Wow I never really thought about needing theses, but now looking at you mockup with customizable buttons. I so want some. I will for sure buy some when they come out or are up for pre order. 
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Awesome! I love the customizable options! Now I want to order more 
Ha, I just logged on to start a topic asking if there would be any interest in a duplex switch with a single load. A few places in my house I have, for example, 4 gang switches where I SHOULD have 5 gang, based on there being 5 lighting circuits, and the 5th circuit is in some weird place, like across the room or down the hall. So I don’t need to handle 2 loads in one space, just the ability to use Zigbee or whatever to tell the dimmer across the room to turn on/off. This essentially allows a “remote control” that draws power from the “real” load.
I preordered the 5 button, but for some uses I have, I don’t need the confusion of a bunch of buttons when a duplex would do.
That’s a legit use, though. Someone could program the LEDs to come on as needed, and the user would press the button to acknowledge that they had done the thing.
Like someone with mild dementia might find this useful, especially since it can’t be misplaced, it’s always in the same location, and it can be installed in a highly visible location.
Or my kids could have “chore buttons” that they press when they complete them. Shower, homework, dishes, laundry, etc…
Your other switches have RGB LED indicators, but using them for notifications requires that you know what the colors mean. Does purple mean the security cameras detected a vehicle? Does yellow mean there is a severe weather alert? Hard to say. But with 8 little icons, you have notifications that can be easily interpreted.
About the paddle functions… I’m assuming there’s 8 switches that you cover with plastic buttons. So the 1/8 buttons would have just button press with variations for double press, long press, etc… And the 1/4 buttons straddle 2 switches, so they could rock (horizontally or vertically, depending on how oriented)? Would the 1/2 buttons have 4 switches that can be activated? So NE, SE, SW, NW switches? Might be a little learning curve, but they’d essentially become “D-pad” controllers. So you could dim the lights up by pressing the top 2 switches simultaneously, but cycle the hue by pressing the right two switches simultaneously.
Is that possible?
Yeah I think this is a great upgrade then and I’m in a similar boat as you. I don’t necessarily need all these buttons when I just want two.
Oh yeah for sure – it’s actually what I do with my morning medication. I actually have a pretty bad memory and/or get distracted easily (4 kids will do that) and the daily reminder that goes off to take my medication is right by the garage so I always see it. It’s honestly been one of the most useful automations I’ve ever set up.
Now we’re talking lol.
That’s a great point!
Great questions – we haven’t gone that far down the user experience path yet, so potentially this is possible. I’ll have to see what the engineers come back with. I don’t know if we’d be able to do vertical based on the design submitted, but I’ll note to ask about it
Yes, they’d cover 4x pads (not sure on the technical term).
I’m not sure what the engineers will come up with in terms of sensitivity – they may be able to pull this off, but my thoughts are more that the switch will be setup to activate if any of those pads are depressed. This way you can press anywhere within that 2x2 button and it will activate (not necessarily if you press in the NE quadrant will you be able to set a specific action for that quadrant).
Hopefully I’m explaining it correctly.
Essentially, how it will work is the following:
- When you put the pieces into the switch (ie: let’s say you do 4x 1x2’s), you will program it to know that’s what the configuration is
- Once it’s programmed (again, in this example, let’s say its 4x 1x2’s) if you press anywhere within that 1x2 button, it will combine both pads into one button.
If you want it to be more like a D-Pad, I think using the individual buttons (1x1’s) would be the correct choice.
Make sense? Sorry, I feel like I explained that terribly.
This is how we presented it (the purple, red and green dots are what I’m referring to as “pads”).
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Yeah, the four 1x1 buttons would be a functional replacement for one 2x2 functionally, but it isn’t as easy to understand at first glance, especially if the primary function is more common than the secondary functions. Pressing all four 1x1 buttons simultaneously isn’t intuitive at all.
If I were to make a duplex dimmer out of this, I’d want vertical buttons to simulate the Lutron MA-L3L3. On/off would be the larger buttons on the left and the dimmer buttons would be the smaller one on the right.
Pros:
- Can turn on/off loads with one finger without having to lift over any other buttons. Think swiping down to hit both vertical buttons. Easy to do without looking or in the dark.
- Dimming buttons are in a more common up/down config.
- Easier to associate which load the dimmer buttons affect.
- Potentially easier to visualize the current (or preset) dimming level with the vertical 2x LED diffuser.
Cons:
- Less room to put a text label. This becomes a bigger issue when you have a 4-gang box that has 8-10 different loads and the labels become a higher priority.
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And just a small observation, these images have the rounded corners on the inside of the border plastic rectangle. Meaning a 1x1 button with square corners wouldn’t fit in the top or bottom rows. Having 5 different parts for the 1x1 buttons (and 3 different parts for the 2x2 buttons, etc…) seems like a pain for that small design element. Either round all 4 corners of all the buttons (meh) or make all 4 corners sharp (better, imo).
Is this project still active?
Yes, but don’t be in a hurry. They’re kicking around some new options (see earlier in the thread) which look great, but it’s going to be a while.
I love the new concept. I have a 2-gang box with a dumb paddle and a red dimmer now. The Red controls two sets of blinds plus a light (1, 2, 3 taps) and I’d love to swap it out for this. Nobody but my wife and I know how to raise/lower the blinds because there’s no label. I’d probably do a @Capeland’s images, with one switch controlling lights and one controlling blinds that are labeled.
Any thoughts on how you’re going to diffuse those LEDs behind a “two square” label? Could look pretty terrible if it’s two “points” behind it, not lighting evenly. I’d probably disable the LEDs most of the time, and have them blink on activation.
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I loved the old concept enough to back it 2 years ago (still have that order pending). Still love the idea, but kind of disappointed other projects keep being shoved in front. This and the z-wave fan controller were big ones for my house, that I’m probably going to end up using Zooz for.
Yeah I wanted to buy like at least 20 of these scene controllers. Instead I’ve been buying the ZEN32 because I can’t keep waiting to complete projects.
Maybe there’s just no demand for in wall scene controllers in the DIY home space, but I love them and every high end residential and commercial turnkey automation system uses scene controllers as a common component.
Just want to say the new concept for this is AMAZING. I need it…
I’ll chime in here as I understand the frustration and believe me when I tell you I’m also very frustrated. Here’s the update on this project: Right now it’s still in the concept phase and we’ve received quotes back along with SOW’s.
- There is a beta team that’s already been assembled and they’re waiting for the green light. In fact, they are the ones that helped build this new concept.
- We made the decision with the beta team to wait until we can provide a concept of the mmWave switch so that people don’t think we’re just out here putting up hopes and dreams, taking cash and being accused of vaporware, receiving interest free loans, etc. It’s honestly quite tiring and is frankly wearing me down.
I’m open to feedback for sure – if you guys think it’s a good idea to crowdfund this to get it moving again, I’d love to hear your thoughts, but I’m just worried about the negative publicity (although, I suppose you could argue this project can’t get any worse lol).
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I’m going to bring it up again today with the B2B company as we just finished their Z-Wave switch and they’ve been wanting a remote. If they can commit to this, I don’t think we’ll need an Indiegogo, but I’m going to have to do the math.
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I’d be curious if this 5-button switch could also be setup to use a mmWave sensor… That would be really, really nice!
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People can really suck sometimes. Don’t get down on all the negative Nellys. For every person complaining, 100 more are patiently and excitedly waiting. It’s really amazing to see how much publicity the Indiegogo campaign has gotten. Once the mmWave switches ship it’ll quiet down all the naysayers.
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When you say “remote” do you mean hardwired scene controller, or do you really mean remote, like the Zooz Zen34?
Don’t be getting my hopes up on Project BFF!