Zigbee 2-1 Switch (On/Off & Dimmer) | Project New Horizon (Blue Series)

Vesalius · February 18, 2022, 6:04pm

Agree with the better intermediate solution being to utilize 802.15.4 radios and hardware that is OTA updatable between Zigbee and thread. Bluetooth is separate and will need to be there for fallback networking and for the OTA upgrade most likely.

Lastly having a plan to make a current (Via upgrade) or near future Inovelli Zigbee hub Matter compliant/compatible would solve most if not all of the issues with bringing previously purchased switches into Matter compatibility without the absolute necessity of voiding consumer warranties or Inovelli going through corporate lawyer hoops. The hub would handle Zigbee communication to older switches and then speak the universal Matter application layer to all smarthome hub ecosystems. Any newly released thread switches you make skip that hub and go straight to all smarthome hub ecosystems via matter.

grooves12 · February 19, 2022, 12:09am

Plus, hubs aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. The automations of the big 3 that will be supporting matter are (and will probably always be) limited. Building complicated automations, will likely always require a 3rd party hub.

jrperry · February 19, 2022, 10:55pm

@grooves12, I have to agree hubs aren’t going anywhere till they are incorporated into everyone’s wi-fi routers. I have to say I don’t think hubs fix the complicated routines problem, consumer hubs are marketed as being easy, there is always another level of complexity. HA Yellow, and future generations, are probably the closest thing to an advanced hub well see.

prjct92eh2 · February 19, 2022, 11:12pm

That’s actually one of the advantages of Thread: it doesn’t require a hub. Just a device that acts as a Thread border router and connects to your LAN, like the Nanoleaf panels. Thread is also being activated in wifi routers like Nest Wifi. Then any middle layer like Matter can communicate with those devices. Obviously for automation engines and the like, you’ll also need a hub to control those Thread devices. I do like that hubs are becoming more embedded instead of standalone devices. They’re in smart speakers, smart screens, soon will be in Samsung TVs and fridges, etc.

(we’re really starting to derail this post )

mrkelley · February 20, 2022, 1:42am

First time posting! I am all in on HomeKit and found Inovelli by accident. After reading a few threads and seeing the red series, I thought I hit the jackpot to see the roadmap for the blue series. I had to read up on Zigbe and Matter to learn that it should be able to be updated to work with HomeKit. At least in the Apple community, anything with Thread support gets TONS of free publicity/reviews…and apparently sells very well. I understand Matter to be the “language” that is mostly coding…Thread is the hardware that people worry about when buying something. Stressing future compatibility with Thread vice Matter is what would make me buy it instantly. Instead I went down this rabbit hole to figure out matter, thread, and Zigbe to see if I need to wait or not. I also discovered this great community! Great for the techie guy here but I don’t think a regular non-tech type would do any research. Just look for the Made for Apple or Thread support. Sorry if this is long winded and all over the place, I just want to buy these Blue Series! Would be good to see some HomeKit love here…when signing up, HomeKit wasn’t even an option for a community.

jrperry · February 21, 2022, 9:20pm

I am getting excited!
the official hype video is out.

@Eric_Inovelli, is it too soon to ask when?
Maybe a better question is what hurdles do you have left? I know you mentioned the UL testing has been backed up.

Eric_Inovelli · February 22, 2022, 5:10am

Lol good point. I also need to chill on the spending so it will wait a tad haha.

Welcome! I’m in a similar boat believe it or not – Everyone always assumes I am this super techie guy who owns a smart home company, but the reality is @EricM_Inovelli is the brains behind all the protocols and languages, whereas I know how to draw pretty pictures to make this stuff look cool. I know enough to be dangerous, but that’s about it lol.

I am super excited about the future though and what Matter hopefully can bring to the table and I definitely understand the love for Thread and the HomeKit community. Your post is a good reminder that I need to add some more love to HomeKit

Thanks so much for checking us out and again, welcome to the community, we’re excited to have you my friend!

LOL, nah, never too soon. I will admit, I’m way more hesitant with this one based on the 5-Button fiasco, but I’m extremely confident in this one (one because I’m managing this project myself and two because we’re in a really good spot with beta testing).

If I had to put a wager on it, I’d say likely April will be the release date.

The hurdles we have left are the following:

We’re on version 7 of beta firmware – I think we likely have 1-2 more iterations left.
Philips Hue integration (not a deal-breaker for release, but I’m pushing hard bc it’s a huge opportunity if we can pull it off) – right now, we can’t get the switch to work with the gateway (something to do with the key – we’re working with the ZigBee Alliance as Hue has not been much help)
UL Certification – it’s been submitted, but we’re waiting on finalization
FCC/IC/ZigBee Certification – this isn’t really a hurdle, but it’s what we have left to do

Honestly, the hard part is behind us – hardware has tested amazingly in multiple scenarios (neutral, non-neutral, etc) and the beta testers are crushing it. I can say from the bottom of my heart that this has been the best group I’ve ever worked with and this switch is going to be the new flagship (and that’s saying a lot bc I never thought anything could beat the Red Series Dimmer).

NET: I feel good about an April release (let’s say late April to be conservative) – I plan on opening up pre-orders once beta testing is complete and there’s a production run scheduled. I wish I could take more risks, but man that 5-Button really made me nervous about any pre-orders lol.

jrperry · February 22, 2022, 11:43pm

Really there is no need or expectation from me for anything more exact than that. That was a great run down of where the project stands. Thank you.

My only follow up is how long after the US release do you see it taking to reach Canada?

Zingbat · February 23, 2022, 8:44am

@Eric_Inovelli – first of all, I’m super excited that you guys are entering the Zigbee/Matter market. Personally, I’ve found Zigbee to be much more robust than Z-Wave and have removed almost all Z-Wave devices from my home automation system.

I am looking to replace the Homeseer HS-WD200+ dimmer which has individually controlled RGB LED’s. (In fairness, the device has been performing well – the issue is that it will lose routing as I continue to migrate off of Z-Wave.) My primary use case is to have a colored LED per person to display their occupancy in the house. A different LED blinks red when a family member’s Dexcom glucose meter indicates low blood sugar, etc.

Question: is it possible to add individual segment control of the LED’s instead of addressing the whole bar? I think it would open up a significant and valuable “statusing” capability.

harjms · February 23, 2022, 12:14pm

Stay tuned….

Eric_Inovelli · February 23, 2022, 12:39pm

Great question. The switched will be available to Canadians via our website the same time they’re available to US customers.

There will be a higher shipping fee of course but I promise we’re not making any money off of it.

In regards to when they’ll be on Amazon Canada or we have some sort of Canadian distributor, that remains to be seen. I am working on a few things behind the scenes that I hope to release to the public in the next couple of weeks. It’s taking a bit to solidify the details, but I promise it will be worth it as we have attracted some pretty large backers who can help us from an operations side of things.

I would bet they have distribution in Canada that we could tap into as they are one of the largest IoT companies (that many of you I’m sure use) - how’s that for a tease lol?

Thanks, I get more excited by the day too! We were hesitant to get into ZigBee bc we love Z-Wave and it’s what we’ve done for so long, but ZigBee has impressed us big time. I kind of wish we took the opportunity we had 3yrs ago to explore ZigBee… Oh well, never too late!

Wow, this is really incredible. I’ve never thought about the health benefits of notifications, but that makes total sense. What glucose meter are you using? I’d love to use this as an example down the road if you don’t mind. Once we get more staff that can write up tutorials, I think this would be huge to let ppl know it’s possible and then how to do it.

It’s like you are in our beta chat and have been monitoring it haha. We’ve been talking about this and how to pull it off for the first release.

We do plan on adding individually addressable notifications and the team is working on it for the next release of beta firmware. I’m not entirely sure on if there will be animations for each individual LED, but at the very least, they can turn different colors.

The problem we’re facing, however, is that the way our LED bar is set up, it has a diffuser in the design so that it can dissipate light to give that smooth effect of the LED bar going up and down (hard to explain - when I get to the office, I can edit this with pictures).

The individual LED notifications may look weird as it wouldn’t be as defined as the HomeSeer one that has individual dots.

So, we’re left with a challenge, if sell replacement paddles that look more like HomeSeers dot design, we gain the individual LED look, but we lose the smooth bar design (which is our signature look and also used to indicate dim levels). However if we keep the current design, my fear is that it will look weird.

This is why @harjms likely said, “stay tuned” lol.

TLDR: it will be built into the firmware, we’re just now working on how to best display it.

ericCLT · February 23, 2022, 12:48pm

Will the Philips Hue Integration work like the with Friends of Hue functionality? I’ve installed a couple of Lutron Aurora dimmers, but the look is awful and they will be removed soon.

Since this look is similar to Sunnata dimmers, this would save me a BOATLOAD of cash on RadioRa3 Sunnata dimmers!

Eric_Inovelli · February 23, 2022, 3:06pm

This is an excellent question and you must also be reading our beta chat bc Philips is a hot topic right now.

Short Answer
No, unfortunately these will not work like the Friends of Hue functionality (officially). We aren’t able to get Friends of Hue certified bc they are not taking any applications right now unless we want to add EnOcean to our switches (wut…?).

Long Answer
I was about to share the email, but noticed it said, “Classified” at the top, so I’ll just explain it.

We initially wrote in to see if we could be, “Friends of Hue” certified and had an intro call with their FOH team lead. Within 2 minutes, we were shut down lol. I’m exaggerating, but the gist of it was that they were super overwhelmed and short staffed that they couldn’t dedicate any time to new partners right now.

I even made this awesome PPT:
Inovelli + Hue - Overview_compressed.pdf (571.6 KB)

This was back in October/November timeframe and they said we can follow up after the new year, but it still would likely be a not right now type thing. They also mentioned something about EnOcean, which I hadn’t heard of outside of some reports that I read back in 2018.

We then reached out in early January to see if we could at least be added to their platform as an unofficial partner (it was a long shot, but I noticed other brands on the list that weren’t listed on their site, so I thought I’d try). This was also shot down. However, they were at least more clear this time that they needed us to support the EnOcean protocol in order to be a FOH partner.

At this time, we don’t plan on supporting EnOcean as we simply don’t have the resources. Looks like a cool protocol, but hard to pull off right now.

So, that leaves us with more of an, “unofficial” integration until we figure out what to do (maybe we’ll just have some variants or something of the firmware that are Hue specific that supports EnOcean).

At this time, we’re trying to get the switch to pair with the Hue bridge, but are having some issues in that the bridge detects the switch, but then fails during the key exchange. We’re thinking Hue put some sort of proprietary lock on their hub to only work with approved vendors.

This is, unfortunately, why I took any reference to Hue out of the hype video. It sucks bc I was really excited to pair up with Hue and we have gotten our switches to bind properly using Hubitat and Home Assistant (in other words, the switch pairs directly to the Hue bulb, but requires a third party hub to do it since Hue locked us out) so I know it works and is a limitation on Hue’s end.

We’re still trying for the unofficial integration, but my fear is that even if we do get it to work, Hue has a history of updating their gateway to break any unofficial integrations (Philips Hue cuts support for third-party bulbs - CNET).

I’m not sure how Lutron does it – likely the power of their name and a fat check to Hue via licensing and/or platform fees as I don’t believe they support EnOcean since their products run on a proprietary protocol.

These guys… I swear their product manager hangs out in our forum lol.

Note for legal purposes: I’m not privy to internal discussions at Lutron nor do I have any associations with them. I’m not claiming they have copied our design, but rather merely pointing out the similarities as brought up in the quote above. The above design is my opinion only based off public knowledge shown in sources and screenshots below.

Source for Dimmer: https://www.lutron.com/en-US/Company-Info/Pages/News/Media-PressCenter/PressReleases/PressReleaseDetail.aspx?prid=795

Source for RA3 Line: https://radiora3.lutron.com/us/en/residential-lighting-system-devices

Sorry to derail – the RA3 announcement really peeved me off. I get it imitation is the best form of flattery, but c’mon Lutron, this was lazy.

bill.d · February 23, 2022, 5:05pm

I really like your products and I hope your new ones really are successful. Here are some comments:

The potential power of Matter is to get around Hue’s self-imposed limitations. Hue has signed up for Matter. If Hue implements the standard in some non-proprietary way then all the FOH and EnOcean restrictions should mostly go away.
There are reasons to criticize Lutron, but I feel the ones in your post are at best superficial. There’s a reason a market exists for $200 MSRP dimmers and $350 keypads. You really should have both RadioRA 2 and 3 systems in-house to understand the differences. I think there’s a lot of opportunity for you to compete against them. I have both Red dimmers (used to control Hue bulbs) and a RadioRA 2 system.
a) Sunnata design (non-smart) was introduced in November 2019. So they were not in any way copying your design. Sunnata controls are touch, not push. The keypads are a variation of the HomeWorks Palladiom line from ~2015.
b) Lutron is a pretty large company. Over $500m revenue and 1500 employees. They spend a lot on engineering and customer support. I believe their residential sales are much smaller than commercial.
c) as a result of #b Lutron is the gold standard. I’m pretty sure your Chinese suppliers use Lutron devices as a reference.
d) Lutron uses its own communications protocols that just f-ing work. See #b. Clear Connect A is low frequency 434 MHz. Clear Connect X is 2.4 GHz - some proprietary implementation of Thread/Zigbee. (They’re on the BOD of both groups). F*** Z-Wave.
e) Inovelli and Lutron Sunnata both miss the boat IMO in keypad design. Lutron RadioRA 2 keypads (6 + 2 buttons) (changeable in field) are better than Sunnata or Inovelli. And Control4 beats both companies in button configuration ability.
f) Your 2 button device is not the same as Lutron’s. Your’s is a 2 load control. Lutron’s is a 2 button, non-load control. So yours is more capable! Lots of Lutron customers have requested 2 load including fan controls.
g) Sunnata dimmers (and RadioRA 2 Maestro) are both forward and reverse phase capable. Any true competitor needs to come up to the same level at even the mid-market. Acknowledging that added capability is not costless. LED lighting continues to grow in complexity. The longer term trend in higher-end is away from line level control to low voltage in new construction. Because line voltage low end dimming mostly sucks. All manufacturers will need to adjust over the coming years as the technology flows down to lower-cost segments.

I really am hoping your products succeed. Smaller companies are the ones that keep the markets moving. At the low end Zigbee is OK. Anything higher you’ll need Thread/Matter capabilities.

vreihen · February 23, 2022, 5:46pm

How about asking Friends of Hugh for some help???

harjms · February 23, 2022, 6:49pm

Lutron is the next Insteon.

bill.d · February 23, 2022, 8:05pm

High quality comment of the day. Fanboiz rule, I guess.

Bry · February 23, 2022, 8:27pm

Um, do you really think he was serious???

Eric_Inovelli · February 23, 2022, 8:37pm

Yeah, this is what we’re also banking on – I still don’t get the EnOcean route as this seems to be new, but I guess it is what it is.

Yeah, I must say this took a weird turn lol. I was not debating that Lutron’s technology is superior than Z-Wave/ZigBee, etc… nor was I debating that head to head the RA vs Inovelli are the same exact switch.

What I was debating was that their design was almost identical to ours. I also stated this was an opinion and to draw your own conclusions. Yes, as a small business owner, it really makes me upset that our switch design was copied and there’s not much I can do about it bc they’re such a huge company and like Amazon, they can do that with zero repercussions. It’s one of the risks that we take by being so open in the community with everything.

At the end of the day, I still like and respect Lutron and always have. We’ve taken inspiration from them on some things, as well as other companies, I’m not saying all our thoughts and designs are original – my gripe is that it seems like every design is similar to ours and it was released after the fact.

That’s all.

epow · February 23, 2022, 8:48pm

From what I’ve read this is a technology best suited for wireless devices - energy harvesting from the ambient environment to eliminate the need for a battery sounds fantastic. However, I fail to see how it would in any way benefit a mains-connected switch.