Hey @Kyle1977 - I can definitely take this to the engineers and see what they think. Because we will have two separate radios (Z-Wave at the switch and then RF to the module).
I’m just not sure if the RF for the existing PIN modules you’re talking about (I have them in my house too) are proprietary to that brand. My guess is yes, but who knows.
Definitely an awesome idea - the simpler the install the better!
Yes definitely 
You’ll have a few different options and our new switches will have this too:
Note: the LED bar can also be changed to any color and can be dimmed to any brightness level)
I think that covers the options - the LED was a hot topic last year with our Gen 1 switches (some people like the brightness, others hated it) so we tried to cover every single scenario!
Eric
Estimated drop date? New fan coming this week, interested in this product!
Would this work with a light + bathroom exhaust fan or is it only for ceiling fans? I’m looking to replace this switch in my bathroom - the top controls the vanity lights and the bottom controls an exhaust fan (with a built-in light):
That’s a great question – likely not until Q4 now as this has turned out to be a little more complex than the engineers thought. I’m being told October now from the manufacturer, but we will continue to push them for a September launch as that’s what I originally wanted.
They were supposed to get me an updated timeline last week during our weekly call, but they didn’t, so I asked again last night. More to come!
Eric
Great question – I don’t believe so as the ceiling fan has various levels of power that needs to be sent to it whereas the exhaust fan has just one setting.
I’m definitely looking at adding this type of product to our repertoire as it seems fairly common to have this setup in the bathroom, but I haven’t kicked anything off officially yet. I’m still trying to do some market research on this one.
Thanks for the question and for throwing the idea out there!
Eric
You may be right that there are proprietary aspects to some of the wall controls and receivers that could impact some functions, but there are definitely a lot of universal wall controls with the 4 dip switches on the market (and some come with their own receiver),
but I have 8 ceiling fans in my house and on my back patio that are a combination of Minka Aire, Harbor Breeze, and Casa Vieja models. As I added more fans and updated some pull-chain fans to wireless remote/wall control operated units, I initially didn’t
keep track of how the various dip switches were set on each unit and would accidentally have controls in one room operating multiple fans throughout the house because the dip switches happened to be set on the same pattern. It didn’t seem to matter what
brand anything was, just that the dip switch settings matched. I definitely had controllers from one brand operating fans from a different brand. Eventually, I went through and gave each fan and corresponding controller their own dip switch combination and
wrote them all down, so now everything works independently without any interference.
Granted, there are certainly fans that have more/different options than others (# of fan speeds/auto blade reverse, etc.), but a huge amount of fans and universal remotes/wall controls on the market are basically configured like this one:
My thinking was that if you essentially took a product like this, but gave it z-wave capability to accept commands and transmit to the hub the state of the device in the event someone uses the wall control, you’d be able to just set the dip switches to match
your existing fan’s receiver and it would be no more difficult than installing any of the light switches/dimmers already on the market by GE/Honeywell/Jasco, Inovelli, Zooz, Nutone, etc. Maybe the solution is sell a switch with the receiver kind of like this
sample universal fan control that I linked to, then if people need it because the wall control doesn’t properly communicate with their existing fan receiver, they can still use the z-wave wall control, but people who have some luck with the wall control properly
communicating with their existing fan receiver don’t have to go to the trouble of partially uninstalling their ceiling fan and rewiring in a new receiver. From a consumer perspective, probably the best case scenario would be if a company like Inovelli sold
a wall control without a receiver for a little less money and a bundled wall control/receiver for a little more (or just sell them separately). That way people who don’t need the receiver aren’t wasting money on it, but people whose existing receivers won’t
work with the wall control have the option to buy a bundle with the wall control and the receiver. Their install would be a little more difficult than the people who just need to swap out the wall control, but at least they’d have the ability to make virtually
any fan z-wave compatible.
But I’m just a home automation consumer/geek with very little technical understanding of how they work. I’m good at installing them, programming scenes, getting various products like Vera, Alexa, Bond, etc., to talk to each other, etc., but I’ll be damned if
I understand the technical side of how all of it works, so it’s certainly possible that there are all sorts of technical issues that would screw up the concept.
Litex Industries - Litex WCI-100 Wall Command Universal Ceiling Fan Control, Three Speeds and Full Range Dimmer -When installing a Litex or any other fan and you need a wall control unit that is easy to install.
I just looked on your website, and saw the new switches (or at least one of them) are due at the end of this month. I was curious about the LED. When you say “notifications”, what does that entail? For example, could I program Smartthings/Webcore to send any kind of color/brightness command to the switch for any reason, like a smart bulb? If so, that would be really cool!
Yeah fantastic question! The notifications are super cool and I’m happy to explain better. Maybe @erocm1231 can explain better too in case I miss something as Webcore is above my paygrade lol.
The notifications are a way that you can visually see what’s going on in your house. For example, what you can do is set up a notification to notify you when a window is open (ie: LED bar flashes red when window is open past 10pm) or if your alarm system is armed (ie: LED lights up green to signify your alarm system is armed). Really, the sky is the limit in terms of what you can do.
I haven’t confirmed this (maybe Eric M. can) but possibly you could tie into IFTTT or something that has the LED light up a certain color based on the weather or whether your favorite sports team scores a touchdown or goal or something.
Hope this helps?
Eric
Just so you know, the homeseer brand zwave switches that came out last year have separate tiny indicator LEDs, each of which can be set to a different color if you want to.
It’s been quite a popular feature, particularly for people who want to show whether the smart home monitor feature is armed or not. 
So we are starting to see this kind of notification feature from more brands.
Yes, that sounds awesome. Now, are the switches currently up for preorder on the website all the new versions that will be coming out? I find it odd that the non-neutral switch has the LEDs, but the neutral-requiring switches don’t. My house has neutrals, so that doesn’t concern me, but what other differences will there be between the neutral-necessary and neutral-less switches? For example, I like the LED notifications, but I only need one that would have to be a dimmer. will there be a Advanced On/Off (or “Red”) version with LED notifications later on, or must I buy the dimmer to get notifications?
Hey @mebejedi – great questions and sorry for the confusion. We left the older switches up on the site because people are still looking for information on them (ie: parameters, instructions, etc) but I can definitely see how it’s confusing.
So, here is what’s coming out and I’ll follow up with answers to your questions below:
Dimmer Switches
On/Off Switches
Yes, these are all brand new switches.
They all have the RGB LED bar, we just made the Dimmer one longer so that it could show the dim level when you’re dimming up and down.
I’m not sure on an easy way to explain this as there is quite a bit of information, but I think the easiest way is to list out each switch and it’s capabilities – hopefully it’s not information overload!
Base Dimmer
Neutral or Non-Neutral Installation
Red Series Dimmer
Neutral or Non-Neutral Installation
Includes all of the above Base Dimmer Features plus the following:
Base On/Off
Neutral Installation Only
Red Series On/Off
Neutral Installation Only
Includes all of the above Base Dimmer Features plus the following:
So, to give a summary to your question, if you want notifications, you can purchase the Red Series On/Off or Dimmer.
Happy to answer any further questions – I know that was a lot (now you know my pain in trying to write a manual lol – it’s been a fun week to say the least!)
Eric
Another idea that could be a solution (but may not be practical) would be to have the wall controllers essentially have the capability to copy frequencies like what Bond does. Based on the link that JDRoberts provided to me up above, I decided to try out the Bond since the Zigbee option wasn’t really going to work for me (partially due to technical difficulties with my set-up and the pain of rewiring all of my fans & partially due to the cost since I have so many fans). The Bond is cool because I was able to program 6 of my fans with it and at least give them Alexa voice control, but they are far from ideal because it doesn’t work as reliably as my z-wave devices and it just blasts out a toggle signal that reverses that state of the light (the fan operation is a little less problematic because off, low, medium & high speed all have their own signal), so it’s impossible to keep the fan lights coordinated with all of the z-wave/Alexa controlled lights in the same room/group. If you turn off a z-wave light manually, that information is transmitted to your z-wave hub, plus there are separate commands for on and off. For the Bond, it doesn’t communicate with your z-wave hub what a device’s status is or if the wall control has been manually pushed (or the light came on as part of a scene or something), so it can pretty easily get out of sync with other lights it is grouped with.
For example, if you put the light on a ceiling fan that is downstairs in a group called “downstairs lights” so that you can turn them all off when you walk upstairs for bed at night, but the ceiling fan light isn’t one of the lights that is on, when you say, “Alexa, turn off downstairs lights,” all of the z-wave lights will properly turn off, but the Bond just sends out the on/off command, so the fan light then turns on. If the fan light is on, then it turns off and it isn’t a problem. But I live in a house with a wife and 4 kids, so the wall button is getting pushed every once in a while, likely putting it out of sync. There are huge aspects of the Bond that I really like, but it’s definitely imperfect when trying to integrate ceiling fans/lights controlled by the Bond with a house full of z-wave and other Alexa controlled devices.
In any event, my recent experimentation with the Bond gave me some insight into what it does. I’m guessing there are huge technical hurdles (and I think the Bond people actually have a huge database of ceiling fan remotes that they’ve programmed into their database), but on the off chance I’m wrong, maybe a z-wave fan/light wall controller that has the capability to copy the RF signals from your existing wireless remote/wall control that is already paired to the wireless receiver wired into the fan, similar to what Bond does, would solve the issue of compatibility. Basically a best of both worlds scenario: the flexibility of a Bond, but with true z-wave capability that would allow you to have accurate control through your z-wave hub and effectively include ceiling fans/lights in scenes.
I’m still pretty new to it but in my experience with the Bond it’s cool for giving my ceiling fans & lights voice control capability, but doesn’t integrate those devices in my smart home or give me the ability to reliably include them as part of scenes. I think separate z-wave enabled controllers for each fan would solve that problem and make it so that the ceiling fans/lights could be completely integrated just like the dozens of other devices I already have.
There may just be way too many technical/cost hurdles to make a universal z-wave controlled fan/light combo switch that doesn’t require rewiring a new receiver into the ceiling fan practical, but from a consumer’s perspective, it seems obvious that if such a solution were developed, it would sell substantially more units than an option that requires partially uninstalling and rewiring a ceiling fan. A lot of consumers just aren’t going to be willing to do that because they either don’t know how and are scared to, know how but don’t want to spend that much time and effort, or aren’t going to be willing to pay an electrician/handyman to do the job for them. Whereas swapping out just the wall switch is something that anybody who has gotten in to home automation is pretty familiar with.
As for WebCore, through the device handler we will make it possible for SmartApps such as WebCore to activate the notification feature of the switch based on any “event” that the SmartApp supports. For WebCore the sky really is the limit.
Oh, I see. (I mean, I guess one could tell by the dimness of the light itself, too…but it’s still a nice feature nonetheless.) Since the bar looked so different between the two, I wasn’t sure. Thanks for the clarification. I love my two existing switches…but now I have to ask myself if I want to replace those with LED switches, just for the COOL factor! 
Weird that dimmer switches don’t need a neutral, but on/off switches do. Must be a technical thing.
Well, now I need to see a man about a preorder. Will prices go up once we reach the shipping dates?
[EDIT] Looks like the website was updated. Much easier to see the differences now. Thank you. 
It sounds like you’re still not understanding the physics of what the bond does.
The bond has one radio which can hear signals in one radio frequency range, from 300-434 MHz. That’s it. It doesn’t operate in the same range as Zwave (908 MHz in the US). It doesn’t operate in the same range as Bluetooth or zigbee (2.4 GHz). So it simply cannot either hear or be heard by any devices working outside that frequency range.
Now that frequency happens to be one which is very popular for US-made fans. That’s why they have a big database of fans. However, there are lots of other fans that have zigbee or Bluetooth controllers, and they can’t do anything with those. Or zwave.
To listen to fans with controllers operating on other frequencies, they would have to add additional radios, additional antennas, and then they have to start worrying about interference between all of those. It’s just not worth the cost to the manufacturer because customers won’t want to pay the added costs it would require.
Think of it like a television set. You can buy a television sold for the US market, move to pretty much anywhere in the US, and pick up any of the local stations. That’s because they’re all operating in about the same band, And the television can receive them all with the single antenna and knows what to do with them.
But your electric toothbrush can’t listen in for what television station is on because it doesn’t have a radio for that. Even if it’s a Bluetooth toothbrush it still can’t hear the television frequencies.
The bond is not a “hears every fan controller ever made” device. It doesn’t even hear all of the most popular fan controllers ever made. It just hears a bunch of fan controllers that happen to be in about the same frequency, just like a television can receive a bunch of channels which happen to be in about the same frequency.
You could certainly add Z wave to a control device and create a bridge. There are some devices that exist of this type, but none of them handle more than two or three frequencies total, plus maybe IR.
Remotec has a zwave to IR device with a huge database of IR controlled air conditioners that will then look like a Z wave thermostat.
https://products.z-wavealliance.org/products/2445
Vera has a zwave hub that includes a 433 MHz Radio that can then link to a bunch of other devices. (They call their method “veralink“.)
But nobody makes a commercial device in the residential price range that can handle more than three or four frequencies. There are just way too many design issues and cost factors.
So understand what the bond is. It has a controller for IR and for a frequency band that covers frequencies in a very specific range that covers about 100 MHz. And it has some Wi-Fi capability for its own communications. But that’s it.
So if what they did looks easy it’s only because they picked the right use case to match a large category of existing consumer products.
If you have a specific set of devices that you want to control you can absolutely build your own bridge device between it and smartthings provided There is an open API so you know what command to send. Lots of people have done that for various different devices. It’s way easier when you know exactly what device you’re trying to talk to.
But as far as a universal controller that can handle any of the up to 57 different “common” frequencies used in a Home Automation or Entertainment devices, it’s just not gonna happen.
BTW, As I’ve said before, this company is the poster child for “overpromise and underdeliver.” So a lot of people are confused. In particular, the following statement
- Works with any remote-controlled ceiling fan
Just isn’t true. But they keep saying it. 
This is great info – I’ll definitely pass it onto the team to see what they can do. I just purchased a few different brands of RF switches and am going to send them to our manufacturer. It would also save me the hassle for a couple of my fans too, so I’m all about it. Thank you so much!
Also, we’re starting something new with all of our products in that we’d like to give credit where it’s due, and anyone that’s contributed to the product will get a free product as well as have their name in the box (signature) and credited on our website. You’ll be the first if we can implement this feature!
Yeah, 100%. I love it!
Lol, I mean… we won’t argue with you if you do!
Yeah, the reason is that with dimmers can draw from the power source to power the Z-Wave chip whereas with an On/Off switch there’s only On and Off. When the light is off, it cannot draw from the power source, and thus the Z-Wave chip is not powered (and goes offline).
Yeah, the’ll go up to their normal MSRP prices (~$30-$32 for Base Model & $37-$39 for Red Series). Keep an eye on the Inovelli.com website though, it’ll be cheaper than Amazon there.
Hope this helps!
Eric
Well I hope they figure out a way to make it work. That would be super cool!
Hey @JDRoberts, @Kyle1977, and anyone else who would like to have an update.
I’m at the manufacturer right now talking about the universal compatibility and here’s the issue that we’re running into and may be a roadblock here, unfortunately.
The issue is that it appears that a lot of RF Modules (kits) use 915 MHz or 433 MHz (with the majority of them at 915 – I sent about 5 different name-brands and all ended up being 915 MHz). Since our switch will have Z-Wave inside as well as RF, there will be significant interference with 915 MHz since Z-Wave uses 908.42 MHz. The issue with 433 MHz is that the antenna is supposedly huge (so much so they were all laughing… idk lol).
They are recommending 2.4 GHz – I’m not sure how many modules out there run on 2.4 GHz.
They’re still looking into it for interference issues, but they are pretty confident if both frequencies are in the same switch, there will be interference. We asked them how it’s possible Z-Wave, ZigBee, BT and WiFi can be in the same HUB, and they said that the HUB’s are larger first of all, and second they antennas are facing different directions.
Anyway, thought I’d give an update here. I’m a little bummed as this means I have to climb up on the ladder to replace my RF modules, but I guess it is what it is.
Any thoughts or insights? I’ll admit this isn’t my forte so I’m learning too about this hardware stuff.
Eric
