Project Update I shared on Indiegogo:
Good evening everyone,
Well, I have some good news and some bad news. Let’s start with the bad. As I alluded to last update, we’ve had to push back production due to us wanting to add in the lux sensor and in doing so, we had to revamp the PCB.
In addition to that delay, we have been vigorously testing a certain mmWave sensor, which based on their sales team, could do everything we wanted while also maintaining a small profile to fit inside the switch. Turns out, as we started testing for quality control and for other false positives, the sensor failed. This was surprising to us as this sensor has been praised all over the internet and is even used by a lot of people in the Home Assistant community (HiLink).
Upon talking with their sales team further, they admitted that they aren’t actually the manufacturer for this chip, but rather they get it from a different company and they have no control over the firmware. Not only that, but the sales specs listed aren’t true.
This was very disappointing and we had to go out and find an alternative.
This brings me to the good news.
Upon researching, we found another module that performed exeptionally and passed all our internal tests. Not only that, but the field of view is 150 degrees (as opposed to the 120 degrees we’ve been promising – which turned out to be one of the things the original company lied about – we were seeing 60 degrees tops).
That said, we’ve had to redesign the PCB again for the new module, but we’re just wrapping up Phase 1, which is the hardest and longest phase (the building and testing of the hardware).
We will be receiving our beta samples on December 15th which will give us a solid month or two to really test and finalize the product. Luckily, during this time, a lot of the certifications can be done in parallel.
Our latest estimate for production now is end of March.
I know this is dissapointing, but I do want to say, I truly believe this is a much better product than we originally promised, which I’m excited about.
Any questions, I’m happy to answer!
Eric
Founder | Inovelli