Alright guys, let me give an update! Sorry again for being MIA in the forums lately.
Right now, we’re probably on track for a Sept/Oct release date, but that’s still TBD. Here’s what we’ve been working on and what’s been taking so long.
We switched manufacturers (can’t remember if I’ve already stated this) and will be using our current/main manufacturer for this project as it was just too complex for the new manufacturer and we needed them to focus on the mmWave switches.
The biggest issue we’ve been dealing with (and finally fixed) was light leakage. How do you have 12 LED’s inside a switch with no light leakage? Very hard.
The single most important thing to the B2B client was light leakage and we’ve had a lot of back and forth with the engineers to finally get this right.
Let me show you what I’m talking about:
Competitors switch:
Initial Inovelli Alpha Sample (oof - lots of leakage):
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No (it’s a bad picture, but the red is reflecting off a faceplate that is above the buttons) light leakage sample:
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The other issue we were dealing with was a, “double-click” issue where when you press down on the larger buttons, if you pressed in a certain area, you’d hear a, “double-click” because one actuator was depressing on the PCB and then the second actuator would then also press.
This would not only cause confusion with the PCB, but it also just wasn’t very aesthetically pleasing.
When we removed one of the actuators from the paddle, it caused a pressure imbalance on the paddle that made one side easier to push down (but felt more spongy) than the other.
They’ve since fixed both issues, so the next step is to send us a 3D print (should be coming early July) to verify tooling.
The good news is that most of the firmware has been developed already, they’ll just need to work on figuring out the optimal way to program the buttons correctly depending on how the user configures it.
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All that to say that we still are targeting CEDIA (early Sept) to have this entering production as that was the goal for the B2B customer (for Z-Wave). Depending on the next Alpha sample that comes in, I should know whether or not we can accomplish the Sept/Oct production/delivery.