If that’s how slow the factory is in packing each switch, my guess is that the first batch will be completed by October!!! 
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I’m curious, too…
Since November of 2021 I’ve wanted to buy 23 Z-wave switches and I decided to wait for the Red dimmers to be in stock because the features they offered were the best in the market. Understandably there were supply chain issues from Covid and I knew I would have to wait a year or more. Then the 2-1 was announced and the Red dimmers were halted entirely. So I resolved to wait at least another year for a brand new improved product to go from proto to production. I would also like to get a few of the light/fan switches but they’ve also been out of stock for years. This morning I got an email fundraising for another new version of the 2-1 before the one we’ve been waiting a year and a half for has even shipped. Other users asking for shipment updates for items I assume they’ve preordered and have already paid for are being ignored. Maybe the majority of current products should be at stock levels where they can be ordered and delivered within a week or two before money is invested in new projects. Inovelli is stretched too thin and consistently fail to meet their own projected timelines. This is ridiculous.
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My existing Inovelli zwave switches are so good that I am waiting and if this is going to be released even later I will still wait.
But yes, it would be good to know an feasible timeline, even if that is July or later.
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Yes, they finished up late last week which is great! Unfortunately, it’s Labor Day over in China, so they won’t be back until later this week when they can dispatch the cargo. From there it’s about a 3 week process depending on how long customs takes.
My best guess at this point is either late may or very early June.
I understand the frustration – trust me, I do. I read these comments all the time and it sucks for both of us. You (and everyone else) in that you wait and wait and wait but it seems like nothing is ever fixed and me in that we try and try and try to fix something but we just can’t get out of the hole of running out of inventory. Its been the thorn in my side as the CEO for going on 3 years now and it is one of those situations where all I can do is acknowledge the issue and try my best to be as transparent as possible about everything. I can’t promise a timeline on the fix as it’s much harder than it appears (it’s not as simple as, “take the profits from your sales and invest them in more inventory” or “take out a loan – that should solve the out of stock issues”).
What we faced from 2020 through present has been the hardest situation I’ve ever dealt with. I’ve never had to deal with logistics issues before, it’s always been as simple as submitting a PO, paying, receiving the product, selling, rinse/repeat.
I’m not sure what all you know about our specific situation, so if you’ve read the updates, then feel free to ignore, but here were the challenges:
- 2020 brought record sales – I’m talking 3.5x what we did in 2019, which was great in the beginning (and honestly what probably allowed us to stay in business the last couple of years)
- 2021 was when things started to fall apart
- Lead Times: lead times went from 16 to 52 weeks overnight. That means anything we ordered would not be seen until a year later, once you’re out of stock, you’re completely screwed unless you have a strong brand following, a solid product, and people trust that you’ll eventually deliver
- Cashflow: When product goes out of stock we see our sales drop by at least 50% per month as people don’t want to wait (understandably) and go elsewhere. Most of the cash that was in excess from 2020 was burned up on overhead to keep the lights on and we had to lay off 1/3 of our staff. Again, we have to wait almost a year for product
- Z-Wave Chip Shortage: Our manufacturer produced the keypads for Ring, which is a much larger company than us and they allocated all their Z-Wave chips to them and gave us the scraps (metaphorically), so even when we had to wait a year, we’d only get enough to cover maybe a month or two of sales before we’d have to wait again. Clearly this wouldn’t work as a business model.
- 2022 was just a disaster in that the Z-Wave manufacturer essentially cut ties because we moved onto a different manufacturer and the new Zigbee manufacturer underestimated the complexity of the switch which delayed us (causing out of stock for 1/2 - 3/4 of the year)
So, in 2021 as you mentioned, we had to accelerate our future plans which were to create a Zigbee equivalent (we’ve always wanted to get into Matter – CHIP at the time). We also wanted to explore a new manufacturer as things were shaky at best with our current one. The new manufacturer had experience in Zigbee so we had to make the tough decision to put Z-Wave on hold (as you mentioned) until either the current manufacturer could give us what we needed or we found a different one who could do it for us.
As with just about everything we do, our timelines seem to be optimistic at best and that’s something I’ve always struggled with. I thought for sure we’d have the 2-1 launched in early 2022 as that’s what I was told.
–
So, what are we doing to fix the “death spiral” as it’s one thing to explain what happened – anyone can explain their decisions away – but it’s another to actually fix them.
Well, I had to take a long, hard look in the mirror and accept the fact that I am just not the guy who can negotiate effectively with China (or any supplier for that matter). We’ve been walked all over by them and because I wasn’t the best, we’re in the position we’re in (although I would argue a lot was out of my control, I still take responsibility for it). So, we’ve partnered up with and brought on a COO who has a ton of experience running his own IoT company as well as negotiating with manufacturers.
Not only that, but he’s the one who will be handling inventory cycling and digging us out of the out of stock mess.
It will take time, but I can honestly say, pending no new pandemic, I think this will be possible with the next purchase of Blue 2-1’s. Our inventory for Red 2-1’s are solid and I’m hoping to be completely caught up by late summer. I’m sure you’ll hold me accountable 
Yes, these simply aren’t coming back. Long story short, there were both communication issues between the switch and canopy that our old manufacturer refused to fix and we don’t work with that manufacturer anymore. Very unfortunate because I loved that product and get at least (not exaggerating) 1-2 comments/emails, etc per day about this.
It is on our list to bring back – I realize I likely got an eye roll there from that comment, but it’s just the best I can offer at this time.
I’m confused at this comment. This project was announced in September 2022. It will be delivered in, at the latest June 2023.
The Blue 2-1 has been shipping since November of last year. We just happen to be out of stock on it again (although we’ve gone through 3 batches since November).
Again, confused about this one. There is a thread, yes, of people asking about orders, but all original pre-orders from last year were fulfilled in November of 2022.
I’m just going to assume you haven’t been following closely in the forums – if you have, I apologize – but I’ve stated that I agree with your sentiment of getting caught up on inventory levels being the number one priority. In fact, in a lot of these threads that are discussing new project ideas, I’ve openly stated I did not want to do pre-orders, did not want to do Indiegogo/Kickstarter, but there is overwhelming support for us to fund it.
I decided to take a risk with Indiegogo this time to see how it panned out and, if you read the page, I stated that if this was not successfully funded, everyone would get a refund. In fact, I went so far so to tell Linus of LTT to make that same announcement.
With every innovation/pre-order, etc we have refunded anyone who’s asked for it.
This is a fair criticism. I agree with you. But I also challenge you to find another company who even releases their anticipated deadlines from the beginning of the project, let alone works with you alongside the project and keeps you updated as to why they are behind.
If you’d prefer me to keep everything internal, never talk about an anticipated release date, etc – then I guess I’d recommend either not paying attention to the project threads, or finding another brand that offers the same features, innovation, etc that suits your needs.
I agree with you and am trying my best to make it better. It sucks for everyone.
I appreciate it
It’s looking like these will be arriving in late May, early June. Production is finished, we’re just waiting for the freight forwarder to pick them up after the Chinese holiday and to clear US customs.
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That’s not so awful. Glad it is progressing!
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Just wanted to add my 2 cents. I love tech., but I also take forever to make a decision on what to do (about everything). So I watched and searched about Zigbee and Z-Wave and Lutron, etc. This was even before Z-Wave Plus. Nothing I saw did all I wanted to do. For a switch I wanted to be able to do multi-taps for different actions and a “favorites” button that I could pre-set (sort of like on the Lutron Pico, but which isn’t on their main switch - go figure). I also have several ceiling fans but all of the smart switches were 2 pieces and I simply couldn’t add an extra gang in many places. That is, until I discovered Inovelli and their Red Dimmers and Fan + Lights and saw all the rave reviews about them, including doing 3 ways.
So now all of my 30 some switches are Red Dimmers, 5 Fan+Lights and a few Black series. There certainly have been some bumps in the road, especially that I can’t take a chance to update the firmware with Hubitat for the last year or so since I got multiple failures that almost bricked a couple of them. (If you go to the Hubitat forum you’ll see threads about people still having trouble updating the firmware. They suggest a Z-Wave stick but I only have a 27" desktop Mac so that ain’t happening).
I’m also disappointed that despite only being about 25 feet, at most, away from my centrally located Hubitat hub (first a C-7 now a C-8) and being 7 series chips, my Fan+Lights just won’t connect directly to it and run very slowly (a couple of noticeable seconds from turning them on at 9.6 kbps) despite them not having any multi-pushes associated with them (and speaking of which, that I can’t associate them with a red dimmer) and me trying to a Z-Wave repair, etc.
BUT… That said, I’m still very happy that I went with Inovelli. I was hoping that the Hubitat C-8 hub with their antennas would solve some of the lingering slow connections that bounce hither and yon through multiple switches before getting back to the hub, but it is actually worse than my C-7 was - which baffles me (and I think the Hubitat folks).
I’m not looking to maybe replacing my switches with new 2 in 1’s but just might for a couple of them to see if I get any better result. So all-in-all I’m still on team Inovelli and hope they can hang in their because even years down the road I still think their is nothing that touches them for features.
i have a quick question: is there going to be any stock left on these once they actually come in?
to be quite honest, i haven’t pre-ordered because of how long it takes you all to get things into stock from pre-order, and i can’t have my money tied up for weeks or months waiting for the pre-order to come in. i’m interested in probably 15-20 of these, but only if i can buy them and have them a few days later…is that point ever going to be here, or should i just sacrifice the features and look elsewhere?
edit: and i guess i should ask since i just noticed the note on the main page…when you say this doesn’t work with ballasts, what exactly does that entail? all of our LED lighting has ballasts in the ceiling, since CA code required it when the house was built. we have LED bulbs in most of them (the 4 pin ones that don’t require a ballast bypass, they’re just plug and go), and i’ve got existing zooz switches on those circuits right now and they work fine…am i to understand that these switches may not work for me even though the zooz work fine? we also have some ultrapro switches that control our christmas lights, which is an outlet under the eaves that is wired to the front door…would this not work there either?
if that’s the case, it’d make my decision a lot easier and would (unfortunately) cause me to just forget about inovelli altogether right now. i can’t spend $1000 on 20 of these switches and then also have to spend money to retrofit and rip out the ballasts on top of that when i can just spend $35 per switch on a zooz switch that just works as is right now without having to take the ballasts out. it sucks because i’d really rather the extra features these have, but the math of it just doesn’t work if there’s additional cost on top of already spending more per switch on these vs zooz.
Are you reselling these? Otherwise doesn’t your money get permanently tied up with all physical things you buy no matter what it is?
I’m with you on preordering in general though. I don’t preorder things, especially things in development that might not work as promised.
do they not charge your card immediately? i thought i had seen that somewhere…if it’s not charged until shipment, then that would alleviate that concern obviously. i just thought i had read that the card was charged up front on pre-order, my bad if that’s incorrect.
that doesn’t answer my second question / potential issue, though…
Not sure which model of Zooz you have but most (if not all) dimmers have the same restriction. It’s not just an Inovelli limitation
This is from Zooz website
do not install this unit to control a receptacle; a motor-operated appliance; a fluorescent lighting fixture; or a transformer-supplied fixture.
I believe with the Shopify or whatever system is now used, it does charge you upon ordering.
hence me not wanting to have my money tied up for an infinite amount of time until i actually receive the switches.
dimmers perhaps, but on/off works fine. i’ve got a ZEN71 and ZEN76, and they both work fine (non-dimmers).
the inovelli switches literature seems to indicate that even on/off doesn’t work with ballasts.
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I guess my take is if you need the money then just request a refund. 
Perhaps you missed the pedantic joke I was trying to make earlier, in that no matter what you buy, your money is permanently tied up in that purchase. Even if you get the item immediately your money is still tied up in the purchase, unless of course you resell it.
my take is that i shouldn’t have to give them an interest free loan for potentially months, and for an indeterminate amount of time given how long it has taken them to fill orders in the past…but sure.
Well if that isn’t the epitome of the US tax and social security system.
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Yeah, it cracks me up when people brag about getting a tax refund. Umm sorry to inform them that means they let the government borrow THEIR money interest free. Its better to end up having a small tax due on tax day
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