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

Just placed my order too. Good job guys!!

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Thank you @jimhim, @rpulivella (beta team was actually talking about you the other day ironically, we miss you man!), and @thanatar - that really means a lot.

I want to take a quick moment to acknowledge the beta testers. I hadn’t planned on typing this up until Sunday, but here we go.

These guys have put in countless hours - hours they could be spending with family, friends, or heck just some alone time - to help us come out with (what we think) the best switch on the market. I’m so pumped that this is coming to fruition, especially during a time where things have been difficult.

It’s not even just beta testing these guys have done, I’m talking about writing SmartApps, making sure Home Assistant integrations are completed, helping Maycock with device handlers and drivers and literally working late hours to talk through various parameters and how they should be implemented.

This wasn’t just a, “here you go guys, can you test this” type deal - this was a genuine, “let’s build this together” project and I can honestly say that it was the most fun I’ve ever had (and am still having) in my 5 years with Inovelli.

The beta testers have been bound to an NDA so there hasn’t been much that has been said outside of my and Maycock’s perspective, but I’d like to publicly release the NDA and allow the beta testers to chip in and answer any questions or comment if they’d like.

We’re extremely pumped about this and I firmly believe that this will be the best switch to hit the market hands down. No one comes close!

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You guys created an amazing product. I am moving into a new house and I am so excited to make it smart, and when I started researching smart switches, I kept seeing person after person recommend your products. I was bummed when I saw all of your switches were sold out, but I was so excited when I landed on this forum. I have been checking the forum at least 10 times a day for the past week and a half waiting for the pre-order.

Then I realized I could have it email me every time someone posted. So as soon as that guy posted on the forum - I stopped what I was doing and immediately ordered 6 minutes later.

I am so excited for this - I cannot to install these switches in my home. You all should be proud of the community and product you have developed.

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So this switch is pretty amazing.

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Finally! Now my patience moves from pressing the order button to awaiting shipping. Hopefully UL goes faster than expected :smirk:.

Ordered 2 contractor packs, I now have a time line to finish adding recessed lighting to my house which had none until we got here.

As a suggestion to the Inovelli team, I saw you mention earlier about nobody buying your lights. If you made a recessed retro fit (4 and 6") you would probably see a decent uptick in light purchases. I personally just went with Hue white ambiance, as they have great color reproduction and I didn’t need the full RGBW. I know this doesn’t help in the interim however would be good to keep dollars rolling in. If you could come in just below the hue price point $35 for white tunable and $55 for RGBW I think you’d get a lot of retrofit business.

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Exciting stuff! Just placed my pre-order!!

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My house has 15 red switches. I’ve been needing a couple more. Should I just add the 2-3 Blue series instead of Red’s? I only have about 3 Zigbee products. Not sure if there is a pro/con to add blues instead of red.

Been watching this company for the last month. I had been an Insteon guy since 2013. I recently upgraded to a Polisy device and upon that my PLM ( I think) went down. Since you couldn’t get new PLM’s I decided to start the migration to Z-wave and came across this company. With Smartlabs going down last week Im glad I made the switch. Ive been checking the site daily hoping to finally get any switch or fan control. After some thought I figured I would get whatever was available to order first. Today I placed an order for the Blue series contractor pack. I can’t wait to get these and see why there is a 500+ person line to even purchase a refurbished device.

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So excited to have my order in!

Looking through the manual again, I’m honestly a little concerned about “just hold the button for 20 seconds” as the reset procedure. It seems like if someone leans too long on the switch, or something slumps up against it (moving furniture? Have a nearby lamp? A drunk person?) that might get triggered accidentally, making the switch seem less reliable. It’s also simple enough a toddler might learn to do it to see the lights…

Seems like “allow factory reset within 3 minutes of power cycle” might be safer but still easy to do with the air-gap.

Also, the pairing docs should make it clear that the pairing procedures only apply to an UNPAIRED switch. I really hope it won’t allow adoption any time the power blips, or my downstairs neighbor who leaves their zigbee system in always-allow-pairing mode would steal my switches after any outage!

Order Done! Glad i checked this community later than normal today!

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I’m fully planning on getting a couple of these, I have installed around 8 of the various Red series and I have 2 strips (they are apparently really good repeaters, a lot of my Zwave tries to route through them even though they are further from my hub).

With the news that the Xiaomi/Aqara sensors route through the Blue series, these will be fantastic to increase the range I can put my sensors. I just have to figure out how many/where I want to put them to build the best mesh. Everywhere I’ve looked people prefer Zigbee or 433mhz RF for sensors due to battery life.

The only thing I haven’t looked at much is how well these “blend” with the Reds

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I don’t think it’s any different than the reds, unless I’m missing something. So a hot and neutral to both to fully power them. But you’ll have three conductors between the two switches so getting both there shouldn’t be an issue.

I had the red series for almost 2.5 years and never had anyone (visitors, wife, etc) hold the config down long enough to force a reset. Granted I have no children, but that’s the risk you take with those!

What’s great about the Blue series is if someone accidentally resets it with the force reset, it will add back into your controller and know exactly what it used to be (speaking for Hubitat, I think the other hubs are the same). During firmware upgrades, we had to factory reset multiple times and I always dreaded resetting switch cuz all my rules. Not this one. Once reset, power cycle, start zigbee inclusion on hub. Bam switch adds back into the network as if it never left. (May need to force config to what it was previously).

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Dang you guys, we’re almost at a record and it’s only been a few hours!! Amazing :star_struck:

I remember when we opened up pre-orders for the Red Series Dimmer and sold 1k units the first 24hrs. We’re coming in hot on that already. Can’t wait to tell the manufacturer and also pass this along to the new COO (will release more once I get the green light from legal).

I’m honestly super humbled and I know the team is too!

Thanks! It’s definitely a community effort and while sometimes it can be daunting keeping up with all the requests, comments, etc, if we didn’t have those our products would be pretty basic. Very grateful for everyone!

What are you most excited about? I love hearing how ppl use the switches. It means a lot to us!

Some might even call it the next generation of smart switches.

Lol you and me both! Appreciate the support and looking forward to seeing these in your house as well!

This is definitely on our radar. Our Z-Wave manufacturer makes some amazing lights - and I believe they sell recessed lighting in Zigbee.

My job in the coming weeks is to put together a sales story for the new COO around lighting which includes both switches and bulbs. More to come on this but this is definitely a priority for me and the company.

Thank you so much! Let’s goooooo!!!

How far away from the hub would you say these new switches are going? I have a mixture of the red and blue in my house now and it seems to run great.

In regards to pro/con, in my personal opinion (and I know it will vary from others, it’s ok!) I don’t really see that much of a difference between the two protocols and this is coming from a guy (and company) that has been in the Z-Wave business for 6+ years now. All the features are the same between the two and, in fact, I’d say the Blue Series has some upgrades over the Red Series.

However, if security and having products run outside of the WiFi band, then Z-Wave is for sure your best bet.

Good suggestion tho for me to make kind of an, “official” comparison between the two.

Dang! First, welcome to the community, we’re glad to have you and I hope you feel welcomed and enjoy some of the discussion. I really can’t wait until we have some product in stock so there is more to talk about bc when things are humming along product-wise, this community is vibrant and so many cool ideas come out of it. I love it!

Thanks so much for putting your faith in us and going all in on the contractor pack. What would you say you’re most looking forward to on your new journey in home automation?

Great point and I’m glad you brought this up. We did just change this (of course after I made all the videos and wrote the tutorials haha) to make it harder to factory reset. Instead of just the config button being held down, now you will have to hold the config button and the top paddle for 20 seconds.

Anecdotally, in the 3ish years we’ve had the Red Series out, I haven’t seen or heard of anyone accidentally resetting the switch - but maybe @anon640257 or @Courtney_Inovelli could confirm.

Either way, definitely on the same page in making it harder.

The other one is the tap 8x to disable local control - this one for sure caused issues as people thought they broke their switch. Now, we’re making it so you have to hold the paddle down as well as tap the config button (I can’t remember the sequence off the top of my head right now, but I do know there are multiple buttons that have to be pushed)

Great point! I will update the docs - appreciate the call-out :slight_smile:

PS - thanks for the order and support!

Awesome thank you! Great seeing you as well - I feel like you’re one of the OG’s of the forum :slight_smile:

I can try to take a side by side for you. Remind me if I don’t do it by mid-Monday!

The only cosmetic difference is the config button is slightly shorter in depth than the Red Series. I’m not sure on the white color though and how much that differs. It was a hot topic with the Red Series.

Appreciate you checking us out and following along!

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Ok everyone, checking out for the night. I’ve worked until 2-3am every night this week in preparation for this and I have my daughter’s soccer game in the morning. I’ll be monitoring this thread all weekend though.

Thanks again so much for all the excitement and rallying - it’s always so cool to see everyone pumped about new tech!

@Darwyn_Inovelli - looking good buddy, pass this onto your team, people are ready for these to get here!

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That’s an understatement. The very first thing that hit me was the smoothness of the dimming. With the red dimmers, you can’t help but notice the stepped dimming. But not with the blue series. It was like whoa, what a difference!

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Order placed! I’m planning on doing a little shuffle with the Blue Series replacing two Red Series which will then be moved to replace some GEs. Looking forward to adding these to my existing arsenal of Red Series and getting rid of some non-Inovellis.

Order placed here too. Got a little worried you sold out already. Clicked order and it failed the first time. Went through the second time.

For the 10 pack, will we be able to select a paddle color prior to shipping, like you could with the Red 10 packs, or are we stuck with White for now?

Did you end up able to implement 3-way/4-way with multiple Blue dimmers where they communicate over the traveler instead of having to rely on wireless communication between the switches?

This is awesome, do we have color paddles for the blue series? Can we use the red series replacement paddles?