this thread, it looks like a good replacement for my INSTEON keypads. I agree with dpasto that a way to custom label the buttons would be fantastic. This is something that INSTEON actually got right with their keypads. You could buy sets of custom buttons etched to order. I have 20 or so of those 8- and 6-button keypads in my home and they look really professional! I am looking forward to one day being able to do that with a z-wave multi-button scene controller!
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@Eric_Inovelli I know you’re probably busy as all hell, but it’d be awesome if we could get a brief update on the project and updated timeline estimate when you get a chance. Thanks!
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Yeah certainly – and thanks for commenting so I remember to give updates every now and then. For anyone else that reads this, I tend to get distracted easily so if it’s been a minute since you’ve heard status updates, feel free to tag me and I’ll respond!
Here’s where we’re at on this (and I’m going to give an overall company update as well in a separate thread):
- New COO has been hired
- He has been negotiating with the 5-Button Manufacturer and they have basically told him, “we don’t care what you say nor what we did, you will pay us in full” – which seems really short sighted bc we’re about to bring them (or at this point, whomever) between $3M-$7M worth of B2B sales. So, we’re trying one last attempt with them this week and if it doesn’t pan out, then we will move to our Zigbee manufacturer
- I’ve been working on a separate deal for close to a year now and they are finally in the process of committing officially, hopefully by next week. Part of this deal includes the 5-Button (however theirs is in WiFi/BT) – the profits from this deal will go to fund the Z-Wave/Zigbee variant which is this project
- This company wants this project done by CES 2023, which means we need to start now
So, what does this mean for this specific project?
If we are able to work things out with our original manufacturer, the process will be much quicker as we’ve already completed and paid for tooling, it’s just a matter of them dusting it off and putting firmware on it. My best guess would be a Q4 delivery. If we have to go to a new manufacturer, it will take a couple months to get tooling down, but these guys have also surprised me, so possibly sooner. My best guess for this would be some time in Q1 2023 (we have to have working samples ready by CES 2023, which is in January).
If this PO falls through, then I’m afraid we’ll have to throw in the towel for now or move it to a Kickstarter to get it back up and running. My vote would be to refund everyone and then start from scratch when more funding arrives.
Here are the receipts as well to back up the above in the name of transparency:
Email from manufacturer (NOTE: I’ve redacted the names)
Context: We approached them with an aggressive ask, in hopes they’d at least work with us. What has been happening is that we had an original debt of around $1M, which back in 2019 we agreed that it was both our faults (theirs bc they caused us heavy cash burn bc they said they’d have the products and guaranteed it by April 2019, but nothing came until November – ours bc we honestly should’ve managed our overhead better) and we agreed to pay 10% of our monthly sales, which we’ve been doing. In addition, we’d pay all new bills either up front or before it was shipped.
What was strange was that they claim that we owe $1.2M, which is literally impossible bc we started with a debt of $1M, have been paying our 10% (so this number should be going down) and also paying any new bills up front (so no new debt should be added). I uncovered a scheme where they’d give us an order to sign, I’d sign it, and then months later, they’d bill us for 1.5x what was on the original invoice (however, these invoices were never signed). Hence the, “we believe our debt is x, we’re going to pay you x” – or in this case, we just said, “we see some shenanigans happening, we have a $3-7M PO coming, let’s agree to erase the debt of $500k in exchange for us not going to our other manufacturer.”
EDIT: Messed up the redaction – good thing I don’t work for the gov’t!
Comments: Please understand too that a lot of what they are saying is posturing and as noted, we have our own opinion on what is owed and the signed PO’s to back it up. There hasn’t been anything free given to us, I can assure everyone of that lol. Either way, this reads, “we can’t really erase your debt, but we do have some white-label products you could buy that are Zigbee to circumvent the 10% increase of Z-Wave or we could give you 10% off of a totally inflated debt that we can’t back up”
Large Deal
Context: I’ve been working on this for quite some time and there’s been ups/downs – I love these guys and would love to work with them as they’re kind of underdogs too, but the process has taken so long bc they’re a huge company with lots of red tape.
Finally, a new person came on the team (in both companies) and has really pushed things forward with the goal of getting these to them by CES 2023.
Comments: Here’s where the $3-7M deal comes from. They are a very large player with Home Depot and there are two forecasts and it really depends on how their pitch goes in September (we plan to help as much as we can to help them nail it).
They have made it very clear the 5-Button is mandatory for launch, so this is why I say I’m confident this will get off the ground again and sooner rather than later. We just need to close the dang deal.
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Why Wifi/BT? Is this going to be Homekit compatible? If not, why would they choose those protocols?
Major thanks for the update! I didn’t think I’d get this much detail, but I absolutely appreciate and enjoy getting a glimpse of how things work. I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed that the PO works out!
It may fit their design better. If the business is based on commercial sector, zigbee and z wave may not work as well, but there’s probably a AP on every floor (probably multiple) which would allow them to have access remotely or better communication range opposed to z*******.
Good question, I was wondering it myself, but I think what it boils down to is that they are really big at Home Depot and HD doesn’t want to play the hub game anymore bc they’ve been burned by Wink and SmartThings apparently. So, they’re asking for something that doesn’t require a hub.
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I guess, it Matters to them…
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