I’m coming out as one of the testers on HA and ST, so feel free to give me a tag.
Lots of great questions! A few general thoughts:
Improvements over Reds:
- dimming is smooth as silk on low-wattage applications.
- notifications can be single LED based (similar to homeseer), but they blend really well so you can do a rainbow notification WITH effect. This is great for seeing multiple status items in my master bedroom (all green good, yellow is not secure, red is alarming, etc.)
- smart bulb mode just WORKS. I have a lot of ZigBee groups, and it controls them no problem with great speed and reliability.
- My ZigBee network LOVES these (~32 devices, mostly battery powered). They are now one of the main devices holding the network together, I have one on a cord that l moved around and got it to bind at ~45’ no issue.
No one is mentioning the aux switch, but I’ve also been testing that and it is such a great solution for areas without led bar/notification needs. Multi-taps work great!
I’m also going to state that I have been surprised by the reliability and resilience of ZigBee. It seems to handle a LOT of traffic perceptibly “faster” than zwave just due to bandwidth increase.
I have a very robust 2.4GHz wifi network and have had absolutely zero perceptible interference in my home.
Hopefully this puts people’s mind at ease! Also, here is a blue and a red next to each other:
