Z-wave vs Zigbee Inovelli Sales and Production

Alright, let me jump back into the Lion’s Den here as I asked the manufacturer for some updated Z-Wave quotes and the break-even’s seem achievable for Z-Wave.

My guess is cost. It’s what it usually boils down to for the larger companies unfortunately. Companies such as Amazon and Philips who still support Zigbee can purchase the same chips and use either Thread, WiFi, BT, or Zigbee on them. Whereas with Z-Wave, you really only have one option – at least from Silicon Labs.

And, if I had to put myself in their marketing department’s shoes, I’m assuming they are targeting the more entry-level user, so they don’t necessarily need all the bell’s and whistles Z-Wave offers.

Yeah, I think this is possible based on the latest numbers. The other thing driving my interest, aside from you guys, is our B2B partner as they are exclusively Z-Wave and don’t want anything else (they had a bad experience with Zigbee in the old days and never want to look back). So, my hopes would be that if we can get our Z-Wave portfolio rounded out, then we could offer them additional products. They don’t want to commit to the smaller sellers like the Fan, Fan/Light Canopy Module since I’ve told them that they’d have to buy quote a large MOQ from us in order for the numbers to work, but if we can fund this via Crowdfunding and then sell them 500 units or something small, that’s still a win.

Yeah, I think I’d like to set the expectations that these Z-Wave projects would only happen if we can reach the break-even and we’d have some sort of “thermometer” or scale that shows where we are at in the process. It will be much harder for me to predict a delivery date, which is always stressful for me because we get emails all the time about the status of orders and when it will ship, etc – but if the expectation is that this is an initial crowdfund where the project can’t start until $x is met, then that may be a place to start.

What hub are you using? (nm, I see your response below that it’s Hubitat) I have almost the identical setup as you – like eerily close and I found that SmartThings (which I use) has a memory limit on their hub and the Edge Driver we made is maxing out their memory and it caused hang-ups and all sorts of weird things as well. We’ve since reformatted our driver to be more light and I purchased an additional hub and things have been super stable ever since. It was the fact that the Driver was so big and it was being used across 45ish switches that caused the network issues.

This may be the case with you, but I’m not sure what hub you’re using.. It’s possible we can look into the Device Driver and see if we can clean it up a bit to help with memory, but a secondary hub may also really help (I know the C8-Pro’s are not cheap, however).

This is an interesting perspective that I hadn’t thought of. I am curious, now that more hubs are supporting LR if it would make a difference. One of the biggest selling points Z-Wave used to tout was that they were a mesh network and this was better than WiFi bc it could reach further than your WiFi bc of the mesh. But, I do see your point, especially if LR can connect from the distance it can, you wouldn’t have to worry about your mesh getting congested.

Yeah, I think this is the biggest issue – confusion. I know I’m highly biased as my background is in marketing and I love the psychology behind building brands and why people buy what they buy, but to me, the biggest issue with Z-Wave was that they didn’t really have a clear message. They often spoke in terms of their features and not the benefits. In other words, let’s overwhelm the average consumer with Command Class features and Parameters – I kid you not, they have a rule that says you can’t call the, “pairing process”, “pairing”, but rather your documentation has to say, “inclusion”. No one knows what the word inclusion means when it comes to connecting your device unless you’re familiar with Z-Wave. Just call it pairing.

My favorite story to elaborate on this point is what Apple did with their iPod when they first launched it. They weren’t the first to come out with an mp3 player, but they were the first to tell a story and put all the tech talk into words that the average consumer knew. Rather than saying their mp3 player had 100mb worth of storage space, a fast CPU, and other random tech specs, they said, “put 1,000 songs in your pocket” or something similar.

Customers in general, me included, have no clue what the various protocols are. When I first started down the Home Automation path, I just wanted something to work with my Wink Hub (yes… you read that correctly lol) and so I bought some random GE smart bulbs. I think they were WiFi honestly, but I don’t know.

It wasn’t until I started researching the best technology that I stumbled across Z-Wave. I was wondering why my devices were so laggy and took forever to turn on and that’s when I found out that Z-Wave ran on a different band and didn’t have the network issues WiFi did. But I was also much different than your average consumer, in that I was hooked on Home Automation.

Anyway, it’s a mix between Z-Wave being, “too complex” and also Zigbee having big players associated with them (Philips, Amazon) that I’m sure play a huge part in why the big box stores are clearing Z-Wave out as it doesn’t work with Philips Hue, Amazon Echo, etc.

Lol, well hopefully it will be worth the wait :slight_smile:

The Aux switch and the LED Bar was a big miss, I will admit that. I really wish we could’ve figured that one out. It may be worth exploring this again down the road with the manufacturer. At the time, when we priced it out, it was pretty much the same as creating a smart switch as we’d have to build some sort of, “smarts” into the Aux switch so that the LED Bars would sync properly. But that research was done so quickly and it was in the early days of working with our manufacturer, that maybe we could try it again since we have a much stronger relationship with them.

Yeah, this is the biggest gap in our portfolio in my opinion and I worry about this almost daily. I actually just talked to the other Eric about this on our call earlier. Everything is moving to DC Motors and there’s just no solution that our guys could come up with. My understanding is that each fan company has a proprietary motor inside of it and it’s too hard to come out with a universal module that can control that motor effectively. I don’t know enough about engineering to know if this is true. But I assume this is why Bond is using RF as they can manipulate the signal to control the module based on the fan manufacturer.

However, I will say, and this is very very early stages, I just had a manufacturer of fans (actually they can be found in Home Depot) reach out to me to talk through making their fans smart. They have a very large portfolio and if we can make a DC module for their fans, I think that would be a win. They offer both AC and DC, so they could use our existing AC and we would just tweak the hardware to work with their DC versions. They said they currently use Bond, but their customers haven’t been happy with it (which is a surprise bc I’ve heard only good things about Bond) and they want a more integrated solution like our module.

More to come there though.

Yeah, it’s a tough one for us to lead with Z-Wave as we’re also trying to attract the mass market and mass market doesn’t support Z-Wave.

I see the argument of Zigbee got a head start and that’s why it’s outselling Z-Wave, but we actually sold Z-Wave since 2017 and even if I compare numbers to the, “glory days”, Zigbee outsells Z-Wave 3-1. I honestly think one of the main drivers aside from the points I’ve made earlier is Zigbee Bindings and the ability to bind directly to smart bulbs. Smart bulbs are extremely popular and the biggest gap in the market (still, which is surprising to me) is that there isn’t a great solution on controlling your smart bulbs from the wall. I know there are remotes and behind the switch modules that can work, but having a smart switch and smart bulb combo has really been a major seller for us. Unfortunately, there just aren’t any Z-Wave bulbs anymore. We had them, but it was so hard to compete with the 1,000’s of other bulbs out there, that we had to discontinue them. It took us 3 years to sell through 4k units, which is crazy. I even took a loss on them at the end.

But my argument for leading with Zigbee is that I know it sells and it sells a lot – my goal is to take those profits and invest in more innovation. If I led with Z-Wave, it would take much longer, in my opinion, to see profits to invest in more innovation. I wish it was a risk I could take bc I do like Z-Wave, but it’s just too risky for me.

Dangit, I just typed up that response above and then read yours which was much more succinct lol – nice write-up :slight_smile:

Yeah we would definitely do the backwards compatibility. I’d definitely help coordinate a lifeline for you guys. I just need to figure out a way to keep people from taking advantage and saying there’s a problem with their canopy when there’s not. We had this happen to us on our Gen 1 switches that had a lifetime warranty and when we launched our Gen 2’s, “miraculously” all Gen 1’s stopped working and needed replacing with Gen 2’s lol. But for those that have the canopy issue, if you turn it in and we determine it is defective, I don’t have a problem at all replacing it as I know this was a manufacturing defect that’s on us.

Oh yeah for sure! Great project name – I am running out of names for projects, so maybe I’ll take you up on this haha

I swear this is a built in timer on these things – these companies are out to get us! I just installed some smart blinds and everything worked perfectly until my fiancee touched the switch and the blind decided not to work. This was over a month ago and things have been working great, but I still hear, “these blinds are terrible” :rofl:

Yeah this is a good reminder to market the approval factor. It is actually much more important than we joke about! I just need to be careful what I call it bc last time this topic was brought up, there were some ruffled feathers lol: Zigbee / Matter Motion Switch | Project Linus (Blue Series) - #308 by simnick

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This was clearly solved just a few posts below the one you linked…

Home Assistant has made an intentional push to use a more all encompassing term.

5 posts were split to a new topic: Inovelli: Smoke Detectors?

Very much appreciated!

Ya, I can totally see that happening.

By “lifeline” I merely meant that the LZW36 users would have a path to restore full functionality to their fan setups. I’m totally willing to pay full price for the module or a verified swap of the canopy unit at cost would also work. That way the replacement units wouldn’t negatively impact Inovelli breaking even on this project. I’ll be happy as long as a Z-Wave Canopy Module become a reality.

Thanks!

I’m struggling so hard to not just buy an available canopy module so I can use my dumb fan smartly, but I really want to wait for the Z-Wave stuff :smiley:

No doubt! Get that all the time

The only conclusion I can draw from this response is that Z-Wave is a dead-end and the market is shrinking, Zigbee is on the way out and probably shrinking, and the only two protocols that will survive are Matter/Thread (and wifi, based on what’s available on Amazon).

There is a significant opportunity cost of investing your and your company’s energy into launching, shipping, and supporting a ‘break even’ product; they take time away from products that could scale, be profitable, and help more users.

My $0.02 as a Z-Wave diehard is rapidly changing after a few hours with my new White Series 2-1 Matter/Thread switch in a portable electrical box powered by a lamp cord. It responds almost instantaneously to commands from Home Assistant, and seems a bit faster than any Z-Wave device I’ve ever owned. Time will tell if it is as bulletproof as Z-Wave has been for me, but the initial impressions make me want to say Z-Who? for our future house construction plan…

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I’m all in on Z-Wave and Inovelli. I have 7 ceiling fans in my house. 1 with a light, others just fans. Also have 5 bathroom fans that I would love to be able to make smart if there were an Inovelli Z-Wave option.

Currently have 70 Red Dimmers in production and they have been absolutely rock solid for 3 + years now. Being able to maintain a consistent look and feel across the switches in the house is important to me. From appearance to the high quality feel when you press the buttons, I won’t buy anything other than Inovelli. Hoping this gap gets closed soon so I don’t have to bite the bullet and use some other manufacturer or worse, have to add Zigbee devices as I’ve read nothing but mostly horror stories.

I’d totally commit to a preorder crowdsource campaign.

There are so many variables involved that any radio protocol conversation is a highly-personal experience. That said, I thought the same way as you, and was all Z-Wave, all the time. Then, I bought into introducing high-quality Zigbee battery devices from known entities. Now, I’ve started introducing Zigbee wired devices into my overall network.

With the caveat that I stick to ‘good’ devices from ‘good’ manufacturers -the opposite of which, IMHO, is the reason for Zigbee’s bad rap-, I’ve come around to Zigbee and now prefer it over Z-Wave. While -with one exception- I am not ripping out Z-Wave to replace with Zigbee, I am using Zigbee for new devices, and have been very pleased. Again, it’s a personal situation for everyone, but given that caveat, I would have a hard time telling someone to not give Zigbee a shot.

Given that the current (3rd) generation Inovelli devices all appear the same on the wall, I would give Zigbee (or even Thread/Matter, if your ecosystem supports it and you can live with the current limitations) a shot. I’ve been quite pleased with my wired Zigbee devices, and my so-far-lone Blue Series Dimmer is no exception and performs quite exceptionally, which we’ve all come to expect from Inovelli.

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I created an account on this forum to add to this that I would definitely be willing to participate in a crowdfunding campaign for additional Z Wave modules, including specifically a fan canopy. I love the initiative to invest in thread/matter, which is likely where the industry is heading, but with all the growing pains I can’t imagine leaving my Z Wave setup for at least a few years while Matter matures.

Just to put it out there, I would immediately sign up for at least 7 z-wave fan modules if a pre-order were to open.

I’d love to have a z-wave version of the on/off switch with the humidity sensor. It’s perfect for bathroom exhaust fans.