Quick question (I hope) - can the new aux switch work with red series switches? If so, will I need to rewrite the already installed red switch at all?
Quick answer - yes.
Lol, you should be good 
I think Iām following here ā are you asking if you can mix/match aux + smart + dumb? If so, then unfortunately, no, you have to choose one way or the other (ie: smart + dumb, or smart + aux).
Yeah you should be good!
Haha, well I will throw you for a loop with this response. No, we are not being bought out and no, itās not an IPO in the sense that you think (Iām probably toeing the line with that response).
Iāve been very careful to not lose managerial control between Maycock (other Eric) and I and we donāt intend on giving it up any time soon. Weāve had many investors try that (and trust me, it was very hard to turn down the deals bc Eric and I would be set up for life), but ultimately, weāve turned them down because of exactly what you wrote out. Eric and I arenāt interested in turning Inovelli into a corporate company that only cares about squeezing margins, staying secretive about their products and has the company in mind with decisions and not the customers that support them.
Not to get all emotional but we started Inovelli as a way to bring innovative products to our own homes as well as provide a platform for other smart home owners to build the products of their dreams. I love hanging out in the forums with you guys, love interacting with everyone on Reddit or other smart home communities and I actually love going to work every day (well, almost every day lol) because I get to do something I personally am passionate about.
Sounds cheesy, but these products are something weāre extremely proud of and we want to protect them at all costs from the nickel and diming that comes with a different management philosophy.
Anyway, rest assured, weāre not selling out any time soon ā weāre having way too much fun
Iām excited to tell you guys the plan though ā I think everyone is going to be pumped. Weāve done a lot of work behind the scenes to set us up for this and Iām very proud of our team!
Wow, thatās awesome, thank you so much! Congratulations on your new house, Iād love to see pics when itās complete. I always love seeing the switches out in the wild haha.
Correct, you can do this ā just make sure you have a hub that supports Zigbee Binding for the best, most natural, experience. Iād recommend Home Assistant for it as Iām not really sure on Hubitatās capabilities w/bindings, and Iām not really sure if SmartThings officially supports it yet.
Awesome man, thank you!!
Yes, they will work with the Red Series switches
@Bry ā thanks man for the help with all these questions, I really appreciate it!
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@Eric_Inovelli I just want you to know that I too, like @Artfle, like this product so much more than every other switch on the market that I will have an inovelli blue 2-1 (or an aux) for every switch in my home too, even the kids rooms! I havenāt ordered all of them yet, I think Iāll need another 20 to cover the remainder of the home but Iām very excited to add these to home assistant and show them off to visitors.
Really congratulations to you for making a product that delivers what it seems like most smart home enthusiasts have been wanting for a long time. When Iām done retrofitting my home I plan on having home assistant ācontrol panelā tablets in strategic areas of the house for home control, but Iām very excited about the multi tap potential and the notification lighting that Iāll be able to leverage at the switch itself.
This is really a switch by nerds, for nerds, and it shows. I hope youāre wildly successful and keep innovating for years to come sir
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No loop thrown in your response, just pleased to hear that the company doesnāt plan to sell out to the Man.
However, I have been concerned about the financial viability of Inovelli since Covid hit. It looks like with the upcoming delivery of the Blue Switches, the dollars will once again be freely flowing into Inovelli (which is a good thing).
Was another company restricting your access to the Zwave components to try to put you guys out of business, since you have a superior and more attractive product?
Eric mentioned it in one of his posts. I think it was a mix of things, but the biggest is the chip shortage.
There was a huge shortage of the chips (still is for 500/700 series) and one of the manufacturers reserved most of the components for their Big 5 company (Ring/Amazon).
Yeah me too. It has been one of the hardest obstacles to overcome (and weāre not completely out of it yet, but definitely have the ship turned around and on a positive course).
Before COVID, we had lead times of approximately 12 weeks for Z-Wave chips. Once COVID hit, as @harjms mentioned we faced almost a perfect storm of disaster. Lead times went from 12 to, in some cases, 52 weeks (average was around 30-35wks) essentially overnight. Couple that with chip allocation issues from our manufacturer (they produce the Ring keypads) and we were basically left with the scraps.
This caused mass out of stock issues, which continue to this day. Out of stock means limited cash flow, which means layoffs (at our height we had 9 employees - we now have 5) and a downward spiral of what we could order (money that could be used for inventory now had to be used for overhead).
What saved us was a couple large B2B orders (very large thankfully) - one of which was non-Z-Wave. Without them, I donāt know where weād be.
Luckily we were recommended another manufacturer that specialized in Zigbee, but the problem there was that we had to start completely from scratch.
Anyway, the good news is things are improving from a supply side. While our original manufacturer still has allocation issues, our Zigbee one has managed to secure Z-Wave 800 series and we just received a large order to start an 800 Series 2-1 switch, which is officially kicking off tomorrow.
In addition, you may have seen another brand on our website. Weāve partnered up behind the scenes and one of their main guys is now on our team (dual role) helping with manufacturer relations, logistics (basically all the crap I struggled with) and negotiations opening up opportunities we didnāt have before.
So, the futureā¦ What does it look like for us? Well, hopefully a lot of the financial issues are behind us. There is still a cash flow wound that we need to bandage up, but luckily it isnāt as bad as it was. The demand for product is there, the market has almost recovered (weāre looking at 7wks lead time for Zigbee and 16 for Z-Wave) and we have the infrastructure and team to compete. We just need a cash infusion to cover the increased demand and set us up so weāre not always robbing Peter to pay Paul via pre-orders.
Hope this helps with some context. I plan on going into a little more of the details when the time is right, but this is the gist of it!
Edit: I guess I didnāt really answer your question about other companies trying to put us out of business.
I donāt think there was any intentional sabotage, more of less that the manufacturer we chose to produce our product only gets so many Z-Wave chips themselves and they produce the Ring keypads which move millions per month. Our direct competitors all use different manufacturers which did not have companies to compete on allocation with. I was kicking myself bc it seemed like Zooz was never impacted by the chip shortage. I swear they came out with a new product every dang month and we used to use their manufacturer. Jasco has their own manufacturer (not sure who it is, but itās not the one we or Zooz uses) and HomeSeer has their own as well.
We definitely learned our lesson to not put all our eggs in one basket and now have multiple manufacturers with a few others currently analyzing our products and giving us quotes on pricing and lead times.
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That is always hard whenever the future looks ok. Cheaper contracts and fewer of them. Often more expensive, in the short-term at least, to keep multiple vendors. Harder to justify with each passing year of normalcy, unless the top brass has been through a supply chain shortage that almost bankrupts a firm.
Kind of like insurance, usually nothing but a drag on profits, at least until you need it.
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Doh! Was away for a few weeks and missed the preorder!
Question about zigbee binding: Two of my pre-ordered Blue 2-1 switches will be replacing a pair of z-wave switches. Theyāll be configured in smart bulb modeā¦ between the two switches there are 6 Hue light bulbs downstream. In my current config, zigbee bulbs on zwave switches, I have to use my hub to translate button presses into lightbulb actions.
Another post described how to set up group bindings in zigbee2mqtt so that switch actions are mirrored to each other and all lights are controlled, regardless of which switch is touched. That looks great, but I have one question: if all bulbs are bound in a group to a switch (or are part of multiple overlapping groups, per the instructions), will I still have individual control over each bulb via my central control hub? In other words, does binding these bulbs negate my ability to define scenes where the bulbs may have different dim values or on/off states?
Iām not an expert, but Iām pretty confident in this answer based on the research Iāve done. Happy to be corrected by somebody more knowledgeable:
Donāt think of it as the light being bound to the switch: think of it as the switch being bound to the light. The light doesnāt care what is controlling it: it doesnāt āknowā that a switch is bound to it- it only knows about the commands it receives. The light doesnāt send any information back to the switch: there is no 2-way āmirroringā happening. This is similar in the āgroupā zigbee functionality you mention as well: an individual light only cares about itself and what group(s) itās in: it has no idea about any other lights in the group.
With the above in mind, it should be more clear how your lights will react to different scenarios.
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You can set any scenes you want (via your hub) across your bulbs at any time regardless of how many switches are bound to them: the bulbs are always going to respond to any commands theyāre given whether they originate from your hub vs a switch that is bound to them.
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The switch that is bound to those lights will not know about your lightsā state(s). If you set a complicated scene on your bulbs from your hub, your switch is happily ignorant of that. When the scene is āactiveā, youāre still able to go to your switch and physically press the buttons on it to send commands directly to the bound lights. e.g. if you press down on the paddle, your bound lights should all turn off. Note: I think these functions could vary based on how Inovelli configures their switches: I assume a switch in the āoffā state would still send an āoffā signal to the bound lights when the bottom of the paddle is pressed (I have a GE zigbee switch that works this way).
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Whats the status. Online has generic statement of December for non pre-order. Is there still some inventory? I could go for another 10 if theyāre actually avail shortly. Thanks!!
Yeah we are completely sold out of the pre-orders ā so we have to place an order for more which wonāt be ready until Decemberish.
Crazy times!
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Question: will these support handling multi tap in the switch itself such as the Zooz double tap for full brightness and night light features?
These sounds like something that could be implemented by firmware changes only and are such great features (Lutron implemented double tap to full brightness in their new Caseta Diva dimmer).
I understand I can do it with my hub but having it in the switch would potentially make it respond faster and work without a hub.
And since it is software based it could be configurable (turn feature on/off and night light level).
If this is not available yetā¦ here goes my first feature request 
Excellent question and dangit, I knew there was something I wanted to add. I remember seeing this feature on the Zooz switch and while I initially thought it wasnāt that big of a deal, I can see the benefit in a couple scenarios.
- Speed like you said
- Hubs that donāt support scene control
I donāt believe this was built in, but I could be wrong (EDIT: I was wrong!) - @EricM_Inovelli, if this wasnāt built in, can we add it to our GitHub as a parameter that could be enabled?
@CodeMaster - just brainstorming out loudā¦ Maybe we could have it so that you could have it be any button you program it to as well as pre-defined levels (ie: 10%, 25%, 50%, etc). We potentially could do both the up and down paddle for on and off.
What do you think?
Edit: Apparently we do have the double-tap to full brightness built into our switch. I need to pull it together lol!
I suppose we could build upon this like I suggested above, but at the very least the good news is we have what you asked!
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ahhh bummerā¦that sucks for all of us! to slow on my side!
on the other hand: congrats!!! to inovelli. Thatās excellent to see such great response to the new product!
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Let me check today. I was being very conservative as to not make ppl upset if they ordered and I had to tell them it wouldnāt be available until December.
I know the numbers are very tight though.
It definitely is very exciting (and frustrating - I never can get demand right).
Do you hold back some number of switches from the initial batch for warranty replacements?
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Yeah definitely. We hold about 5-7% back
Great question!
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Just put in another āpre-orderā for 10 more, hoping to squeek into the initial run to totally convert the house over!
Thanks Eric, glad to hear theyāre moving fast, hoping I squeaked this last order in under the cut-off!
Have a great day,
Jonathan
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