LOL – dangit… happens every time. Copy/paste error!
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Hardware Feedback:
- Would much prefer this based on the dimmer hardware with a full height, multi-segment LED bar so there is the ability for more variations of status than what the single LED allows for. Even if it IS only on/off, those notifications can be used and it could help reduce the variations of hardware going forward. Or is this just a case of the wrong image being shown?
- Appreciate the no heatsink tabs. Those are always a pain to deal with in my experience and I would have to think there are not that many cases of people needing HUNDREDS of watts of LEDs on the same switch. Incandescent is a bit more problematic but most people going with smart switches are not using many of those nowadays. As an example at my house, our “heaviest” light load is ~144w. 12 x 12w LED bulbs (my wife has 2 “starburst” fixtures, each with 6 bulbs in one room). If these were using their original incandescent bulbs (60w each) it would have been an insane 720w, but I never even put them in the fixtures to begin with.
- Appreciate the fan/motor compatibility. Any ideas or goals for the supported amperage of said fan/motor and whether there will be a minimum level as well? I got hit by that lately with a switch that could not properly drive a fan that has too low of power requirements.
- Work with existing dumb switch or smart switch, so as the main switch or as an auxiliary as needed? Nice. Basically the goal is to be able to put it anywhere and have it work as intended?
Firmware Feedback:
- Timer function should be able to trigger the notification LED(s) without having to go through the controller (if configured). I WANT THIS timer function with a full LED bar so our fans can finally be on smart switches not the old timer switches they have… I did not think this was possible with the existing Z-Wave models you have, but buying ZigBee for it… hmm…
- Smart Bulb Mode: should put a link to the Red Series implementation, not everyone might be familiar with that.
- No mention of whether it will handle multiple presses, hold, or release functions. I assume they would but just want to make sure that functionality is there.
This is the on/off switch. Recommend moving to the Dimmer.
This. It’s time to abandon the single-LED on/off and go full Inovelli look. The notifications are just too useful not to implement across the board. In your last video you gave great reasoning for cancelling the black series, but I know very few of us are going to complain about having the full LED bar and having to pay $5-10 more per switch.
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Thanks! My bad, done.
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This is the age-old debate lol. Let me toss it around again internally to see what people think.
The points for basically boil down to:
- Consistent look (this has been argued to be a pro and a con)
- Large LED bar for notifications
The points against boil down to:
- Added cost (yes, some people don’t care, but others certainly do)
- Consistent look – people want to know what switches are on/off and what are dimming
- Believe it or not, some people do not like the LED bar (I know… ya weirdos) and the small bar is preferred
Yes, we’re excited about this as well. While it takes maybe 2 min to remove them, the B2B crowd installs 50+ at a time, that time can add up and cost money. Plus, yes, it’s annoying to find some pliers sometimes lol.
It will likely be the same as our current On/Off switches in that they support a 300W inductive load. I’m not sure on a minimum load, but I can find that out.
Yes, that is the goal 
This was the inspiration for our Gen 2’s and for the most part, we did it. We did drop the ball on the smart switch to smart switch hardwired capability, but it works from an association standpoint, so it’s close enough. We hope the ZigBee ones can do this by traveler detection like normal switches.
Can you elaborate here? So, you’re asking if you set the auto-off timer for 5min, it should give some sort of visual count-down via notifications?
Great idea – I didn’t want to open a can of worms lol – I’m still recovering from those conversations, but I can add in more context haha.
It will if ZigBee supports it. I believe it does and we called it out on the first bullet-point in the, “Software Requirements” section, but there’s so many requirements, it’s easy to miss!
“very few of us” (us being the key word here) – I can see the logic here and oftentimes I have to reflect on our target market. Right now, I will definitely agree with you in that our current target market has shown that an extra $4-5 increase in costs has not made a difference in sales. However, our current target market are also enthusiasts and appreciate the value of what we’re building together.
The target market for these switches (which I know there will be some cross-over) is mass market and looking at the competition out there, their pricing is low. Much lower than we can ever be. So, while we can probably command a slight premium pricing difference, there’s not a lot of wiggle room. Especially as companies catch up to us from a firmware POV (we’re seeing this now in the Z-Wave market – one of our competitors has successfully copied most of our firmware and is way less expensive than us in some cases). So, what I’m trying to say is every penny counts in ZigBee. We can exploit some of the gaps in the market for a short period of time (ie: no Hue hardwired switch) but that time will run out and we need to be able to have a product that is attractive to more price conscious consumers.
Sorry for rambling lol. Marketing is my passion and the 4 P’s are always on my mind (I’m a nerd, I get it).
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If people can understand what it can do, they will pay extra for it. I just know that is the case in the people that come to my house and see it in action. The problem is making that visible in packaging. Perhaps a QR to a video like “SEE IT IN ACTION” showing what it can do would be valuable…
Fantastic idea.
@Eric_Inovelli:
For the button press/hold, multi-press, I took that part to mean they were all tied to the scene capability and could not be used separately by hubs capable of it. I have almost never used scenes, so when I see that feature it is usually a “skip” in my mind.
Sorry, I realize I forgot to answer this question. So the concept is pretty much that, although it really only applies (well) if you have multiple LEDs. For example, our current ones have 7 settings with an LED next to each. 5 min, 10 min, 15 min, 30 min, 45 min, 60 min, ON. They also have an up-down rocker and then the main on/off button. Pressing the rocker up moves the LED (and time) up, down down… but does not turn it on/off. That is all handled by the main button.
Ex: Set to 30min, when turned on, it slowly pulses down from the 30 min, through the 15, 10, and 5 times. When it gets to 15 minutes remaining it pulses down through the 15, 10, 5. 10 just pulses 10 and 5… When it is 5 minutes remaining it blinks the 5 minute LED then turns off.
I see the up/down rocker as being excess if the on/off button could handle the time setting with a press/hold combination. With RGB LED(s) this effect could be expanded on (if desired) to change color as it gets lower as well (shading from one color to a final color for example).
With a single notification LED it would be impossible to do a “down” effect BUT it does have (at least) three possibilities:
- It could “pulse” for the time. Slow pulse that speeds up the closer it gets to turning off.
- It could “color” for the time. Similar to what I mention above with the RGB LEDs. Have it start at X (configurable) color that fades to Y (configurable) color.
- It could “dim” for the, similar to the color but in this case it just gets dimmer (or brighter, configurable) until it ends.
NOTEs:
- The only times we ever really start with are 45 or 15 (once in a while the ON with no timer). So if there were only 5 LEDs and less times were possible, that is fine in our book. Of course it would be a bonus if those times were configurable from the controller.
I have one that is 10, 20, 30, 60 min and basically it is solid LED next to the light that applies, then works its way down the pad, so at 30 it goes to 30, 20 min it goes to 20, etc. I think in the last minute the 10 min blinks, but not 100% on that.
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There are a couple varieties out there… so that lends a little more reason to make the actual time blocks be configurable (if at all possible). If I really wanted I could always put some stickers next to the LEDs showing the times, but I think even just having it able to move up (or down) gets across to people that there is some function of time there.
$5 for sure. 
$10 is pushing it 
How much “more” and how much “extra” is the key. I think Eric is right in trying to keep it in the $4-$5 range (roughly in the 15% premium ballpark). Higher than that is a tougher value-proposition to sell mass-market. $10 is roughly a 30% premium over similar competitors. That kind of premium is a very tough market … especially if you want to get into mass market which is really necessary for growth. Individual enthusiasts may not mind paying $10 more for a premium switch in their personal home. But larger projects like builders, remodelers, and integrators are not going to go for that kind of delta as a general practice.
TBH, I’m a little concerned that Inovelli’s prices have gone up slightly while at the same time Zooz prices have gone down slightly. As of right now there is a $13 per dimmer price difference which is a whopping 44% premium. 
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of the Inovelli stuff and willing to pay a bit more for it. But its getting hard to justify a 44% delta even though I absolutely prefer the Inovelli features. The value-proposition needs to balance with the percentage increase in order to gain mass-market appeal and market-share 
Quick update here – we’re still on track for a September release date. @Darwyn_Inovelli says July 30, but we’re going to add a couple months in for comfort
As for questions/comments, please see answers below!
Agree for the most part – ahhhh, the challenge of marketing on a tight budget
@EricM_Inovelli – can you translate this into the technical doc?
Agree 100%. It’s very hard to compete at a premium when the competition is able to copy most of our features and as you mentioned, entering a new market, people may not know who we are, so there’s a lot of flashy marketing that needs to be done. We have a few tricks up our sleeve
Yeah, this one is super perplexing to me. The only thing I can think of is they managed to buy a ton of inventory prior to the tariff increase, they are being subsidized by the manufacturer and/or profit sharing (this is the deal we used to have with their manufacturer, so I’m leaning this way). I know our volumes are much higher (old manufacturer told us), and I know our current manufacturer is at least 100x larger in sales revenue as theirs, so it’s unlikely they’re getting some sort of quantity discount on their BOM. Outside of that, if all things are equal, they may be trying to drive down the industry while operating on low margins in hopes that we can’t keep up with them and people start switching to their brand, thus driving us out of business. I truly am impressed they can operate this way and kudos to them if they can maintain it.
Preach it! We’re trying our best, I can promise you that!
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@Eric_Inovelli: Not sure what you might mean, so here are two possibilities:
- Technical (Engineer version):
Visual depiction of time remaining. When switch is using the timer function it will display the time remaining in two ways:
If the switch is off, a single LED will be on in the position that represents the time the switch is set for.
If the switch is on, multiple LEDs will be used. When first started, the time related LED will come on. This LED will dim over 2 seconds then the next lower LED will come on and dims… The sequence repeats until the bottom LED dims out. At that point the sequence restarts. Once the remaining time is only represented by the last LED that LED will blink at an 1 second on, 1 second off interval until the time is completely up. At this point the switch will turn off.
Example: Switch set for 30 minutes (with LEDs representing ON, and 60, 30, 15, 10, & 5 minutes). LEDs will perform the dim and next sequence starting from the 30 minute LED for 15 minutes, then starting from the 15 minute LED for 5 minutes, then starting from the 10 minute LED for 5 minutes. In the last 5 minutes the 5 minute LED will blink on and off until the timer is up. Then the switch will turn off and the 30 minute LED will come on at an unchanging level. - Technical (User version):
When in timer mode the switches notification LEDs will be used to show the time the switch is set for (if off) or a dimming pattern showing how much time is remaining (if on). When on, the final 5 minutes will have the bottom LED blink so it is easy to know the switch is about to turn off.
Yeah, sure, this seems like a cool idea to add.
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Any idea yet what zigbee means for the price point? In general, it seems (I think) that zigbee stuff is usually cheaper (because it’s, ya know, cheaper)… Seems like you’re targeting a higher end product here with features similar to your zwave stuff. Just wondering 1) Are the zigbee electronics actually fundamentally cheaper, whether due to real reasons or simply licensing costs on the chipset? In which case we might expect your zigbee products to be less than zwave? 2) Or are they just made crappier for a mass audience with unrefined taste… In which case you’d expect similar pricing to your zwave stuff because, it seems, you’re trying to build a similarly awesome product?
If it’s the second, curious if you have thoughts on how that might play out in a market of…eh… Cheaper (and crappier… But still cheaper) stuff? Haha
Fyi… For what it’s worth for market research.I don’t intend to change and I’m really just a casual user… Not a total automation nerd (yet). But I am an engineer (read:a completely irrelevant sample point as far as normal humans go). I have a couple cheap zigbee bulbs I bought, which I consider toys. But wouldn’t consider it for anything going inside the wall. Too much else lives at 2.4…
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I’m going to close this thread as we’re going to transition the On/Off and Dimmer to a single SKU and we can discuss the project here: ZigBee Dimmer/On-Off Switch (Maycock Signature Series) | Project New Horizon (Blue Series)
We’re excited about this one!
I’ll take the remaining questions and answer them on the other thread.
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