awesome to hear that! In the update last month it said once you guys got ETL certifications you could start production - So are we in production or was that assuming you had all the other certifications first?
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Hi there,
We are not yet in production on these switches as we are waiting for the last of the certifications to complete.
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This is way too late to add, but Iām curious if there will be a separate moving targets and still targets entity, like the Apollo MTR sensor offers?
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Dont know where else to go, can anyone tell me when the Blue Series - Smart Presence Sensing Dimmer will be available or can I get my $455.00 back? I made the purchase August 14, 2024.
I can utilize this money for something else. plus there is no other way to contact anyone at Innovelli. What up with That?
Hi. I moved your post from the Hubitat changelog thread to this thread because your question is about the Zigbee motion switch.
What up is that if you go to the Inovelli website (where you placed your order, presuming your not an Indiegogo backer), under the Support menu there is a link for canceling or editing orders. Did you try that?
As to when they will be available, they are currently going through FCC certification, and since the Z-Wave versions have finished and should be shipping in August - September, I would expect the Zigbee version to start shipping sometime in Q4 this year.
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@Eric_Inovelli, @EricM_Inovelli , @Kaleb_Inovelli ,
Hi guys? Where are the bi-weekly or monthly updates that were committed to? Why does this group get sporadic updates when spurred / poked, but itās usually coming in the form of cryptic or 1/2 answers.
There were key milestones laid out last month that inferred production commencing, yet nothing has come. Thereās no real or clear updates and about a half million dollars of indigogo funding on a project that is years behind.
Inovelli is great, but youāre damaging your brand right now. Youāve got to know that. Inovelli was one of the most open communicators out there, but something has changed.
Flickering on current blue switches taking months and months to resolve with no real commitment/plan to address.
This project with promises to communicate then radio silence. @Eric_Inovelli @EricM_Inovelli, if you guys have hired Kaleb to monitor these forums, or have delegated project communication to him or a team member, please take the feedback that itās not working right now and your brand and reputations are suffering.
You know your loyal customer base can take bad news and delays well, what they donāt take well is feeling disconnected and in the dark on projects theyāve already invested money in.
Ok, enough rant. Please issue some updates on status and timing. Along with how to adjust initial backing and swap from Zigbee to Z-wave for initial early backers.
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Hey, thanks for the poke and for your candid response/comment. I feel like a lot has been said over the course of this project that some of the context has gotten lost, so if some of this is repeated, I apologize.
Most of the issues here are my fault. Iāll own up to it. Iām neck deep in a major architecture change that shouldāve been done years ago, but amidst the growth, I just never could get around to implementing it.
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I wonāt bore you with the details (unless you want to probe further, but Iām trying to keep this short since this is the mmWave thread), but we are facing some major hurdles as a company which are as follows:
- Unclear communication with what products do what (e.g., customers go to our site and have no clue what theyāre looking at)
- Unclear documentation on products
- No defined project management structure (clearlyā¦)
- No defined marketing communication structure (clearlyā¦)
- No defined firmware update structure and product feedback channels
Basically, weāve been flying the plane while building it and this worked for the first few years when we were building a Wright Brothers plane, but the problem is that this turned into a 747 and without the proper structure/engine, weāre going to collapse (dramatic, I know, but thereās some truth to it ā maybe not financially, but our brand will as you brought up).
We have all these fragmented tools that help run the business, but the issue is that the business is so complex that thereās no, āone size fits allā tool out there that solves for the above methods, so Iām having to create this from scratch.
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Which leads me to the lack of communication/openness.
Yes, there was a time where I would monitor the forums daily and try my best to help where I could.
But, and you can ask my wife, Iāve been working 10-12 hour days (some weekends included) on building the foundation from scratch that should help us run this company more efficiently and solve for the issues you brought up and more.
Iād share the link to the full implementation plan, but Iāve learned the hard way that anything I post that is a link is hard to remove later on because I forget about it and then those links are used by AI to recommend things that are not accurate.
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So what am I getting at?
Iāve had to make the hard decision to step back from the day to day interactions in the forum, Reddit, etc ā the part that I love the most ā so that I can build this ERP system that helps us get organized and streamlined across multiple areas of the business.
I get it, people are excited about this switch, so are we! But what I have to be careful of is overpromising, which admittedly, I am guilty of. I promised two week updates, but have failed to deliver. My track record on this is poor and I need to stop promising this, so I apologize.
I go in with the best intentions to keep the threads up to date and then get distracted, or, even worse, donāt want to face the angry mob with pitchforks demanding to know why my promise of delivery is delayed and not accepting the reason for why. Admittedly, this is likely more in my head than what actually happens, but Iām trying to be open with you about this.
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The other angle that I have to balance is what is shared and what is not shared. Let me clarify. By not shared, I mean not shared immediately. Oftentimes, Iāll get an update from our manufacturer that is not good. If I shared that immediately, there would be mass panic in the forums and 9/10 times, the manufacturer will end up solving the issue, so I just created chaos out of nothing.
The problem is that I, myself, am not as checked in to some of the projects as I should be and this was another trade-off that I had to make.
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Alright, enough of the excuses, let me just say one last thing ā I think it was unfair to bring Kaleb up and since I canāt read the tone of the comment, Iāll assume that it was more of a misunderstanding and frustration around the project management than of him as a person. Kaleb was hired to be our customer service representative and I asked if he could help out in the forums with the intent to have him answer what he could. Heās only as good as the information he is given and that falls on me to give him information.
One would then say, āwell, why doesnāt he ask you?ā. The issue is that if he asks me and delivers the message to the forum, heās then asked 100 questions that I end up having to answer anyway, so I made the decision to step in the projects when I can, like today.
So, to sum it up ā yes, I know this is hurting our brand and itās something Iām having to deal with. Iām hoping that weāve built up enough equity to overcome the shortcomings while I work on building our foundation so that we can be more efficient with our communication in the future.
In the meantime, I will try to give updates when I can and hopefully itās good enough.
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I will issue the update as a separate comment so people can skip this one if they want and just read the update.
EDIT: To switch your status, just write into customer service ā we have a master list of people who have wrote in before and asked. We can put you on the list.
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Project Update: Weāve passed Z-Wave, Zigbee, FCC/IC, and ETL Certifications. Great news!
The next step is production.
Hereās the bad news. The FCC came back and said we need to modify one small thing on the PCB. Weāve checked and it doesnāt impact any of the existing certifications as itās just a small shield that needs to be put on the back of the mmWave sensor (facing inward towards the switch).
We had to send them the updated PCB prior to approval. The issue is that it has to be installed by the mmWave manufacturer which is separate than our manufacturer, so they needed to acquire the shield as they produce the mmWave PCB and then ship it to our manufacturer who assembles it along with the switch itself.
The timeline impact, Iām told, is one month. So, rather than starting in early August, right now we are starting in early September.
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I donāt know why this was just disclosed to us after the fact, but I found out late last week and wanted to check some things prior to announcing it.
Iām frankly upset about it because the night before I was talking to Linus about getting him his switches and was excited about it and then right after I sent the email, I got the MS Teams message about the shield, so now I look like an idiot as I told him we were starting production in August.
So, right now, thatās all I have. Everything is completed, itās just a matter of producing the switches now.
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Thanks for the update! Canāt even imagine how difficult it must be to manage all these projects while running a company! And Iāve been told that growth can be difficultā¦ 
Love your products and how open and transparent you are!
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Appreciate the candidness, Eric, and very excited to hear these switches are nearing the production phase. Itās been a wild ride.
Iāve been curious to see more about how the motion detection performs and what the configuration process looks like. Any plans to release a more detailed video on the switch? Any YT reviewers have their hands on them yet?
This is a great idea. The sensor is able to detect multiple targets, but we currently arenāt exposing this via an entity. Iāll add this to the project timeline for a future update.
@francesc0 Over the next few weeks we will be updating the help.inovelli.com website to have instructions, parameter info, etc. Hines may also have plans for videos too, but text based documents with screenshots will be up there for sure.
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@EricM_Innovelli Might I ask for moving and still target counts to be added later too? Especially to the Zigbee version, but I presume you will want to keep their features in sync.
Yeah, for sure. We are keeping them in sync as much as possible. The only exception would be if something exists on one platform that canāt exist on the other.
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New to discovering Inovelli, but excited as I am planning on swapping all my switches next year. Really excited to use one of these in each room along side the smart dimmer. Iād prefer to go with Matter swtiches, anyone know how long after release of Blue that White series are released? Would love if those would be available next year
Might I recommend posting this update to the kickstarter updates page whenever youāve a moment? Iām sure Iām not the only one thatās been monitoring there for updates (no longer of course now that Iām here hehehe), and would appreciate the info for sure 