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

Fixed, thanks! I’m sure there will be quite a few mistakes – the beauty of hosting it digitally and having so many different eyes on it :nerd_face:

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Curious if you were ever able to snap some pics or video of what it would look like without the diffuser.

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I thought @Eric_Inovelli posted one without the diffuser. Maybe on one of the other posts?

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Looked back and there were only pictures of it showing diffused multi led, nothing without the diffuser yet. I suppose I could pull the diffuser out of one of my Red series dimmers, but not sure how easy that is.

I can snap some pics/vids tomorrow when I’m back at my house :slight_smile:

Remind me if I don’t post anything by the evening!

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Not the same. The addressable LEDs make a difference.

very easy … it just pulls out. But, of course, the Reds don’t have individual LED color control. you’ll see the individually leds all the same color thought

@feens - here ya go!

I don’t have the ability to change the individual LED’s yet bc we haven’t updated the device handler, so it just shows all the same color right now, but once I get the individual LED’s I can take a few pics.

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@Eric_Inovelli, sorry if I missed a response to this somewhere in the thread… Have any of your beta testers tried using an blue series switch as a repeater for a Aqara/Xiaomi sensor?

I just bought my first house and I would love to buy several blue switches to use in combination with the Aqara leak detection and other sensors. Either way, looking forward to when y’all open preorders.

Yes, @chack has been using a couple of the contact sensors with no issues :slight_smile:

Model - MCCGQ11LM

Anything I’m missing @chack

@GeorgeBurdell - any specific ones you want us to test?

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That’s the important part :wink: I’ve been happy with the performance. Joining them through the switch was super quick and easy and they’re very quick to update.

If it matters, this is on Home Assistant using ZHA and a Conbee II coordinator, though like I said the sensors were specifically joined through the switch so I’d expect similar behavior regardless.

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Just checking in here and I’m excited to see the progress on this product. I was just wondering if there has been any confirmation yet on the control of smart bulbs as well as sending hub events at the same time for scenes. The use case here is that I currently have red series z-wave switches controlling my Hue lights and this causes a couple (noticeable) milliseconds of delay while the command goes from switch–>hub–>hue lights. I was hoping the blue series would do something like: switch → hue lights + hub so that it could reduce this delay but also send button event to the hub for other automations.

Thanks!

This should be accomplished with binding. So far they have said that binding works with single devices, think we are still waiting to hear back about binding with zigbee groups.

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I’m like 99% sure this is the way it’s setup, but let me have @EricM_Inovelli confirm it.

Like @bgreet mentioned, the bindings will work for the smart bulb mode and eliminate the hub (similar to Z-Wave Associations) and at the same time scene control can be used. So a simultaneous command can be sent (switch to bulb and switch to hub).

@adamkempenich has been one of the ones testing a lot of the bindings, so maybe he can pop in too. Sorry to put you on the spot lol

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I really hope that connecting to the Hue bridge will work and that eventually Hue will help the Inovelli engineers.

I understand it was mentioned Hue isn’t being too cooperative. I thought the whole point of “Friends of Hue” program was to allow 3rd party manufacturers to integrate with the Hue Ecosystem?

They advertise some really non-useful smart switches while not helping Inovelli with what is arguably the best industrial design for a Hue smart wall switch, it makes no sense to me.

The lack of a real good smart wall switch that installs into an wall box is literally the thing that holds Hue back the most. I’m a Philips Hue user for many many years, and I and others I talk to have always yearned for a Decora style smart switch that goes right into the wall, is wired, yet is smart enabled so that we can stop telling friends and relatives to stop using the wall switch in favour of ugly switches screwed or taped beside the cover plates already in our homes.

I’ve had my eye on Inovelli for a while, and I know others have too. It’s shocking that now that Inovelli is making this heroic investment of time and money into developing a dream switch with the aim to make it Hue compatible that it is the Philips Hue side that’s not cooperating.

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image

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I’m waiting for the Will Smith / Chris Rock slap with Hue and “Friends of Hue” on it…

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Yes, I have been extremely disappointed in Hue and I hope they change their minds. It would be one thing if they would flat out say they don’t want to work with us, but the whole, “you need EnOcean in your switch” makes zero sense for an in-wall switch.

We talked to the EnOcean people and even they said it didn’t make any sense to have their technology in the switch, but rather we should work with them for a remote option.

It’s almost like they don’t fully understand what an in-wall switch can do and how it would benefit them. I even made this fancy graph for them, but they still kept saying, “in order to be considered, you need to put EnOcean in your switch”.

So, at this point, I’m just going to take the loss and my hopes are that once these things start flying off shelves, we can have more data to go back to them to show them this is a viable option for them to consider.

It would also be helpful if Hue customers who have the Inovelli switch write in or tweet at them. Maybe then they can adopt a page from our playbook and listen to their customers.

__

From a tech side, we were presented with a choice from the engineers:

  1. Hack their key encryption and force our products to work on their system (essentially going around them)
  2. Use a third party hub and bypass the Hue gateway

While option #1 is very tempting, and I’m assuming some of the other companies that say they work with Hue (but aren’t Friends of Hue Certified) have done this, my fear is that Hue would catch on and modify their encryption in one of their hub updates and that would cause issues on our end as it’s out of our control – plus, if there ever was a potential of partnering in the future, that would likely be out the door if they caught on to us hacking their encryption.

So, for now, we’ll have to collect as much data as we can around who is using their bulbs with the Inovelli switch and what hub their using to explain to them that they’re missing out on hub sales and people are taking their products outside their ecosystem.

Finally, the next option, which I’m moving forward with is to just create our own ZigBee bulb lineup and build something outside of them. Our Z-Wave manufacturer has an entire suite of bulbs that are amazing and ready to go – we just need the capital to purchase and support them.

Anyway, thanks for listening to my Ted Talk.

EDIT: The one thing we’re exploring is to see if we can use the EnOcean module instead of the SiLabs module. The EnOcean module has the ability to use ZigBee. It definitely won’t happen for our first launch and there are still some follow up questions I have for the EnOcean folks (just sent an email) regarding OTA and Matter, but if it is as simple as swapping the module, it may be something we can explore to, “check the box” with Hue. Still ridiculous, but it is what it is.

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Did you mean Zigbee manufacturer?

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