Great question and apologies for the delay on the answer.
Our strategy moving forward is (very high level):
- Z-Wave = B2B focused (Alarm companies in particular), and advanced user B2C focused (aka our current market)
- ZigBee/CHIP = B2C focused (mass market)
- LoRa (not announced by us yet, but what the heck) = B2B focused – we’ll announce where shortly once we start this journey, but think industries (and hobbies) where long range is an issue for signal degradation.
Our focus is and always will be lighting – focus on switches and perfect the industry, while adding in bulbs and sensors (possibly plugs) to round out the overall lighting experience. We want to be the Ring of lighting.
Honestly, I’m not entirely sure and I’m going to be extremely humbled here lol – we rely heavily on our manufacturers at this point to help us from an engineering perspective, so I’m not 100% sure on how all the circuitry works. We basically say, “this is what we want and why” and they come back with the design and implementation. I hope one day we can hire an engineer of some sort to help us with these questions.
Another great question – typically how I do my research when coming up with product ideas and writing the PRD is to look at the competition to see what they have from a B2C standpoint and pick/choose the options we want in our products. Couple that with customer feedback and you have a nice, fancy PRD. In the past (even with our Gen 2 products), we’ve been lower than the competition on LED max wattage. The main culprits are chandeliers. Most people who start down a path of choosing a company to go with, remain loyal to that company (if they have a good experience) and want their switches to match, so if we fall short on specs for one area of their house, then we may lose out on the entire house.
Yes, wish I could answer this one lol.
Likely not as it would require a hardware change and I had this in my original PRD and it was not able to be done at the time. I can’t remember the reasoning, but I remember them pushing back on this. So, it may not even be able to be done with this dimmer, but if I don’t ask, then the answer is always no 
Excellent point. I feel like ours do now, but I can double check. If not, it’s definitely something that should be added. I suppose if they don’t, at the very least, we should put an automation in the Wiki that says, “if max load = x, turn off light and send notification” or something.
I’m going to add this to the list above
This is a great idea as well!
Yes, that would be cool – I don’t think it does, but I can ask. We’ve tried to get temperature chips inside the switches before for monitoring the room temperature, but were told that it would be very inaccurate due to the internal temperature. However, it would be a nice safety feature.
Most definitely. It’s funny I’m seeing this now as I just installed some different LED lights in my basement and they are very choppy. I don’t notice it as much on certain LED’s, so I’m wondering how we solve this as it could just simply be a variance in how the bulbs react to the switch.
Question for you – are you pretty well versed in how dimmers work with LED’s? Maybe we can have you talk a bit about it via PM (or publicly, it doesn’t matter) with us and the manufacturer.
@Darwyn_Inovelli – this is what I’m talking about with the choppy bulb issue on our Z-Wave switches.
LOL, it’s much more complicated than you think, but I understand being perplexed about it. I’m hoping the ZigBee manufacturer won’t play these games with us and I’m told it won’t be a problem here, so hopefully we’re good.