When you are using either an Aux or another Inovelli switch as the second switch, only two of the three conductors of the 3-wire are used. Nonetheless, running a 3-wire between the two switch boxes is the proper way to wire it. The third conductor is capped of in both boxes.
Nothing will change for the blue series in terms of wiring schematics.
For lights I’d use 14-3. It’s sucks trying to with with 12 gauge.
He may not have a choice if it’s a 20A circuit. I’m not sure why you’d run a 20A lighting circuit for standard lighting fixtures, but who knows.
I once did a whole house in 20A circuits . . . not my idea . . . also not my idea of fun.
You’re correct: It’s on a 20Amp circuit
I’d rather not chance failing the rough-in inspection by using lower gauge wire which could not handle the full 20Amps. I’d rather have 12 gauge in the walls even if the load is limited to just a low-powered LED light, which would never pull the full 20 amps.
Why? You might ask…
You never know what someone else in the future might plug into it…
It’s legal to oversize gauge wiresize. You can put a 15A circuit breaker feeding 12-X. You cannot feed a 20A breaker on 14-X.
It’s all in how you want to run circuits. Some use one branch circuit to feed outlets and lights. Others will feed two circuits; one for outlets and one for lights.
Precisely! The breaker for this circuit is 20A, and all wiring in the walls is therefore 12 gauge.
For context: This particular room had a combination of both. There’s a 15-Amp circuit for the main basement lights. Then there was a 20-Amp circuit for all the wall receptacles and these two wall sconces. Interestingly, the previous owner and/or electrician had not wired any switches to those wall sconces. Instead, there was a twist knob built into each wall sconce light fixture to switch them on and off. We had a major sewage plumbing issue happen back in 2019 which caused most of this basement to have to be renovated. The old main sanitary sewer line was cast iron, and had rusted out near an old retrofitted floor drain in the basement bathroom’s shower. We had to get the entire home’s main sewer line redone and have pipe bursting done for the section outside the footprint of the foundation.
So, the old pipe had to be excavated with jackhammers and a lot of digging. Some of the drywall had to be cut out because it had absorbed water. That’s when we found a bunch of problems with how the prior homeowner and/or electrician had done the electrical. The master electrician we hired called it all “lipstick on a pig style of work”.
Then the pandemic hit, and we’re still putting things back 2 years later the proper way. It’s involved a lot of code upgrades, including a new electric panel with AFCI breakers, new wiring, new properly sized junction boxes, proper “floating floor” framing, and an egress window. All now required by current building code. The previous homeowner royally screwed us over by not pulling any permits for the original basement finish. 
Too bad that wasn’t listed on your disclosures.
Got it. Didn’t realize it was a 20A circuit. I feel your pain.
I too use Homebridge to port non HK devices. My red series is a love hate. It doesn’t allow me to just add scenes to the button, so I have to move over each multi tap as a separate switch. But it does work.
NEC codes and most inspectors require that grounds are already tied together during the rough in. Having grounds run through a device always has a higher risk of getting disconnected than the usual twisting them together and use a pigtail to the devices. I have not seen any device allowing dual ground connections (it can still be done, but most are specifically designed in ways that should prevent it.
In general, many electricians prefer the “pigtail” method even for hot and neutral. Just reduces a possible failure point.
Matter 1.0 is officially out.
Hello, do you have any timeline for these switches to be delivered. It seems like you (the company) are starting to get it rolling. Any thoughts on a matter thread scene 5 or whatever many button switch? How about some small relays for behind a switch or for in a box next to say a fan (bath) for control. Can dream big!
Thanks
Peter
Lots of Matter related news today. Hoping inovelli is still on track to do this in 2023.
And I want this without the switch 
- Just the LED’s.
I have a couple of thoughts about what I would love to see in this new switch.
I would like for it to support both leading and trailing edge dimming so that it supports the widest variety of bulbs (loads?) out there. Configuration through a setting accessible over the air and through a set of magic button presses.
The big change is this one… Make it with 5 buttons and make available two varieties of button plates. One button plate is just like most every other that you already sell: On / Off / Scene, with the same diffuser as is already used. If this button plate is used then two of the buttons on the base are not used.
The second button plate would have 4 scene buttons plus the scene button in the upper right as is on the switches now. Something similar to the picture below. Blank buttons would be great for engraving (although there may be better/other designs).
The basic idea is the same as these UPB switches (which I am running in my house now): http://www.simply-automated.com/documents/Datasheet_US2-40_1306013.pdf. You can see in the picture of the base of the switch the 8 green “dots”, which are the 8 buttons in the base. I’m only suggesting 5 buttons as opposed to the eight shown in the PDF. I have a number of different faceplates that are shown in the PDF.
The “diffuser” for a 5 button would isolate each of the LED in the base so that each of the 4 main buttons would have its “own” LED that can be controlled.
The base can still be connected to a load. Or not, if you choose.
A way to configure each of the buttons would be needed. I don’t think that’s possible in the Blue series at the moment (but I am still waiting for mine to be delivered, so I haven’t got to play with a real switch yet).
I will stop here. I understand that there are probably many design considerations and tweaks to the above. I wanted to get the concept out there for discussion and then some tuning of the idea can happen.
Hi all, bumping this thread to see if there’s any update now that a lot more details about matter have been revealed since the official matter release a month ago?
Very interested in separate diffuser… Would be great on the Blue series as I start to play with lighting notifications. Would be a great option, maybe not something you’d do on every switch, and most would want the diffuser, but to have multiple distinct notifications.
Hey guys – glad to see some thoughts/comments here to keep this alive.
I plan on bringing this up this Thursday at our bi-weekly meeting as we are now sort of behind the Blue Series chaos (obviously still need to get the replacements out, but they are shipping to us in 2 days, so I feel much better).
Question for everyone – does this need to be a dedicated Thread switch or can we just make this a Matter switch?
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Our ultimate goal was to get Matter products out when it became a more serious protocol and thus why we started with Zigbee (as it allowed us to have something readily available to our current customers who use SmartThings, Hubitat, Home Assistant, etc – but allowed us to convert to Matter later on).
Given that Matter has come to fruition and it does seem to be catching on, wouldn’t it be possible to just merge the Blue Series and this switch into Matter?
In other words, do we need a Thread switch or can we just make it Matter. I don’t know enough about the differences and selling points yet to understand, so I’d love to hear your thoughts.
EDIT: I have to sell this to our COO, so convincing arguments would be awesome (I have the Matter argument down and sold him on – it’s the Thread piece that I struggle with).
From what I understand, if you just add Matter to the Blue switches and keep using the same Zigbee protocol, then we still cannot use this with Thread only hubs like Homepods and Apple TV.
In order to achieve the most compatibility with existing and future hubs, it makes sense to migrate the Blue switches to Thread or at least introduce this model with Thread. Matter with Thread will achieve the most compatibility across all platforms in the future.
Thread/Matter are not mutually exclusive, unless I’ve completely missed the mark. I think of Thread and Matter in the same way that I think of Ethernet and TCP/IP - they’re completely different layers in the communication stack. What’s confusing is that they’re both being pushed out at the same time. My analogy isn’t quite correct, since Thread is actually an IPv6 meshing network and therefore sits above the switching layer (but still includes it), but you get my point (I hope)… Maybe a better analogy would be Thread is the IP layer (TCP/UDP/IP) and Matter occupies the HTML layer (or whatever you choose as your application-layer example). If there’s an option to make a Matter switch without Thread, how would it communicate? I’m not sure I can envision how that’d work.
Edit: can Matter work with Zigbee underneath? My thoughts are that it can’t, since Zigbee mixes PHY through application layers into one big mishmash. Someone correct me if I’m wrong, please…
