What is the target price point? I know its very early in the process, but is there a target range?
I dont mind paying a small premium for a smart outlet (much rather to get rid of the outlet warts 
), but how much of a premium? But also that plays into the features that can be included.
A 4 pack of zigbee outlets is between $40 - $60, or was a couple months ago.
Plug in wall wart or in wall? The legrand in wall one i just purchased was $55 each
Edit: I suspect you got something like the sonoff s40 zigbee outlet. Two for $22 on Amazon. I have a few and they work great but i would like something cleaner.
Even the cheapest, featureless WIFI outlets are $20 or more, and Zigbee radio models would cost more. You found some for $10 - $15 each??? Can you post a link?
Holy!!! LETS GOOOO! This is incredible news. I would really love to be apart of the beta testing on this! I have beta tested for other smart home companies so I have experience in the area. Knowing Inovelli, this is gonna be epic!
Dont want to deviate the thread to much, but here they are
https://www.amazon.com/THIRDREALITY-Real-time-Monitoring-Compatible-SmartThings/dp/B0BPY5D1KC
Yep, thatās what @stu1811 was referring to. Just so itās clear so that others arenāt confused, this project is about a fully-featured WALL OUTLET that gets mounted inside an electrical box (picture below). What you linked is a low-end wall wart. Both have their place, but thatās not what this is about, and any price comparison between the two makes no sense.
This sounds great, I have two items:
It would be nice to have power to the USB port controllable. Iām currently using a WiFi switch and charger to turn off power when the level of my devices reaches 80%. Also, FWIW, Iād keep the design clean and ditch the light bar. Another USB port would be nice, but donāt make it USB-A. The mixed ports are kludgy.
Any reason this canāt be a configurable Matter/Zigbee product?
Were the other outlets listed products? You can do anything you want when itās not listed.
Count me in as well!!!
I have a few outlets that I currently have plug in zigbee controllers, but hate the current limits of those. I run Z2M with Home Assistant, If you need any more beta testers, I have 2 spots that I use regularly with automations.
Wow, did not expect to see so much traction with this tbh ā this is great!
Iāll see what I can get away with ā I asked for a fast charging USB-C, so at the very least youāll have that.
This will be tricky due to space constraints. I opted for dual outlets instead of having 1 smart outlet, 1 smart USB because I figured the outlet would be used more than the USB-C (or at least have more applications).
I at least wanted to make it so that it could detect power so that automations could be used (ie: plug in your cell phone and a night time routine starts).
Yeah that may be what we have to go with ā I did notice on my Lutron (non-smart) outlet, they may have discovered a loophole.
This is their decora style outlet and what they do is have a traditional style outlet with a decora piece that snaps on over top (this is also how theyāre able to offer different colors).
As you can see, they put the TR on the outlet underneath and then they put it on the part that is ultimately covered by the faceplate.
So, this could be an option. But yeah, if we have to put it on the front, I think having it molded in works.
Yeah, Iāve seen that too ā I opted for the middle so that there could be buttons on the side of the USB-C to turn on/off the outlet, but I suppose weāll see if there are advantages or not when it comes time to layout the PCB
I asked for Weather Resistant, so Iām hoping that will work?
I want to say yes, but Iām not sure. I think it needs a way to manually shut off the outlet in case your app doesnāt work for safety purposes.
Honestly, scenes is just a feature that is put on there because we already have the code written for it. I doubt anyone will use it ā but hey, for me as the marketing guy, I get to say cool things like, ātap your outlet button and activate a cool scene!ā
Yeah, Iām opting for as high as we can on this one.
Lol, now that would be interesting. It may be tricky though because oftentimes outlets are hidden behind things or covered up by larger power banks.
Ha, we need to figure out the dang switch first ā but I can add it to the list for a future iteration. The challenge would be animals though since outlets are lower to the ground.
I like where your head is at though!
This is good to know! Thank you
I appreciate you so much for this ā sometimes I feel like weād be having to sell these things for $200 based off some of the wishlist items!
Yeah this was me being ignorant to 277V ā I removed it from consideration. The office I work in uses 277V (itās been killing me to use a competitor smart switch) so I just figured the entire building was 277V, but the more I thought about it, all my appliances are 120V, so Iām betting the outlets are on 120V, whereas the lights are 277V.
Yeah I have to credit @harjms for this ā I didnāt even think of Weather Resistant, but he called it out and had me put it in there. I definitely have a ton of use-cases for outdoors and to have two outlets would be amazing. It will be a sad day when I have to retire my NZW97 (Dual Outdoor Smart Plug we used to make), but I like the cleaner look of the outlet vs a smart plug.
Probably around $50, but Iāll know more once the pricing comes back. Iād imagine the cost will be the same as our 2-1 switch because weād be losing a MOSFET, but gaining another relay, so idk what the cost differential is between the two.
Yeah totally ā Iām not a fan of pigtails, especially when the device will be thicker than, ādumbā outlets and some people have shallow boxes.
Actually, I hadnāt considered this, so thanks for brining this up. I will ask about a better tamper resistant mechanism and provide them with samples that are commercial grade!
I guess Iād have to see if they can do Zigbee over Matter. I do plan on releasing a Thread over Matter version at the same time, I just havenāt opened up the project thread yet as Iām not sure on the costs and I need to check the piggy bank to make sure we have enough to start both.
Good point lol. Hereās one I found that is ETL listed (I havenāt verified it, but just going off their listing)
Hereās one thatās interesting ā it has the words, āControlledā on it rather than the mark.
https://www.amazon.com/Eaton-EWFWRCR15-W-BX-L-Smart-Outdoor-Receptacle/dp/B0CD9CGC7D
But, the more I look at it, all the reputable brands have the mark on it.
Iām just curious how everyone feels about LEDs on an outlet.
Personally, I donāt see the need. Most outlets I where I would want smart control are buried in non-visible locations, or they are in a place where I feel the LED would be distracting and would just turn them off. About the only use case I could see is an on/off indicator the outlet, but I donāt see that as a big value-add feature.
Thatās much different than a light switch where the switches are more optimally places for notifications LEDs and using them as a scene controller.
Am I missing something here? How would people envision using these?
That said, if everything else on the wishlist happens, I see this as a great product for rounding out Inovelliās lineup.
For those of you that understand GaN vs PD ā I read through this article that outlines a lot of the pro/cons, but one of the cons has me a bit nervous and Iām hoping someone can help.
This is the part that makes me nervous:
So, what happens if a device is not compatible? Is that a fire hazard? I donāt particularly want to have all these disclaimers on the site either.
I love the benefits of it though!
I think the LED feature has a few different use-cases (I realize not everyone will use them):
Those are just a few off the top of my head.
Oh and it matches the aesthetics of the switch (had to throw that in as the marketing guy) 
ā¦including sticking a decal on a product claiming that it is listed. 
I was thinking the same thing. The only visible outlets in our humble abode are along the kitchen counters, and that location requires either GFCI outlets or circuit breakers in our townās electrical code.
Does an outlet need to have an air-gap provision like the switches? If so, the pushbuttons would also be dispensable for my usesā¦
I have two feature suggestions in case they havenāt come up yet:
Many desktop computer UPS units come with an āecoā outlet on them. When the load drops on that outlet (letās say turning off a TV or monitor), the UPS will automagically switch off all of the other outlets in the āecoā grouping (like the stereo sound bar) to save power.
Is there room in the case for a built-in surge suppressor??? 
re: āGaN vs PDā: I think thatās a false dichotomy, and honestly that article looks like a bunch of AI-generated word salad (āGaN Charger vs. PD Charger in Industry Noneā???). āGaNā relates to how the 120V power is converted to low-voltage DC, and āPDā is how the device communicates with the charger so that the device knows how much power itās allowed to draw and the charger knows what voltage to provide (if other than 5v). Perhaps what itās referencing is that there are older pre-PD standards for higher power charging, and a newer charger is less likely to support them.
Thereās no fire hazard or anything like that. If the device and charger canāt communicate, then the charger defaults to 5 volts which has been the USB standard all along, and the device only draws a small amount of current. It wonāt charge quickly but nothing will break.
For Zigbee vs. Matter/Thread, those are at separate layers of the stackā¦
Matter is a high-level spec for smart home devices that covers what kinds of characteristics are available, how pairing is accomplished, that sort of thing. Matter can run over a few different lower levels: Bluetooth, WiFi/Ethernet, or Thread. Thread is a mesh network which is currently basically only used for Matter, but itās a separate concept (you can definitely have Matter without Thread, e.g. with a Matter-over-WiFi device, and you can theoretically have Thread without Matter although thatās rare).
Thread, in turn, is based on IEEE 802.15.4 (not a very marketing-friendly name!) which just specifies low-level details like how the device encodes bits and bytes into radio waves, and how different devices share communication time so they arenāt talking over each other. 802.15.4 is the part thatās handled in silicon - for the most part, all the upper layers are software.
802.15.4 is also the base layer of Zigbee, which is a totally separate stack that encompasses similar responsibilities to both Matter and Thread - the mesh networking part as well as device provisioning and communication and so on.
If this switch is built using an EFR32MG24 chip like other Inovelli products, then it could support either Zigbee or Matter/Thread, but it could only do one or the other at a time (Zigbee in one mode, or Matter/Thread in another mode). This could be two separate firmware images, or maybe one shared firmware with some way of switching the mode.
Being able to control the USB output probably wonāt require any extra space at all - and definitely not a relay. The USB supply circuitry will already have the ability to cut off its output in case of overcurrent, so the āenableā pin just needs to be connected to a GPIO on the microcontroller.
Personally, I would want at least a small on/off indicator LED on the outlet, along with the buttons to manually turn them on/off.
The main use case for me that comes to mind is when plugging something in: I want to be able to see that the outlet is on, and turn it on if not (or off if I want!) without having to pull out my phone/go to a computer.
I would also argue that removing/not adding obvious features just because a few people donāt see a use for them is a bad design philosophyā¦ I mean, you donāt want to add every feature you can think of, as things get cluttered/hard to use/expensive, but you also donāt want to strip it down to the bare essentialsā¦
