Thanks for the update Eric. While the news is a bit of a bummer, I know you guys are doing everything you can to ship this at the highest possible quality. I’m sure this is even more disappointing for you.
Aside from not being able to support Matter, is there anything else the MG21 chip doesn’t support? If not, I’m not too worried.
Thanks for your hard work on zones too. This is something I’m particularly interested in. I don’t have a lot of ceiling fans to worry about, but it’d also be helpful for ensuring that motion through windows or around a nearby corner doesn’t trigger the sensor.
The solution you proposed above is a good starting point. I’m a bit worried about losing all motion in the 4M range though, since that would miss anyone sitting on a couch, bed, or chair under a fan. I don’t expect anything like the FP2, but would there be a way to introduce some sort of grid-based system where we could exclude specific parts of what the switch can see? Maybe a 6x6 grid like this? In this example, red zones would be excluded (imagine the photo is taken from the perspective of the mmWave sensor).
We’d probably need an entity for each part of the grid so we could enable/disable it, which in this 6x6 example would be 36 entities. And there wouldn’t be any way to preview it, so it’d require a bit of fiddling. But at least that would still give us a good amount of control? Just a thought. Having an overall max detection distance (and possibly min too?) is still important as well though so we can exclude a screen on the other side of the room or limit how far the switch senses in larger rooms.
We’re expecting our first child in July and I had hoped to get the new switches installed before then, but it’ll just be a fun project to work on after the fact. Thanks for all of your amazing work!
Bummer, bought a bunch of blue switches banking on updating to matter, … would the mmwave switch be able to at least exclude pets? Like ignore things within a meter off the floor?
Bummer there. That’s one of the reasons (among others) I ordered the Zwave version. I knew there would be issues with the mg24 chips. I figured the Zwave 800 chips would be fine supply wise so they’d get out the door sooner.
Yeah, pretty big bummer, and connecting dots does that also means the hopes of someday updating the 2-1 dimmer switches to matter is likely DOA.
The proposed zoning plan above may help with motion detection, as you’d bracket for entrances/exits and block a ceiling fan, but it seems like would kill presence detection as a feature (say the area under the ceiling fan is then a total blind spot).
Thanks for all you guys do, but yes, major delay with mass production in July that likely means receipt in August, upgrade path/protocol dead-end, and potential use limitations all in one post… ughh…
Oh wow. Not what I had hoped to hear. Is matter/thread support still even doable in a new version? Hopefully you can share a new timeline. If not, can you allow backers to switch to zwave, I don’t want more full zigbee.
Thanks, I suppose I meant in a reasonable amount of time. Really I’m trying to determine if it’s worth waiting based on time and not features. Also hoping that I could just switch over to zwave if it’s too far in the future.
This type of grid would be ideal. I’d also worry about losing the entire 4m area. And I think the way to simplify the fiddling would be to have an additional 36 entities giving the motion state of each zone. For ceiling fans you could turn it on from outside the room and view which zones have motion and toggle those off. Or walk past that window a few times and check the history to see which zones triggered then toggle the entity to turn those off.
Or even simpler (for the firmware), just expose x,y,z coordinates of whatever motion is detected and let the tinkerers figure out what corresponds to real motion vs unwanted.
yeah after reading the updates and thinking about it I think the proposed distance based zone solution wouldn’t work for me, or anyone who has pets as it would just constantly get tripped by pet walking by… and if I set it to exclude 2m+ to avoid detecting anything close to the ground it would basically be pointless for anything but a hallway or a small room
another potential solution to a pet mode would be exclude anything that’s smaller than a certain size, from what i understand as to how mmwave radar work, it should be able to do this to enable a pet mode no?
If the simple distance based solution is indeed the final solution I’m afraid I would have to request a refund and cancel my order
No need to have 36 entities, you can just use a calculator to get a number for enable/disable for each one, then add them. (1, 2, etc then add them all together to get a unique identifier).
How user friendly would this be? If you have to calculate each time you want to change, it would be a bit annoying even if you are only doing this once when you are setting it all up. I’m assuming this would be like the LED bar calculator that Inovelli has? But maybe it’s worth it in terms of entities created and reducing network traffic?
If for the z-wave version firmware is the only issue, would releasing the hardware now and having a firmware update in the future be feasible? i.e. they would act as 2-1 switches (with lux sensor) for the time being, and in the future have mmWave be activated?
Thank you @Eric_Inovelli for the updates! This truely will be a revolutionary switch, and there is a reason none of the “BIG” players have made a version of this yet, and you guys are finding it out and FIXING IT! This is going to fill in a gap that SO MANY PEOPLE NEED!! I hate having to put a seperate motion sensor (and even then, its not mmwave, so I have to keep moving) and then replace battteries in it and then a seperate switch to turn on… this will take away a battery sensor and only a need for switch in each room… I cant wait to install these in each bedroom and have a HomeAssistant overlap picture and put an icon in each room somone is in and create automations based on it! I hate that my wife and son always leave lights on all over the house and can not turn off…
“we have found out you won’t be able to upgrade from Zigbee to Matter due to the size of the new Matter stack”. “Long story short, we’ve confirmed with multiple sources that this is now not possible due to space constraints and certification issues across hubs.”
Does this mean ALL switches with MG21 will not be upgradeable to Matter? If we want to upgrade to Matter down the road does this mean we should wait for the MG24 versions?
I understood that to mean OTA updates for Zigbee to Matter are not possible - even with the MG24. If you want Matter then you should change your order to Matter.
Delaying the Zigbee version so it can use a newer chip that still cannot be updated to Matter OTA will just make the people who want Zigbee(such as me) sad.
Thanks for sharing. I didn’t understand the message to mean MG24 wouldn’t be upgradeable to Matter as the White switches use MG24. I guess there’s confusion around this point.
Thanks for all of your amazing work!
… would the mmwave switch be able to at least exclude pets? Like ignore things within a meter off the floor?
and if I set it to exclude 2m+ to avoid detecting anything close to the ground it would basically be pointless for anything but a hallway or a small room