I just seems odd that we need to pay for light almond plastic. Smart switches I’ve purchased in the past came with white/light almond/almond casing options in the box. Looking at the product offering on the Inovelli website, it looks like you can choose the color when you purchase the device without having to buy an extra trim kit. Why are the backers being asked to pay additional money for a light almond kit when it is a standard product option?
Smart switches I’ve purchased in the past came with white/light almond/almond casing options in the box.
I’ve never seen that, so although I’m not saying it’s not true for some company out there, I would say it’s not the norm.
Looking at the product offering on the Inovelli website, it looks like you can choose the color when you purchase the device without having to buy an extra trim kit.
Look closer. You absolutely are paying for the trim kit if you order anything but white.
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3% or less of the total orders have wanted a light almond colored paddle, so I would say 97% of people would be unhappy having an upcharge on the final product for a paddle they don’t want and will never use. We are obviously charged for the colored paddles at a separate rate by our manufacturer, so therefore we charge them separately to the customers who want them and we have generally never had complaints about this.
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My wife says that I’m unreasonable all the time, so perhaps that’s what is really going on here. I did notice that there is a $5 incremental cost for the non-white units. I didn’t see that detail when I looked earlier. FWIW, the InTouch Z-wave dimmer switches that I bought a few years back all came with white, light almond, and almond trim. This is what set my expectations. Very surprised to hear that only 3% have ordered a light almond paddle….
I’m personally glad the paddles aren’t automatically included, makes for alot of extra garbage.
On that topic, has inovelli considered doing a reduced packaging version for larger orders (ie, if someone gets 25 switches for their house they probably don’t want to deal with more garbage)?
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I can’t argue with that. Shipping the product with extra plastic pieces that will never be used is wasteful. It would be nice if you could just buy a model with the color you want instead of buying a white one, then buying a second trim kit, which is also wasteful. Of course, this would create an inventory management problem. However, this problem could be solved by packaging the switch without a trim piece in one box and having a second box contain the trim piece for your color of choice. This would solve the inventory management problem, reduce waste, and reduce manufacturing costs with fewer parts. I’m confident that most folks from the original crowdfunding campaign wouldn’t blink at assembling a kit. Unfortunately, most consumers probably just want a simple part without need to assemble anything. But, if you’re going to change the color your going to need to do it anyway.
Paying another $5 after paying ~$80 and waiting two years for the product isn’t going to make me go broke. (Hopefully the shipping charge is reasonable.) I’m just glad this product is in the final stretches. I’m excited to have a presence detector that works better than the old school PIR sensors and hope the extra time helped to make it an awesome product. I’m excited to try it out when it finally arrives!
This would create a whole new problem: every order has two boxes to ship with each switch, so is this another SKU? And just managing that for a small company sounds like a nightmare and would cause more problems than it solves.
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It doesn’t seem any more complex than tracking/managing separate SKUs for color kits like they already support. This wouldn’t create any new SKUs. When I buy a separate trim kit today, it is already its own SKU inventoried in a separate location. I suppose shipping two boxes instead of one adds a step and potential for error, but is it really a nightmare, causing more problems than it would solve? It would be a real problem if a company were unable to ship more than one box per order. What happens when I buy two switches, or a switch and a bypass module? Is this a nightmare for them? Maybe I’m missing something. I’m not an expert in warehouse logistics and shipping. I’m an engineer and recognize that in practice things can be more complex and nuanced than in theory, so maybe there are practical limitations to doing this that I’m not aware of.
These are only my thoughts on how to potentially improve the customer experience for those who want a color other than pure white. This option exists with both large companies like Leviton and smaller unrecognizable companies you find on Amazon, without having to buy a separate kit or pay a premium. Inovelli would probably improve their chances of winning customers who want something other than pure white if it were not an add-on purchase. Perhaps this market is so small that is isn’t worth considering….
I’m not actually an electrician, but all of my family are and I’ve been around them my whole life. My anecdotal evidence is that in the early 90s light almond and ivory were relatively common, but since the late 90s almost all new construction is just white. Higher end homes will get into more exotic colors, but they’ll almost always go for Lutron devices at that point, who have by far the widest color selection, or even more expensive stuff. While some cheap electrical devices will also offer devices in several colors, I don’t think that is true of smart devices at all. Once upon a time HomeSeer offered a few colors - all as separate kits from the switch. Leviton does offers color change kits that look like they are meant to fit their WiFi switches, and I’m certain Lutron does for their full line from Caseta up through RadioRA3. Other than that… I’ve not seen color change kits from any other smart electrical device manufacturer.
Tl;dr: besides Lutron and Leviton (who mostly don’t cater to DIY Home Automation), I don’t think this market is big enough to be worth optimizing for.
I’m happy Inovelli supports it at all, and think it’s completely reasonable for them to default to white, and have colors as an after-thought. I have several Inovelli dimmers in black for my home theater that replaced HomeSeer switches - the latter of which I literally took the face off of and spray-painted myself, since they didn’t have black as one of their limited color selection. And honestly, sometimes I consider doing the same to the Inovellis to exactly match the other devices in there, because I would never be able to match the black from the 3-several manufacturers of devices I have between switches, outlets, USB outlets, thermostat, and RGB lighting controls.
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We did that a couple years ago - we had ten packs come in a plastic tray with 10 switches instead of the 10 boxes. It did create a lot less waste but for whatever reason it ended up being more expensive than having them individually boxed. Maybe the cost of plastic, I’m not sure…but we just went back to the individually packaged units as it was cheaper and helped us keep costs down.
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Taking another swing, since my topic got buried. How will motion and exclusion zones be handled?
The Hi-Tech module specs and demo software are interesting, but we can only realize functionality through Inovelli hardware and firmware.
I have no qualms with the color and protocol that I purchased. I just want to learn how the one new feature will be realized.
You can see the parameters that are exposed in the Z2M docs since the Inovelli docs aren’t updated yet (AFAIK). I believe the current firmware only utilizes a single zone for detection and exclusion. The sensor supports 4, so it’s not unreasonable that future firmware updates could expose additional zones.
This would be an awesome upgrade/update if additional zones could be opened up. I’m sure Inovelli would love to do this for customers and for their own bragging rights. With a small crew and a load of work to get done, it might be a long-term dream.
I know Eric wants to do it, but they’ve been focused on getting it working with one and shipped first!
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I appreciate the quick feedback, rohan. Z2M link requires an account, so I will take your word for it.
By zones, does that mean boxes bound by X min/max, Y min/max, Z min/max?
Sorry, wrong copy and paste. It should go here: https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/devices/VZM32-SN.html#mmwaveroomsizepreset-enum
Yep.
Perfect - thanks again. I misunderstood. There is only one box defined - detection.
There is a passing reference to “set_interference” and “clear_interference” commands. I am not sure if or how this might relate to this tidbit from a year ago:
Maybe I am the only one that doesn’t know?
Hi everyone,
Thank you for your patience on this. Just wanted to share a quick update on this project. The manufacturer’s logistics team has just shared the following shipping info with us:
So, Early November is the current time frame for when our shipping partners will receive the first batch of Blue Series mmWave inventory. The second batch will be received in Early December. The plan is to fulfill orders by order date, so those who have been waiting the longest will get theirs delivered first. Since this is a very large pre-order, I would expect delivery to customers to take from mid-November to early-January. Again, these time frames are just estimates and the dates are subject to change. We don’t have specific dates on when shipping begins, but once we do, we will let you know!
Thank you again for your patience on this project, we are excited to finish this up and get these switches out to you!!
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[quote=“hatallica, post:874, topic:10904”]
There is only one box defined - detection.
[/quote]
Yes, that’s correct. You can only select one detection box manually currently. Manually controlling interference areas isn’t exposed to hubs at this point, but the services you noticed allow the switch to automatically compute an interference area to exclude things like running ceiling fans.
Appreciate the updates! Any timing for shipments to Canada? Will any orders to Canada be in the first batch?
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