Inovelli Out Of Stock?

Anyone know what’s going on with Inovelli? I have several of their switches and they work great, but I noticed they are nowhere to be found on Amazon anymore. Just a couple weeks ago they were all over the place. What gives?

Not out of business, they are working on a whole new model line and have let the old models run out of stock.

@Eric_Inovelli can say more.

2 Likes

@bhath2, great question (I get it about 5x/day so I’m glad to know people care about us!),

I promise we’re not going anywhere and I appreciate the kind words about our products, that really does mean a lot!

Alright, so here’s the deal (and I have to be careful bc this is an open forum) and if you’d like me to explain further via PM, I"m happy to do so:

  • Our current manufacturer changed up the payment terms on us and breached their contract
  • It wasn’t just a small change, we’re talking a 180 degree payment term change which really messed with our business model
  • So, currently, we’re working on that to fix the contract and get our products back in stock
  • Simultaneously, we’ve been working on an entirely new line with a new manufacturer that should be set to launch in March-April (don’t hold me to it, but that’s my best guess at this point) – the switches look amazing and will have some of the most powerful firmware on it (I’m really excited)
  • Concurrently, we’re also pitching for Series A funding which has been quite the experience and one of the reasons I haven’t been as active as I normally am as I’ve been essentially going door to door

All that to say we’re definitely here to stay and while we experienced a setback with our current manufacturer, we actually think this will make us way stronger in 2019 and beyond.

So, hang in there – I’m trying my best to be as transparent as possible as you all honestly mean the world to me – a lot of you have helped me since the beginning (and helped me switch from Wink to ST haha). We’ll always continue to fight for the best prices and firmware for you all and I think (scratch that… I know bc we have the designs and pricing) you will be pleasantly surprised when the new products launch.

Anyway, thanks again and I hope to look back on this post in a few months and go, “yeah… things are way better”!

Have a great day!

Eric
Founder | Inovelli

PS – As @JDRoberts said, we actually have plenty of refurbished items here at HQ that we can sell and we should be launching a new site here in a couple of months with the capability to buy refurbs straight from the site.

15 Likes

Thanks for the quick reply. I hope everything goes well for you and things get back on track very soon. I’ll be there in line when the new stuff becomes available!

2 Likes

Might I suggest a thread title change given Eric’s reply. I can see a lot of knee jerks with the current title.

1 Like

Done. :sunglasses:

(Changed from “business” to “stock”)

1 Like

Agreed. The old title could be misinterpreted. I was going to change it but you beat me to it. Thanks for taking care of it.

2 Likes

and they’re still out of stock…

Not surprising, since the earliest estimate last time was March to April for the first new inventory. :sunglasses:

Simultaneously, we’ve been working on an entirely new line with a new manufacturer that should be set to launch in March-April (don’t hold me to it, but that’s my best guess at this point) –

I’m just being a pain. I do wish we could preorder though. I ended up buying 8 of another brand and I’m not as happy with them

1 Like

I happen to check on Inovelli stuff today and noticed the following info where you can monitor the progress towards their new product launch. (Click on Production Status at the bottom)
https://inovelli.com/shop/smart-light-switches/pre-order-z-wave-dimmer-switch-no-neutral-required-scenes-notifications/#tab-production-status

Sounds like things are delayed and launch is not until May (although I have my doubts since they just now completed 3D prototypes; I’m guessing a delay beyond May). I do give them big credit for posting updates though. Not many companies are that transparent. The new switch looks pretty cool too.

1 Like

I know @Eric_Inovelli mentioned something about fan controllers that I’m waiting to hear more on…

Hey @Spartysh32 sorry for the delay – was on a 10th Anniversary cruise and had the, “no cell phones allowed” rule (happy wife, happy life after-all)… I’ll know more tomorrow on when they’ll actually be released. We kicked off the project with the manufacturer in April, but I’ve been out of pocket ever since, so I’m waiting to hear back from them on when they realistically think they can launch them.

We’ll be launching two versions:

  • Fan only
  • Fan + Light

Happy to answer any questions you have in regards to hardware/firmware!

Eric

2 Likes

I hope you had fun on your cruise. Even when life is super hectic, it’s important to spend quality time with family.

For the Fan + Light product that you are starting development on, is it going to be the type of thing that can be paired with ceiling fans/lights that have the wireless controllers that you can pair with the 4 tabs that are set to pair the switch/remote and the fan? If so, that would be amazing. That is a huge hole in the home automation switch market as far as I can tell. I have a bunch of ceiling fans with lights in my house and the only product I’ve seen is a fan speed control switch, which completely neglects the light. A product that actually allows you to automate those type of fans would be a spectacular addition.

Also, are you guys still on pace to release the new dimmer switches near the end of June?

I don’t want to take this thread off topic, but there is an existing zigbee option which works with smartthings and will control both lights and fan speed in a single gang controller format. :sunglasses:

See the community FAQ on Fan Control options. It mentions echo in the thread title, but it covers all the options. The thread title is a clickable link:

FAQ: 2018 Ceiling Fan and Dimmer light wall mount control compatible with SmartThings and Alexa?

Hopefully we’ll be able to add the inovelli fan controls to that FAQ soon, but we don’t include pre-release devices.

Thanks for the info. It would be great if someone would put out a non-proprietary z-wave switch that could be used with any of the hubs out there. Basically just take any of the dozens of versions of wireless ceiling fan speed and light dimming wall switch controllers and add z-wave capability to it. It seems like something that could be done and would be a lot easier than having to partially dismount a ceiling fan and rewire it to a new fan controller receiver. For wireless fans that are already controlled with those 4 tab wall switches or remote controls, it would be way easier to have a z-wave compatible switch with the 4 tabs that could be set to match the frequency of the existing receiver in the fan that would just be wired into the wall just like all of the other z-wave switches/dimmers on the market.

Zwave devices operate on a specific frequency, 908.4 in the US. That radio cannot communicate with, for example, a 433 MHz radio. (Among other things, frequency is determined by antenna length.)

https://products.z-wavealliance.org/

So it’s just not possible to have a universal radio switch such as you describe.

There are other non-Z wave devices that attempt to approximate this for at least the most popular frequencies. They are discussed in the FAQ linked to above. Each manufacturer makes the decision about what to include based on the cost of building the device versus the cost that consumers are willing to pay for it.

Thanks. Sounds like a device with the capability I’m describing would require two separate radios, one to accept z-wave commands and one to output radio commands to the ceiling fan receiver, which may be impractical due to hardware size/cost to combine everything.

In my head it all seems so simple!

1 Like

I had placed a preorder and an email went out last week with the following update:

Good morning everyone,

Thanks so much for your pre-order and for your patience while we continue to work on the new switches. We’re super excited and look forward to releasing them!

As per my last email, I’ll be continuing to update everyone weekly on the status until we launch the switches. So, here we go!

Manual, Box, and new Logo
As the marketing guy, I love this stuff and enjoy working on the design behind Inovelli. From the colors to the way we present ourselves, I want it to really represent who we are, what we stand for and what we believe in.

Manual
I won’t break the manual down too far, but it’s very similar to our v1 switch manual, except we added a couple extra pages that go over a few more wiring options, and then an entire page dedicated to configuring the switch.

Logo
The logo won’t change too much from a font perspective, we just modernized it a bit and dropped a few elements. We removed the Wireless symbol as we felt it was confusing to people given that some thought it was a WiFi symbol whereas we’re primarily a Z-Wave brand (for now). We also dropped the Michigan part (of the logo, we’re not getting rid of it in general) as we plan to expand overseas and the logo may not resonate with foreign markets. We will be creating a new, “Born in Michigan” logo to stick to our roots though as Michigan is very important to us.

Box
The boxes turned out amazing. Much more stable than the prior boxes (reduce damage during shipping) and they actually have meaning behind them, which I’ll break down a bit further below. In the footer, I’ll provide the die-lines for you so you can see.

Inside this box, you’ll also find everyone’s signature who worked on this project. It’s our way of saying that we’ve all put our late nights and early mornings into this and are proud to launch this. In the future, we’ll be opening this up to all of you to submit any ideas to us to improve our products (firmware and hardware) and we’d love to have your signature in the box as well. We want to feel like we’ve built this together with you as we believe we’re in this together!

Red Series
This, we’re super excited about. We originally were going to label our switches, Basic and Advanced to distinguish between the two, but that was very boring and non-inspiring. So, we came up with Red Series, which, will be the new name of our advanced switches.

We chose, “Red Series” because of a few different reasons:

  • It’s simple to remember
  • Red signifies boldness, energy, passion, determination and represents a lifeline (or human connection) which I think definitely represents who we are (we’re bold in that we’re standing up for every day smart home users and creating products that the big dogs won’t, we have an energy, passion and determination to create the best products, and we have a lifeline to our fellow smart home owners in that we’re all in this together)
  • Series = idk we liked it better than “Line” – kidding, it is a play on electrical (Series vs Parallel wiring)

Product Timeline
I just spoke to the manufacturer and they are still confident in the timeline as of this morning, so all should be good there. We have a conference call with them tonight, so I’ll have more of an update if anything urgent happens.

As always, have an amazing day!

Eric
Founder | Inovelli

1 Like

Will you be able to turn the blue light off on the switch while the fan is on?