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We’ve processed your refund. Have an amazing day!
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I’m glad this has finally been resolved. Thanks and good luck.
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@Eric_Inovelli is this still accurate? Is the decision to focus on the Blue series simply a supply/manufacturer issue or is it more of a preference for the zigbee protocol moving forward?
I’m asking because I have a handful of Red dimmers already and love them. I’m doing a renovation and will had a dozen new Inovelli switches, and would normally just choose more Reds + Aux, but hearing about the company focus in the future is causing me to think the Blues may be better.
Great question!
Short answer is yes, it’s still accurate, however they’re has been some developments with Z-Wave that changes a few things. I’ll explain that in the long answer.
Long answer is that while our primary focus is on Zigbee/Matter, we do have some B2B clients who want to focus on Z-Wave as they’ve built their entire infrastructure around it. The supply chain was terrible the last couple years for Z-Wave. For us specifically, it was even harder because our manufacturer had much larger clients than us and basically all the chips went to them first, leaving us with basically no way to produce anything.
However, with the introduction of the 800 Series and us bringing on some help from an operations/logistics side (with their specialty being Z-Wave) we now have multiple options to produce Z-Wave again.
We are actually kicking off an 800 Series project this upcoming week for a B2B client (they want the 2-1 switch in Z-Wave) and we plan on also opening this up to you guys.
Regarding our strategy, we plan on always leading with Zigbee/Matter as it’s more popular and reaches mass market and anything we innovative there, we’ll do a test in Z-Wave to see how good/bad it sells. If it’s positive, we’ll make it a permanent SKU.
I’m hoping the 2-1 Z-Wave is a good first test run 
Hope that helps answer your question?
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Thanks for the response @Eric_Inovelli! It does answer my question and makes a lot of sense. A couple follow up questions for you
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Any idea on timing for that new zwave switch? I assume not in the immediate term but are we talking quarters or years?
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Is there any benefit to keeping all of my switches on the same protocol? Or will having a mix be fine long term?
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I’ve read a lot about the stability and ease of interoperability with zwave, compared to zigbee, especially pre-3.0. Do you think that with 3.0 and Matter, that zigbee will become more like zwave in those ways? Aside from you guys now being mostly all-in on zigbee, I wouldn’t even be considering it right now, but I also don’t want to buy a bunch of switches that will no longer be a priority, and I trust your insights in the market better than my own.
Thanks again for your insightsh!
No prob, happy to help shed some light (pun intended!)
They want it by end of the year. I’m not sure how realistic that is, but that is what we’re shooting for. The good news is that the hardware is already completed and really the only thing we need to do is write the firmware and run it through UL (which also should be too difficult bc it’s the same hardware).
I would give it a realistic availability date sometime in Q1 2023.
This is a tough one to answer, and I think it really comes down to preference. Curious on what others have to say.
For me personally, I don’t think it matters too much as long as you have a strong network for whatever protocol(s) you have.
Right now I have both Z-Wave and Zigbee in my house and it works great.
I really don’t see either protocol going away anytime soon and even if one of them did, the hub you currently have will still be able to function. Both are owned by Silicon Labs though and they’ve made it pretty clear that both serve a purpose.
The one caveat is Matter though and if you want to buy into that ecosystem. I’m not sure Z-Wave will have a path into Matter (I’ve heard rumors, but nothing concrete) so if Matter is important to you, I’d stick with Zigbee.
Similarly to if Z-Wave or Zigbee go away, if somehow we go away or any of the brands that sell either protocol cease to exist, the products will still work as they’re not cloud based.
Absolutely, for a few reasons. Before I go into it though, I want to say that we shared the exact sentiment that you do regarding interoperability. It was a hard sell for me to convince the other Eric to give Zigbee a try bc he called it, “the Wild West” bc nothing worked with each other, everyone ran their own proprietary Zigbee stack (looking at you Hue and Xiaomi).
It appears noe that most Zigbee products will work together, the only thing I’ve noticed is that some still don’t play nice (again talking about you Hue…). For example, Philips Hue works great with our products on Home Assistant and they follow the Zigbee standard properly, it’s just that their gateway locks out other brands unless they approve of them (which they’re not doing right now).
Some Z-Wave companies played the same games early on but have gotten complient recently.
Anyway, the reasons I think Zigbee/Matter will be just like Z-Wave when it comes to interoperability is the following:
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Matter was marketed as being the one protocol that unites everyone - it would be crazy for the big companies to agree to sign up for it and then not follow the standards and play the same games they are now bc they’d get called out so fast
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I think there’s a shift happening with companies realizing that they shouldn’t run these locked down, proprietary ecosystems anymore. It used to be that companies would try to sell you an entire ecosystem and lock out other brands. However, customers look at that as petty and there’s a reason why Home Assistant is absolutely crushing it right now - they’re so open source and give people options to pick and choose the best products (or the ones that best suit their taste). They don’t have to be locked into the Hue ecosystem (I know I keep picking on Hue, they’re just the biggest example of this) but rather they can pick any Zigbee products they want if that’s the protocol they choose.
For example, let’s use Apple so I stop picking on Hue. Apple now can focus on getting you as a customer by providing the best HomeKit/Matter Apple branded products, while also allowing the customer to pick from lighting (which Apple is maybe not interested in selling). Before, people may have went with Amazon Echos bc Amazon has a better selection of lighting products that work with it. Now, Apple won’t lose those ppl to Amazon.
Idk if I’m making sense lol. I’m just getting back from vacation.
I think the ultimate point I’m trying to make is that by having one protocol, it allows more options for people and allows companies to focus in the areas they’re best at. It’s not in the companies best interest to not be interoperable bc it will make people angry and hurt the brand. Plus they’ll just lose sales.
Thanks for attending my Ted Talk.
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Haha thanks for sharing!
It sounds like now might be a good time to start a switch (pun intended) to zigbee then, before I go install a bunch more zwave. Looks like pre-order is just opened, so good timing!
Enjoy the rest of your Sunday!
One other dumb question…what does the “2-1” mean in the Blue series? Is it that it can be both “on/off” or a “dimmer”? But how is that different from the red series? I can hold to dim or tap to turn on/off, so I’m confused.
I believe the 2-1 utilizes a relay in on/off mode. The red dimmer does not.
It can be either or depending how you configure it. Unlike the red series, it’s a true 2n1 unlike the red where the dimmer fakes it. The 2n1 can be used in a variety of non motor loads, but still has its limits (won’t survive a vacuum cleaner draw).
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