Nice, maybe we can chat about it? Curious what the price difference is and maybe it’s something we can use in the interim on some of the other projects or this one if we run out before the 24 is introduced.
Edit: also, thanks for sharing - curious what you’re building!
Absolutely.
The biggest problem with switching over would likely be firmware - the Nordic chips all use a Zephyr based firmware that you would need to port existing firmware to (or start from scratch).
Current lead times in the nrf52 series seem to be in the 16-20ish week point, so better than some, but still not"good".
We did look at the MG21 and MG24 when we selected the nrf52, but lead times were concerning, and the Nordic has much better battery life, with a miniscule power consumption at idle.
If you have any specific questions or things, feel free to DM me, or if it’s too much, massive we could set up a call, I’d love the opportunity to chat about the tech inside the gear I’m using. (Hardware/firmware geek)
I mentioned the same thing last year on these forums actually. I also am an electronics/firmware engineer and moved to Nordic Nrf52 and zephyr RTOS. I am not a fan of silicon labs, personally. Been using Nordic and Zephyr for a couple years now and am extremely impressed.
And yes, you’ll be able to OTA using Nordic.
We will work with SmartThings to push out OTA, but they have not yet given us any documentation or instruction on how to do this.
I’m glad I’m not the only one with those opinions of silicon labs and some of their behaviors.
Indeed. And like I said I’m a huge Zephyr advocate. I’ve been using it for a long time now and am an active contributor. It is especially helpful in this economic climate where I might need to quickly port to a totally new architecture. For instance I changed over an stm32 based design into Nordic in a matter of hours due to how much hardware abstraction I can implement. Normally that might take weeks.
My dream would be Inovelli moving to a Nordic nrf52 based platform with open source firmware 
I’m definitely willing to explore this – you want to connect via PM (maybe a group message w/@zcorneli.iit)? I have no ties to SiLabs other than it’s just what our manufacturer recommends and is (was?) the only option available to us with Z-Wave so we went with them with Zigbee.
hey i know the certification testing got pushed back, but do you know how that will impact delivery for folks that preordered? just antsy on getting all my switches replaced.
Great question – how pre-orders will work is that they will be shipped out in the order that they were received. What we’re planning on doing is shipping in small batches to get them here quickly for everyone (it will be super expensive for us, but whatever, I want to get these in people’s hands).
So, that means that once x amount is completed, we will ship them via air to our new warehouse (good news is we now have a distribution partner – part of the collaboration I’ve been working on) and they will fulfill them. Then once y is completed, we will ship those, etc.
As we get closer to production, I will have a better idea on how many are being produced in the first run and what can be sent out. Then @Courtney_Inovelli will be able to cross reference this number with the order list and notify everyone accordingly.
I’m working daily with @Darwyn_Inovelli to get this wrapped up – UL has been a real PITA and hard to work with to get any sort of firm date, but the good news is that once it’s approved, we should have a spot ready to go on the production line.
Hang in there, we’re just as impatient – I would like to get a win under my belt sooner rather than later as well!
Can anybody explain the hub requirement with this switch?
I’m using a large Z-Wave network (with Home Assistant) but I also use a Hue bridge and Hue bulbs.
My z-wave switches have their relay disabled and then I use Home Assistant (with zwavejs2mqtt) with listen to z-wave switch presses and relay it to the Hue bridge and then to the Hue light.
Can I use this switch with my setup to instantly (?) notify the Hue bulbs over Zigbee and bypass the relay through Home Assistant?
Can I use this switch with my setup to instantly (?) notify the Hue bulbs over Zigbee and bypass the relay through Home Assistant?
I think they’ve said these are ZLL capable, and you should be able to group them straight to the Hue bulbs (as long as you have them on the same network).
I’m not sure they’ll be able to join a Hue hub, you might need a Zigbee radio for HA, or to move to another hub to do the setup. You could move the Hue bulbs there though, and directly link them with smart bulb mode.
Your best option here will be to pick up a zigbee stick (like the Sonoff Zigbee USB Dongle 3.0 plus) and setup zigbee2mqtt. Move your hue bulbs off the hue hub onto zigbee2mqtt and put your switches there as well. Then you can setup binding which will bypass the hub and automations and allow the switch to directly control the bulbs as if they were hard-wired (and pretty much just as fast as well). You’ll love how much faster this setup will be to turn on the bulbs.
Thanks for the replies and the help!
Can I still use Hue Entertainment mode with zigbee2mqtt? …or does that require the Hue Hub? If so, can I combine BOTH zigbee2mqtt and the Hue Hub?
@Eric_Inovelli,
Just wanted to add that I’ll in line for black paddles for the blue series and Aux switch as soon as you list them. Huge on the list for the wife acceptance factor on our new build.
Have a 10 pack on order, adding another 10 today (20 total) along with Aux01 switches.
Will really need black paddles for both. In standard gloss or matte black.
-Jonathan
PS: You’re videos/work to bond the blue series to the Juno canless pucks sold me on putting an order in for another 10 today! Thanks for doing that!
@sofakng you can see this in action in this video and if you want to see the setup instructions to get prepared you can watch how to do that here.
Thanks so much for the video and information.
However, it looks like it’s using zigbee2mqtt. If I use zigbee2mqtt, then I won’t be able to use Hue Entertainment mode, right?
If that’s correct, can I somehow use zigbee2mqtt (with a dongle) AND the Hue hub so Hue Entertainment mode works?
You can, but you’ll lose the ability to do binding and have the same delay you have now by using an automation on home assistant to turn the lights on/off. This is because the hue hub creates it’s own self-contained zigbee network, while z2m with the dongle will be on another zigbee network.
I doubt Philips lets anybody put their switches onto their hubs. I’ve heard they’re a nightmare to deal with and it’s a big part of why basically every smarthome YouTuber hates them. I’m not experienced with Entertainment Mode, but a quick google makes it look like it syncs the bulb colour to the led strip colour of the tv captured from the hdmi capture box. If that’s the case you may be able to swap out the controller with hyperion/wled on an rPi, and that’ll allow HA to capture the colour and send it to the bulb. But I’d expect a delay still because the automation would introduce a tiny bit of lag.
So I’m very close to pulling the trigger on some switches but I’m still a bit confused on the benefit/differences between a multiway setup with aux switches and multiway with smart switches. Apologies that some of this might be my ignorance of zigbee binding protocol/logic and I haven’t stumbled onto the resource for best understanding that just yet. I feel like I may have found answers to snippets of my confusion in this thread but unfortunately not collected together.
My assumption is that an Aux switch will effectively be a clone of the Smart Blue switch upstream of it, but without the LED bar. Any presses on the Aux switch (taps, multitaps) will be interpreted/sent from the Smart Blue switch upstream. Therefore you’ve put your same configuration of the switch (with regards to multitaps/etc) in more than one physical location. Is this assumption correct?
With that being the baseline, where does a configuration with multiple Smart Blue switches fit into this? as I see it, I can assume three options:
A) the second Smart Blue switch is a clone of the first, like with an Aux switch, except the second switch now has a LED bar. Both switches have the same multitap behavior, and their LED bars are synchronized in pattern/color/etc.
B) the second Smart Blue acts completely independently of the first, you can have different multitap programming, different light bar settings, etc, and you’re triggering/controlling the first switches load as a function of programming.
C) somewhere in-between option A) & B), where certain functions are cloned between them (eg color bar dim % as seen in the video) but others are allowed to be different (eg LED color/pattern, multitap).
Again some of my lack of understanding regarding the above options may stem from a lack of understanding of zigbee binding behavior and I apologized for that.
The manual references in the Pre-Programming section a pair of options: ON-OFF / Dimmer / Smart, and Single-Pole / Dumb / Aux. Most of this I understand, but I don’t understand what the Smart setting is intended to be used for, and the language in the rest of the manual doesn’t present the Smart as a distinction of on/off/dimmer/etc. Is it perhaps for a switch with no load and can only control via scenes/binding or a hub interpreting/running automations, ie for the ‘Aux’ Smart switch(s) in a multiway setup?
Unfortunately the manual in it’s current state doesn’t clarify this for me. I see that ‘binding’ sections seem to be missing for the time being so perhaps those updates will fill in the gaps in my understanding.
Personally I can see value in having Smart switches instead of Aux switches if I’m able to program their multitaps differently and/or I can program the LED bars differently for notification purposes. Otherwise if multiway setups act as cloned switches the value proposition swings in the direction of picking Aux switches instead of Smart switches in multiway configurations.
In simpler terms please sell me on the benefits of multiway configs with all smart switches vs Smart & Aux in greater detail 
What can the additional Smart switches do that the Aux wouldn’t do in their place?
You pretty much have it all correct. Except there is no syncing of the color of the LED bar. The led bar LEVELS will sync, but you configure the COLOR of the led bar independently on each smart switch
Also notifications are independant per smart switch.
You get an additional LED bar to do notifications and/or settings changes with. That’s pretty much it. Inovelli really upped the game with the new aux switch to duplicate the master switch instead of the older versions missing scene control and a lot of the new functionality.