Zigbee 2-1 Switch (On/Off & Dimmer) | Project New Horizon (Blue Series)

Yeah, you had mentioned that before, so I was hoping maybe the screwless would only be maybe an additional $0,29 (for the 2nd piece). But at 5x additional cost it doesn’t make sense

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I see what you did there :smirk:

I watched a video showing all of the cool features of your Red Series Dimmer Switch. Using Home Assistant and Zigbee hub, I was bummed to see that you only did a Z-Wave version. But I found this zigbee project page and I’ll be looking forward to you bringing this to market. Good stuff!

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I don’t think Hue is using touchlink (Ikea is though). If my Hue hub goes down the dimmers don’t work (which is the opposite of Ikea were it works even if the Ikea bridge is powered off).

With that said, the response is still instant. Even in cases where the Hue Bridge is not handling the automation but the button presses are actually being actioned in HomeKit then sent back to the Hue bridge the response is still instant.

I was actually curious about the speed one time because I was wondering if setting up the button actions in the hue app was any faster than setting them up in HomeKit. So I took two hue remotes and had them controlling the same fixture of hue bulbs but had one configured in HomeKit and the other configured in the hue app. The speed difference was indecenrable to the human eye - it was instant in both cases. So then I tried it again while filming it in slow-mo with my phone, and even in slow-mo it was impossible to see the difference.

I guess what I’m getting at is that people likely overestimate the amount of lag present on their own LAN (especially with devices that are connected via ethernet). I think the only practical benefit of direct linking is that control is retained if the hub is down. Speed wise, the difference is likely in the single digit millisecond range.

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I had no idea there was so much work involved. Kudos to all who are working on this. I’m no expert on this, but from what I’ve read, there are some who think Zigbee will ultimately edge out Z-Wave (takes me back to VHS v Betamax). So I’m sure your efforts will pay off!

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Consumer will ultimately go zigbee I think, but for security and commercial applications, zwave has a significant lead on that market. I’d be surprised if zigbee took over that market.

Any word on whether or not these switches will support inductive loads for fans/motors? Since this switch combines both on/off and dimmer I’m guessing probably not, but just curious!

It can support light motor loads (think bath fans or small loads like that).

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Looking very exciting! Congrats @Eric_Inovelli and your teams on moving this forward and battling the supply chain problems.

Curious to know a bit more about the dimming design itself. Will this be able to dim using forward and reverse (aka leading vs trailing edge) phase control? Is it TRIAC or dual MOSFET based? Those choices could impact on the low value dimming performance.

I’m also interested if any interpolation or other tricks are being used to smooth the dimming between integer values. I have much more experience with ZWave as I think most here do. If the dimming level is sent as an integer value clamped to the range 0-99, for example, will the dimmer internally smooth the transition between each of those steps? If the min/max values due to the load are further constrained interpolation becomes valuable as the number of remaining steps from min to max could be as few as only 40% points. With longer fade times (for example a slow fade up in the early morning wake up hours or a slow fade down when starting a movie) this becomes quite noticeable. There are a few threads that touched on this with the Red Series dimmers (still the best dimmers ever shipped IMHO) and I’m looking forward to some improvements here.

Thanks for all that you do. I cannot wait to install a few of these in my home!

— Richard

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What kind of zigbee stick are you using? Looking at getting into zigbee now

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Different person, but I have the Conbee II and have 0 complaints with its performance so far either with my small handful of ikea/sengled/aqara devices.

This is on Home Assistant using ZHA, and important to note your choice of Zigbee stick can affect how well it’s going to work between ZHA or Zigbee2MQTT or DeCONZ, whichever you end up using. That in turn can affect the device compatibility as well.

This is where you want to look if you’ve got existing Zigbee devices to make sure the integration will support them - Database of Zigbee devices compatible with ZHA, Tasmota, Zigbee2MQTT, deCONZ, ZiGate and ioBroker
And then once you know from there, it’s easier to make sure your integration of choice is compatible with the Zigbee stick you’re considering.

Spending money on faceplates seems like a waste. Most of my outlets are mutli-gang setups. If my swartswitches came with faceplates, they instantly go in the garbage, so I can purchase the right ones for my setup or reuse the ones I already have.

Personally, I don’t see why a faceplate would be included at all.

The nortek HUZBZBZBZBBZBZ-1 or whatever it is. Does z-wave and zigbee in one stick.

I am curious I am not an EE what is the impact of those choices? Which is more favourable?

So…
Experience has led me to a suggestion.
I mentioned before I wanted a way to lock out a switch, and was thrilled to hear there was a way. An extension of that if I have a series of switches I want to be able to lock out the set from one switch… I think a better representation of what I would like is, if I lock out one switch I want to be able to select other switches that it will also lock out.

You can do this presently with the red series as well. The disable local control option can be a child object. So you can turn that child object on and off, effectively disabling local control (locking out the switch as you termed it) and re-enabling it. Since they are child objects, you can address them programmatically however you care to.

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Thank you @Bry.

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Not sure if I missed it, but what is the difference in depth for these new switches vs the red series? I saw the picture where there is a slight decrease, but I’m curious what the actual measurement is vs the red series.

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Thanks for the update @stu1811

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