I am so glad you let the excitement move it up, I checked message history…we were talking about preorders very shortly after spending some time with it even before a lot of the firmware updates and improvements This switch is awesome, and I can’t wait to have more people get their hands on them and share the experience.
And while I absolutely love the LEDs and individual control, the Aux switch is A+ with these and a great addition to your offerings as well.
I want to say the answer to this is yes, but will look to see if I can confirm that…I personally only tested with the Blue (only have the Red On/Off switches unfortunately).
I’m totally down for the remote switches! Call it laziness or a desire for efficiency, I love the idea of being able to put a switch right where someone expects it. My son’s playroom has it’s light switch behind the door when it’s swung open and there’s nothing at the second door (right around the corner).
Just today I was thinking about how it’d be nice to have a dimmer style remote for the Sonos I just put in the living room for when it’s playing music. Then it could have a convenient wall mount location and also double to control some outlets with lamps connected.
Eric tested the Red series On/Off with it at least and I’d expect the dimmers to work as well based on that. However, it still won’t support multi-tap through the aux switch since that’s a limitation of the Red series dimmers currently.
Seconding or thirding this suggestion. Would love to have an add-on battery switch to augment my existing switch locations or ideally have something that sits on my couch and triggers the correct lighting scene and turns on my TV with the touch of a button. Lots of cool possibilities here I hope you guys develop one!
First post. I’m very excited to be part of this growing community.
I’ve been lingering and watching this thread for 3-4 weeks since we purchased a home in the Charlotte NC area when I became excited about expanding my home automation efforts there after we move in (vs limited ‘lease friendly’ automations in our current home near SF).
Sorry if overkill on the ‘about me’ part here… Skip this paragraph you want. I first started with home automation 10-ish years ago with Insteon (mostly plugs and motion sensors back then). Since the early days, I have added Ecobee, Hue, Ring, Alexa and MyQ over the years (not as off the grid / local control as I’d like to be… I’ll probably work on that a bit more in the next year.) In the last year, after giving up on IFTTT, Yonome, and Stringify… I added Home Assistant and some dabbling into zigbee (still learning both…) . Connected switches certainly weren’t a common element in my set ups - I essentially only had a few strategically placed Insteon switches at a few points to help with outdoor landscape and driveway security lighting. Currently I have none of these in our rental situation.
While figuring out my new home light switch strategy in the last month or so, I had decided to leave Insteon behind to simplify and ‘standardize’ around Zigbee for switches, plugs, and sensors with the exception of Ring Alarm (Z-wave) . I quickly found one of the initial Blue Series posts and then this one which I’ve tried to keep up with every day since. The enthusiasm, design / functionality, and openness / embrace of Eric and team for the community had me sold nearly instantly. Most importantly… in my own mind, I had broken up with Insteon before they broke up with me (and everyone else!) last week!!!
Anyway, I am new to Inovelli but super pumped to have placed my pre-order for 20 Blues on Friday. I haven’t yet even seen our new home (had to buy it sight unseen from Cali! And we just closed the sale last week!), but it was a new build in 2018 and is fairly large and open floor plan (vs California standards we’ve been living in for the last 8 years!) so I expect we’ll have a bunch of 3-ways and some 4-ways. Quite honestly, I’m still trying to decide if I need another 10 pack (or 2) of blues or if I should get a 10 pk (or 2) of Aux when that SKU is opened up. I need to spend a little more time thinking about that and the pros / cons already laid out and another factor I think could be important. Not sure I’ll replace every single switch in the house, but I think having the LEDs visible for the additional ‘3-way / 4-way ‘ controls will be a good visual cue for my family of the sister switch, especially in 3-5 gang panels where only some are ‘Inovelli smart’ (controlling central overhead lights for example).
Since Eric has asked others previously how they plan to use these, I’m excited to say that the automations I’m looking forward to the most (through HA running on an Unraid VM) are:
Using Aquara motion / presence sensors with Blue switches in each of my kids rooms and baths to turn off the lights they consistently forget to turn off when they leave. Even with low energy LED bulbs throughout the home, I’m convincing myself (and the CFO) that we’ll get enough electricity $ savings to pay for the Blues dozens of times over!! This is most definitely NOT true, but I can dream (and justify the expense) and it’s highly unlikely the CFO has the info needed to prove me wrong!!
Setting up motion ‘nightlights’ through the house to turn on ceiling lights and table lamps to low brightness if / when people leave their bedrooms between 11pm and dawn.
Randomizing home lighting when we are away
Turning on some lighting in the driveway and front door when we enter the neighborhood after the landscape lights have turned off.
Tuning on all inside / outside lights during alarm or smoke detector event.
Definitely setting up some favorite radio / playlist(s) multitap automations for the whole house audio and Sonos set ups.
I would definitely like to continue to read about others’ plans for automations with Blue controls as well. Not sure if that would continue here or another section of the community board. Glad to have found this product and community.
In 2 years of support, I’ve never had anyone say that their Red Series (20-sec hold of config button) was reset accidentally. Sounds like we’ve made it even harder now with the Blue Series by adding the need to also be holding the paddle so I can’t imagine an accidental reset happening.
They’re targeting mid-July but could be earlier if the UL certification comes through faster. Bit of a moving target at the moment from what I understand.
Lol, you’re welcome back anytime, maybe a good tech job in Kzoo will open up
Lol, yeah yeah haha.
Awesome, thank you so much!
Great question! I know others have confirmed it for you, but thought I’d also hop on board. Definitely the latter, think of them as momentary switches kind of. They basically just use traveler wires to let the smart switch know what’s being pressed on the add-on/aux switch. There’s no smarts in them, unfortunately.
No worries at all, glad to have you! We were all once new and heck working with the Home Assistant guys in the forum, I feel like all my questions are obvious too haha.
Yeah, I definitely don’t see Lutron releasing their PANTONE colors lol. I mean, maybe if I can convince them that I could sell Claro wall-plates for them, but idk, definitely an uphill battle.
You know what, that’s actually an awesome idea. Hmmmm… now my wheels are turning. Just looked this up on Amazon.com – looks pretty cool actually. Thanks for the suggestion.
Let’s hope the Lutron project manager isn’t stalking this thread again (hey, this is our idea!!)
Yeah, I think there’s a good balance between overly ambitious and what is shared/not-shared. I have a tough time balancing that (and always have). I get super excited and amped up and want to share it with you guys, but then reality hits and I have to backtrack and say, “well, yes, I want to do this, but x, y, z happened”.
Fantastic, congratulations! Thank you so much for the support – as with the others, I’d love to see the finished product. Very exciting
PS - just saw your post below where you got the aux switches – thanks!
I know I’m late to the party and @chack and @stu1811 tested it (thanks guys!) but wanted to confirm as well that they will work with the Red Series (minus scene control unfortunately as that’s a hardware limitation in the Red Series).
Thanks man! It’s been a fun ride for sure – I’m really pumped about these and you’re right, the addition of the Aux (which I need to talk more about bc it is definitely awesome) is a game-changer.
Appreciate all your help with Home Assistant too!
Just finished writing the PRD (project request document) and will be sending off to both manufacturer’s this week after I review it with the client. Really excited to finally get that off the ground. The goal would be to have them match either the add-on/aux switch or possibly (depending on battery life expectations) put a small LED (matching our Red Series On/Off) for notifications. I’m leaning towards the small LED but I’m not sure what that will do to battery life. I remember a couple years ago we explored a remote with the 7 LED’s like our dimmer switch and the manufacturer’s engineers just laughed at us and said, “no way that’s possible”.
I’ll start another thread once we get further down that path to get/give feedback!
Random, but would you guys (@harjms and @fonzi03) want/need USB-A or USB-C built in and if so, would they have to be smart?
Heck yeah, glad to have you! Welcome
Nice, congratulations! That is a big move – hopefully you are adapting/enjoying the east coast? I grew up in NJ so not too far from you. EDIT: nm, looks like you just closed last week!
Holy crap, you just brought back some nostalgia. I had this setup when I ran Wink 5+ years ago.
Thanks so much for the support – especially being new to the brand. That takes a lot of confidence and is actually very humbling to us. Thank you!
I, as a marketing guy, like to personally call that, “marketing math”. Great strategy!
Those are some good ideas and agree with you – I’d love to see/hear how others are automating their houses and hopefully taking it a step further, we can build up the community knowledge-base with how-to’s so we can all benefit.
Appreciate you sharing!
Thanks so much! Looking forward to delivering
Yeah, I need to get better at updating that thread. All the action has taken place over here that I’ve completely ignored it. Ugh, my bad.
No plans at this time for a non-LED version. The LED is what makes us… us
Yeah basically what @exces6 said. I tried to be conservative with my estimate, but it’s been very hard to get a read from UL as they are not using the US based facilities so not only is there a language barrier, but a cultural barrier.
Sounds like a a couple skus to me. Main one would be dual receptacle with both or one controlled via RF (zig, z, w.e). Not sure on NEC rules with having both outlets controlled. Another sku could have one receptacle with a USB-C PD and a USB-A in place of the other receptacle. Or dual receptacle with USB-C PD in the middle. No need for control on the USB port. Perhaps total power usage monitoring for the entire switch vs each receptacle.
One thing I wanted to follow up on and actually show an example of how the community really pulls through.
I have to thank @contactcr for bringing this up (and giving me a mild panic attack) back in early March (and @kevink explaining it) regarding whether or not this switch would be a true On/Off switch or a simulated one via firmware.
My understanding was that it was an on/off or dimmer depending on how it was programmed. When this was brought up, I thought, “oh crap, this makes absolute sense as to why the manufacturer figured out non-neutral on/off – they are simulating the on/off – I really hope they didn’t make this a true simulated on/off switch, that’s not good for motors”.
Queue the mild panic attack.
Well low and behold the manufacturer was under the impression that having it be a simulated switch was ok. A classic miscommunication.
The good news is that they did build the switch with a separate On/Off relay that’s used when the dimmer is set in “dumb” switch mode (exactly how our Red Dimmers were built) and with some firmware tweaking, we are now able to have the switch operate as follows:
On/Off (if neutral is detected) = “Hard” On/Off (ie: the traditional relay that’s in our On/Off switches)
On/Off (if no-neutral is detected) = “Soft” On/Off (ie: simulated)
This also is the same if an aux or dumb switch is used. At any time, you can switch it to the, “soft” relay if the “click” annoys you.
Here’s a demonstration:
So, thanks to you guys for calling it out and for pressing us on it. Without you, I don’t think I would’ve noticed that!
Does this mean that these switches would be suitable for being wired up to in-wall receptacles, when installed with a neutral and configured to dumb on/off mode (or always-on “smart bulb” mode?)? Would yet another listing be needed for this scenario?
I’d use this in this situation: I have a dumb dimmable salt lamp that is currently being controlled by a Jasco 45852 Zigbee smart dimmer plugged into an outlet. The outlet is wired to a dumb off/on in-wall switch that I always leave on. I would love to stick one of the Blue switches in the wall instead, set it to always-on smart bulb mode, and Zigbee direct bind it to the Jasco dimmer so that the wall switch dims the lamp over Zigbee while still retaining full power to the receptacle itself (making code happy). Maybe this is getting a little niche.
For reference Lutron has a receptacle with non-standard prongs that permits dimmable loads (Lutron Claro SCR-15-HDTR-SW). The non-standard prongs are how they make it suitable per code but I have to imagine they introduce a big barrier to adoption.
Suitable, or in compliance with electrical code??? Referring to the NEC in the US, you are correct that a switched receptacle must be controlled by a switch and not a dimmer. However, the NEC also provides that the switch controlling a receptacle has to be rated for the overcurrent device protecting the circuit (ie the breaker). So a 15A circuit requires a 15A switch to control a receptacle; a 20A circuit requires a 20A switch to control a receptacle.
While the specs for the blue haven’t been published yet, I am confident that they will be similar to the red, which don’t come close to meeting the requirements to control a 15A receptacle. (The inductive load capacity alone is only 3A.)
So while you have to refer to whatever code you fall under, I’m reasonably sure that local codes and codes in other countries aren’t going to stray to far from the NEC’s position.
TLDR: Blue or Red switch controlling a receptacle likely isn’t code compliant.
NEC 404.14(F)
Edit: Somewhere in the NEC there is a carve out for that weird plug and receptacle combo you referenced. That combo on a split receptacle would probably be compliant, but I couldn’t find the code just now. It’s in there somewhere, lol.
This switch is awesome, and I can’t wait to have more people get their hands on them and share the experience.
