I am sure you guys can not fully confirm, but if you can has Linus or Jake reached out about this? Might send it in a merch message tonight on the WAN show if not.
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Great question. Weāve been back and forth a bit (both with Jake and Linus) and ultimately where it left off was Jake saying he is going to let Linus respond.
Basically when the original drama with Jasco went down I reached out again (as we spoke maybe 8mo ago when he was first making a decision) and after a few back and forths with Jake, I got a message from Linus saying that while heās not sure where things will go, he really liked what we were doing and said many of his subscribers recommended us. It was a nice email.
Then I pitched the idea of building a new switch (the one shown above) and Jake responded that heād leave it up to Linus to decide. But that was a week or so ago.
I was going to wait until we got beta samples to reach out again if Linus hadnāt reached out by then, but any help we can get from you guys would be amazing.
What this project really comes down to is that if Linus helps us promote it, we can make this happen extremely fast, where if he doesnāt, it will take a while. Either way itās happening bc we do have a large company interested in a WiFi version (that we can then convert into ZigBee/Z-Wave) but Iād love to fast track it.
Plus, this switch will be light years ahead of Jasco (a and any of the competition). Iām saying this out of confidence in our community and beta testers.
Net - man, Iād love for ppl to constantly keep this in the forefront of Linusās mind!
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IMO simple Motion/No Motion can (should?) be handled with PIR. However, as anyone who has used a PIR before that is not enough. I think what is exciting about mmWave is itās higher sensitivity allows for it to act as a highly accurate OCCUPANCY sensor, even when the occupant is completely still.
However, that brings in additional complications. How do you rule out false positives? (mechanical motion in the room such as fans or curtains blowing the in the wind, keep pets from triggering automations, etc.) Iām thinking the only way around that might be the more advanced sensors that can track # of people in the room. If the cheap sensor is just motion/no motion, that might not be good enough to differentiate between 0 people and 1 person. I donāt care about being able to differentiate between 1 and 3 peopleā¦ but I definitely donāt want automations being triggered in unoccupied rooms by non-human motion.
Yeah, occupancy is essentially what I was getting at. That is effectively the same as motion/no-motion, but with the higher sensitivity of mmWave ādetecting motionā when someone is breathing in the room. The occupancy was the part I actually want it for though. Good clarification 
Well i did manage to get linus to discuss it on wan show but he didnt have too much of an opinion and really seemed unaware of any details of the project. https://youtu.be/dOyrx5HOCyY?t=3015
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Yea the way he was answering it seemed like he was put off a bit. He didnāt know the kickoff project was named. I believe the name was used in best intentions, but he seemed a little upset. He also seemed more upset when he found the LTT logo in the PRD.
My take on it was he really didnāt open/comprehend the emails sent to him from Inovelli. They were probably stashed somewhere in his inbox with the other email when Eric offered his entire switch lineup and he blew it off.
Yikes, yeah idk where all the confusion came from. I sent an email explaining weād make a switch for him, he even said we offered in a prior podcast. I even said in the email weād name it after him, but that if he didnāt want that, id change ut. But after that I havenāt heard from him.
It was all done in the best intentions and as noted above, Iāve made it clear we donāt have his endorsement yet.
I guess I need to send another emailā¦
Appreciate you bringing it up! I guess at the very least it got him looking at the project!
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@Eric_Inovelli either way back by Linus or not it has the potential to be an outstanding switch. For me and my use case there is the ability for fall detection which I need as my mother is older and has passed out multiple times. I was looking at setting up mmwave fall detection using esp32 and mmwave chips but not being a programmer I am not sure I have the ability to do this one on my own. This could be/will be an awesome tool in the z-wave arsenal!
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Oh wow, I hadnt even thought about that use-case. Thereās a huge need with the, āaging in placeā demographic.
Thanks for bringing this up!
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If Linus doesnāt want his name on it, I call dibs! Name it a Project Ken! 
Iāve been so excited about a motion switch since the product roadmap that I basically see this as my switch anyway. Anyone here would be honored. Whatever it takes to get this thing moving forward. Without Linusā involvement will be better anyway since heās still a home automation newbie and doesnāt really know what he wants yet.
Lol maybe I will rename it haha!
I agree, while this started out as more of a rally around proving what home automation can do and that there are good companies out there that advocate for their customers rather than pretend they donāt know their own policies and only change them when damage control is necessaryā¦ This has since morphed into a, āholy crap, this could legit be a game-changer for all industriesā and it would be amazing to be the first to market with it!
However, I think what also attracted me to this project in relation to Linus was that it would be an opportunity to reach a new set of people. Ones that may not have heard of us and together with the existing community, weād have enough momentum to push forward a crowd funded product.
Iām not sure we have the momentum without Linus yet, so I was hoping to get him on board.
Butā¦ I think the best approach is to keep this project going and develop some awesome beta units and once everything is flushed out, we can go back and revisit this relationship. From there, open up crowdfunding and hopefully have his buy-in, generating the momentum we need to bring this to production.
The good news is tooling isnāt as bad as I thought it would be and so the up-front costs arenāt terrible. Still more than we have to spare right now, but itās doable.
The more this project is discussed, the more excited I get though of the possibilities!
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@Eric_Inovelli here is a link to TI for fall detection Intelligent fall detection using TI mmWave radar sensors | Video | TI.com
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Xiaomi/Aqara have a (few?) mmWave ceiling sensors with fall detection. Havenāt checked if z2m supports it.
Iād rule out false positives from pets using a secondary motion sensor that provides āpet immunityā like the Visonic MP-840 or something similar. Mechanical, you would expect a pattern, so depending on how the reporting is done, a filter of sorts could be done. I havenāt worked with mmWave so I donāt know if the filter would be at the firmware level or the controller.
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Any possibility to get a European standard version of these switches? (our switches are more of a square shape standard) The state of things is even worse than the US, but the market size and certification costs are similar to the US.
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I love the crowdfunding idea. Not sure how much you need for tooling, but I bet with the group here we could get a hefty portion of that funded with a Kickstarter? I do love the idea of Linus and his 14.5M subscriber base, that surely will bring in a LOT of new users to Inovelliā¦ I can see what that would be a huge win! Regardlessā¦sign me up for a kickstarter on this one!
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Wanted to give a quick update ā we received confirmation that the lux sensor could go at the bottom if we wanted it to.
So, I think the design will ultimately end up like this:
@mraz.camren ā we got a little more info regarding 24 vs 60 (and thereās actually a 5.8 Ghz) and I guess the quote was for 5.8 Ghz, so Iām not sure what the cost differential would be to go to 24 or 60, but Iām having them look into it.
With the 5.8 design, the wavelength is 40mm/1.5" (whereas at 24 = 11mm and 60 = 5mm) and the field of view was drawn out as follows (rough sketch):
In other words, the mmWave FOV is normally 360, but itās cut in half to 180 due to the circuit-board and wall blocking it from going backwards. So, out of the 180, 120 FOV can reach 10m, whereas the remaining 30 degrees on each side likely has a 1m detection view.
ā
I think there is still a lot of work to do and a lot of questions that need to be answered and hopefully we can continue to work together in the community along with the manufacturer on this one as I think weāll have to figure out a way to maintain a reasonable cost, but also provide the features the majority of customers want/use.
Lastly, Iām leaning towards two different switches:
- DIY Market Switch (this one will be the mass market one) that has all the main features we agree on, but may not have some of the advanced features such as people counting, fall monitoring, and other features that require advanced algorithms and/or processing power
- Commercial Switch ā this will be the high end version that will likely be $150+ that will have all the bells and whistles due to the higher cost
Still waiting to hear back on some of these questions and Iāll report back once we get more info. Curious what everyone thinks!
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Sign me up for this kickstarter too. I just start looking into mmWave and this project will be a game changer with the Inovelli quality stamp!
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Would 5.8Ghz sensors cause any interface with 5Ghz wifi?
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Thanks for the info. Hopefully we can get the advanced mmWave without the costs being too prohibitive