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

[bgreet]

I think it was mentioned before, but what zigbee chipset are these using?

[kreene1987]

MG21, down the road MG24. I think it’s silabs? Quick Google should find.

[grooves12]

@Eric_Inovelli Now that it seems like you are in the home stretch for this switch, can you provide any updates on the future blue-series roadmap? I’m (not so) patiently waiting for the motion switches.

[TRiddle1983]

Got my pre-order in for 20. Looks like I’ll have some red switches up for grabs soon!

Before anyone potentially asks, I’ve fought with my hubitat zwave network for years on reliability, and there are just some gremlins I cannot solve. My zigbee network though is reliable to the point that I forget it’s even there, so I’m swapping out quite a bit to stop me from pulling my hair out.

[jimhim]

I see a lot is being thrown at you guys from every direction, but if could add to it, is there a timeline for the MG24?

[nugget]

I just pre-ordered for 70 switches which will be installed in a new home I’m renovating over the summer. My current home has about 50 of the red series switches, and my experience with Zwave at that scale has been less than satisfying. I’m hoping Zigbee proves to be more reliable with a large number of devices. Home Assistant back end at both sites.

I’d been wavering between the blue series and Radio RA3 for the new place, and in the end I’d much rather support Inovelli instead of a proprietary solution that considers the enthusiast market an annoyance rather than an opportunity.

For whatever it’s worth, I’m the original developer of INSTEON support for Home Assistant (and the corresponding py-insteon package). These Inovelli products feel like Star Trek compared to that old stuff, although if I’m honest I’ve never found another wall switch that’s as physically satisfying to use as the INSTEON hardware.

[Eric_Inovelli]

Hey all! Just wanted to at least pop in and say I’m floored from the support and excitement everyone is showing. Wow!

I have to finish some stuff up around the house (just got done installing a mailbox of all things) and I will come back later tonight to answer all the questions and thank each person individually.

Thank you so much again, I cannot wait to share this with the manufacturer. They’ve put as much work into this switch as any of us and I can sense the passion from the firmware engineer (as much as I’m sure we’re annoying him about the most minute details - we told them out community is very passionate lol)

[adamkempenich]

Have you brought up the other diffusers we made … ? I feel like that’s a pretty cool feature for these, with the individual LED control and whatnot.

[clintkev251]

Your timing with this release was perfect. I recently started building a house and planned to outfit with smart switches everywhere. I had been hoping that I would be able to get ahold of some packs of red series, but I was getting worried that I would have to order something less capable instead. Very happy to have been able to preorder a few packs of the blue series (and happy as a Michigan native to support you guys)

[bgreet]

I’m surprised, I’ve got close to 40 z wave switches and it’s the most stable part of my system (have around 100 ZigBee devices). What’s your setup? I’m using home assistant with a 500 series zooz controller.

[Eric_Inovelli]

@Stephen

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.

Thank you so much! See ya later GE lol

Looking forward to sending these north of the boarder!

@stu1811

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.

If you pass on your SSN, mother’s maiden name and the name of your first grade teacher, I’m happy to try running it again

Kidding, thanks for the support man, it means a lot – looking forward to giving you that box w/your signature on it. Thanks so much for helping to make these the switches they are!

@CHasenpflug1

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?

I’m really hoping to get color paddles out, but we’re having a hard time matching the colors of Lutron Claro’s. The manufacturer is asking for PANTONE colors, but I’m not entirely sure how to get them.

I PM’d the project manager to push on this, so hopefully we can – but I would say we’re probably stuck with white for now.

What I planned to do though, is anyone who ordered a pre-order and wants color paddles, to extend the free shipping even if we get paddles after they release.

To be clear though, we will be coming out with the color paddles, I’m just not sure when we can get them.

@eric.dalquist

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?

Let me double check on this for you. I know I’ve asked about it, but I don’t think I got a definitive answer. I’m 99% sure we were unable to pull it off – I just can’t remember why.

@Rxich

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

Great question – we do not have them right now, but we do intend on getting them out. As I mentioned above, if we can’t get them out by the time pre-orders ship, then I will extend the free shipping if you’d like to buy them after the fact.

The issue we’re running into now is that we can’t seem to match the color very well of the Lutron Claro line. The manufacturer is asking for PANTONE colors, which I’m not even sure where to get that from Lutron.

Definitely trying my best though as I know it’s important to everyone.

@PaulM

I don’t NEED another whole contractor pack (my closets really don’t need switches this fancy) but I uh… am having trouble resisting temptation.

Pun intended.

@PaulM

You should totally sell the “if you have a neutral at either end, a traveler location can support the full smart switch” a bit harder in the docs and sales page!

I’ve got a few notes from you that I’m going to implement (pairing procedures only apply to unpaired switch and this one), thank you so much! I will try to find a way to communicate it in a user-friendly way.

@RequiemKat

@Eric_Inovelli awesome thanks! I’m most interested in how the LED bar looks in terms of diffuser. One of the locations I’m considering would have a Blue next to a Red Light+Fan (I don’t think any of my other double-gangs will be a Blue + LZW31-SN). Mostly wanting to make sure that the LED bar aesthetic is fairly consistent.

Good news is the diffuser is exactly the same as the Red Series Dimmer. I know I’m answering this late, but just in case you didn’t see, looks like @kreene1987 posted a good side by side: Zigbee 2-1 Switch (On/Off & Dimmer) | Project New Horizon (Blue Series) - #618 by kreene1987

@PaulM

(I justify this complaining in their thread about other brands as an opportunity for Inovelli to learn what customers dislike )

I love it lol – as luck would have it, we are about to start development on a wall-remote that’s decora for a B2B company. They are debating between LoRa and Z-Wave LR (either way, we can convert it to Z-Wave/ZigBee – it’s the design we’re working on), so this is great timing.

Can’t wait to start that thread and get it going. I’ve been wanting a remote for a long time – in fact, I’m a little salty, but Eric and I developed the Zooz and Aeotec remote (it was for their manufacturer when we were with them).

@RequiemKat

Take that point as you like, marketed properly, a smart switch and a wireless mount-anywhere-or-nowhere-at-all switch go well together. Enough people like Pico switches, you get a good Z* device with the features of an Inovelli and the marketing of “What were they thinking when putting this switch here?” and I’d wager you’ll have a popular product.

@PaulM

Yeah, strong agreement there about the absolute value of a complimentary battery powered switch. Obviously it wouldn’t have all the LEDs, but I’d pay a pretty penny (look at the retail price on that Legrand - the only zigbee thing of its form in existence, or the Hue dimmers, and they didn’t even need to get UL certified to carry power!) for a similar switch.

Oh for sure – the company we’re working on this project with is directly targeting Lutron, so I’m excited to finally have an opportunity to go after this project. The only thing holding us back on this was funding, but this PO will hopefully allow us to fund our own remote.

I will definitely reach out to you both once that starts if you’re interested in helping us with beta testing (if I forget, please remind me).

@Artfle

About to place my pre-order too. So exciting! Before I click go, is there any issue with installing 60 of these in a home? I’m doing a renovation and planning to replace every switch with these. I believe the Zigbee device limit is well above that, but any worries about signal crossing/etc. with that many installed? Also, I assume there is a way to cancel the preorder and be refunded if, God forbid, UL certification falls through or something of that nature?

@PaulM did a great job answering so there’s not much I can add. I was actually going to ask the community for help here as admittedly, I have a Z-Wave network in my house and only a few ZigBee (going to be switching to ZigBee) so I couldn’t give a, “real-world” answer. Glad the community pulled through!

Regarding refunds – yes, for sure – what we do is hold all pre-order money in a separate account and you can cancel at any time, even after we’ve placed the order with the manufacturer.

@PaulM is also correct in that I think we’re pretty safe with UL, it’s just the time delay that’s more annoying than anything. The good news is we’ve made pretty much this exact switch before and are pretty familiar with the UL process. We just had that hiccup with them not knowing how to classify our switch, but now that we are clear, we should be good to go!

@Artfle

I went ahead and placed my order

Thank you so much!

@fastford19

The first Blue switch will be about 5 feet away. The others will be in different rooms further away.

Ok, awesome, I would say you should be good then, especially if that first one is 5ft away as it can be used as repeater.

@kreene1987

Hopefully this puts people’s mind at ease! Also, here is a blue and a red next to each other:

Thanks dude! That’s a really good shot. Just need to make those screws horizontal lol jk (but seriously).

@exces6

Then again I also made a spreadsheet of every switch in my house last night in preparation for pre-order and that’s not something I think most customers are going to even consider doing.

Very interesting – one thing that I have always wanted to do (but never had enough funding to do so) is create a program where you could essentially map out your house and put your smart products in – it would show you the range of your Zigbee/Z-Wave switches, what ones are repeaters, etc. Essentially giving you a way to plan out your journey.

From our perspective, if you wanted to share it with us, we could recommend products to you based on what you have (be it ours or someone elses).

Anyway, hopefully one day – but you are not alone in the wanting to plan things!

@exces6

Hopefully that answers your question; I think you’ve got a great level of detail regardless and it’s clearly written so whatever you do this is going to be great!

Yeah definitely – I’m going to give it some more thought this week as I go through the forum knowledge-base and see where things land on that page. I at least need to fix the hyperlinks, so I will likely have to do some revamping anyway.

Looking forward to hearing the feedback once these are in everyone’s hands and they’re using the KB for reference.

@exces6

Also thanks so much for the soft open of pre-orders; my project is big and requires a lot of planning and I didn’t want to miss out not being glued to my phone 24/7, and I’m sure others in this thread feel the same way.

Yeah definitely! Appreciate the support on your end as well!

@og2

Coming out of the Insteon debacle, I just placed a small preorder for (2) contractor packs to test the water. If all goes well, I’ll need at least (5 maybe 8) more packs, depending on the construction of our carriage house.

Quite excited for the possibilities and finally dumping the defunct Insteon protocol.

Wow! Thank you! I had to look up what a carriage house was and it made the saying, “if you have to ask, you can’t afford it” seem that much more real haha

Congrats on the build, that’s really exciting. I’d love to see it when the switches are installed!

@grooves12

@Eric_Inovelli Now that it seems like you are in the home stretch for this switch, can you provide any updates on the future blue-series roadmap? I’m (not so) patiently waiting for the motion switches.

So there is a pretty big announcement coming in the next week or so (I feel like I keep saying this and I apologize – legal takes longer than I anticipate) in which I can outline a lot more, but what I can say is that our overall plan is to expand our Blue Series and run the Red Series in parallel with it. In other words, we will likely build out the Blue Series and launch the Red in parallel with it. However, Blue will be the lead pony if you will.

We will continue to focus on lighting (hoping to get more into canned lighting and have a more robust lineup from a bulb perspective) and build out new innovation with switches.

The pace at which we will do it will likely be slower than what I’ve laid out (I’ve always had a problem with being over ambitious) but once I get with the new COO (part of the big announcement) to determine what is and isn’t feasible, I will definitely let you guys know!

I know that’s vague, I’m sorry… I feel like a politician sometimes.

@TRiddle1983

Got my pre-order in for 20. Looks like I’ll have some red switches up for grabs soon!

Before anyone potentially asks, I’ve fought with my hubitat zwave network for years on reliability, and there are just some gremlins I cannot solve. My zigbee network though is reliable to the point that I forget it’s even there, so I’m swapping out quite a bit to stop me from pulling my hair out.

Thanks so much! You can sell those Red Series on the open market for a ton – it’s crazy what I see out there!

I’m hoping Zigbee works better for you – I experienced a lot of the same with Hubitat (it was the C7 if it matters).

@jimhim

I see a lot is being thrown at you guys from every direction, but if could add to it, is there a timeline for the MG24?

Ha, it’s all good, we’re used to it!

Let me check with @Darwyn_Inovelli on this one. I heard it should be ready for alpha release in Q2, but I haven’t followed up on it.

@nugget

I just pre-ordered for 70 switches which will be installed in a new home I’m renovating over the summer. My current home has about 50 of the red series switches, and my experience with Zwave at that scale has been less than satisfying. I’m hoping Zigbee proves to be more reliable with a large number of devices. Home Assistant back end at both sites.

Wow! Sincerely appreciate the support both from the Red Series and now from the Blue Series. That’s actually really humbling to know you went with us over Lutron.

I just starting tinkering with Home Assistant and was blown away at how well it handled Zigbee, especially the binding. Now I just need to figure out the automation side of it, but needless to say, it’s awesome.

@nugget

considers the enthusiast market an annoyance rather than an opportunity.

This is honestly so refreshing to hear in terms of someone saying out loud. I’ve talked to so many of these big companies over the years as well as so many investors and they all say the same thing… the money is in the B2B market, stop wasting your time with B2C.

While yes, you can make some great money in the B2B market, the way I’ve looked at it is that the B2C market is what makes the product awesome so that the B2B market will seek you out. So, I spend most of my time working with you all (and honestly I have way more fun with you guys) and creating amazing products that we all want… and all the B2B contracts we’ve gotten have approached us because of what they’ve heard about our products from average consumers.

Long winded way of saying, completely agree with you – there’s so much opportunity and I hate hearing companies argue that customers are more of an annoyance and put their wants/needs on the back-burner to chase the big opportunities.

@nugget

For whatever it’s worth, I’m the original developer of INSTEON support for Home Assistant (and the corresponding py-insteon package). These Inovelli products feel like Star Trek compared to that old stuff, although if I’m honest I’ve never found another wall switch that’s as physically satisfying to use as the INSTEON hardware.

That’s wild, thanks so much for joining our community!

@adamkempenich

Have you brought up the other diffusers we made … ? I feel like that’s a pretty cool feature for these, with the individual LED control and whatnot.

I haven’t! I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to let everyone know

Wait, actually, I did share a video earlier in this thread that had your diffuser on it (bc I haven’t taken it off bc I love it so much). Do you have any pics you want to share? I’d love to share mine if you’re down? Would love to get community feedback!

@clintkev251

Your timing with this release was perfect. I recently started building a house and planned to outfit with smart switches everywhere. I had been hoping that I would be able to get ahold of some packs of red series, but I was getting worried that I would have to order something less capable instead. Very happy to have been able to preorder a few packs of the blue series (and happy as a Michigan native to support you guys)

Ha, I have to thank the community for the timing. I wasn’t planning on opening these up until Mayish, but everyone was so pumped, I felt like I was letting people down by not opening them up.

Congrats on the house and thank you for the support! Is your house in MI or did you move elsewhere?

[clintkev251]

Congrats on the house and thank you for the support! Is your house in MI or did you move elsewhere?

Unfortunately left Michigan for Virginia last year (couldn’t find a good tech job in Kalamazoo) though now I’m pretty much
fully remote of course, but now the wife has a good job that’s not remote. Oh well, maybe we’ll come back some day (but then I’d need to buy even more switches!)

[TRiddle1983]

Definitely a zwave hop issue that cannot be replicated on demand, so nigh impossible to fix. I know there’s an antenna mod that’s all the rage on the hubitat forums right now, but I’d rather just reduce my zwave device count in favor of my preferred protocol of zigbee, which just works versus fixing a problem that shouldn’t actually be a problem. I own nothing but Inovelli switches in my house, and I see no reason to change .

I refuse to remove my Inovelli fan/light combo switches though (until a zigbee version comes along wink wink, nudge nudge). Also won’t need to replace my better behaving zwave switches immediately either, but if the zigbee switches work as I expect them to, it’ll most likely be a wholesale swap.

[Brian123]

Excited about the Blue series pre-orders! Putting in a 10 pack order in shortly.

Question on the aux switches after trying to interpret this chart: Can these be used as independent smart switches that just happen to not have the LED bar? Or are these switches dependent on a separate smart switch / are they just sending signals to the “real” smart switch on the 3 way circuit?

Guessing it’s the latter but wanted to double check. Would love to have a bit cheaper switches in places where I won’t always need an LED strip! I’m trying to eventually wire the whole house up with smart bulbs (to control color temp that changes based on time of day), so need smart switches / smart bulb mode everywhere.

(Please excuse me if the answer here is obvious! Brand new, not savvy with wiring or automation etc yet. And - really love the transparency in this forum about the company’s ups and downs + all the virtual focus groups!)

[stu1811]

The aux switch cannot control the load. It’s used in conjunction with a smart switch.

[Brian123]

The aux switch cannot control the load. It’s used in conjunction with a smart switch.

Thanks!

Though technically I wouldn’t need it to actually control / switch on-off the load - since I’m putting all my switches in smart bulb + disable local relay mode and controlling it all via a hub. But I assume you mean that it wouldn’t be able to do even that independently.

[amdbuilder]

@Eric_Inovelli

he manufacturer is asking for PANTONE colors, which I’m not even sure where to get that from Lutron.

PANTONE colors refer to the proprietary PANTONE color space, and ensure a color is the same everywhere. If I recall right, to use a PANTONE color (at least with print) you must pay extra for a “spot” color. Basically, an additional unique plate dedicated to just that color.

I would be surprised if Lutron released the PANTONE colors for their face plates. That being said you could use something like this to get a reasonably close approximation: ‎Pantone Connect on the App Store

I don’t know how accurate it is, but if you match a face plate in multiple different light sources and the result is the same you should be good.

@Eric_Inovelli

Pun intended.

Hum… How about releasing a line of ceiling lights with integrated motion sensors? I could see having some fun with hall lights, where you use the per-light motion sensor to “follow” you at night. Talk about some insanely localized lighting potential. Not to mention aggregating the sensors during the day for room motion/presence sensing. There never seem to be enough motion sensor - plus no batteries!

@Eric_Inovelli

I’ve always had a problem with being over ambitious

The only problem I see is that you see being overly ambitious as a problem. There is nothing wrong with shooting for the moon, at a minimum will still end up in the stars!

@Brian123

But I assume you mean that it wouldn’t be able to do even that independently.

Aux switches are intended for use in 3+ Way circuits, where there is already one smart switch. They simply send a signal through the wire that the smart switch detects to control the load. You wouldn’t want to replace an existing switch with these, unless it’s a 3+ way circuit with a smart switch.

[jpoet]

The timing of these is almost perfect for me. I just started building a home an expect the electrical work to occur sometime in July.
I have ordered three 10-packs of the Blue switches.
I will order a 10-pack of the Aux switches when that option becomes available.

[Bry]

@Brian123

But I assume you mean that it wouldn’t be able to do even that independently.

Yes, the Aux must be used in conjunction with a switch or dimmer. It cannot be used by itself.

[Brian123]

Will the aux switches work with the Red Series dimmers too?