Hello fellow HA enthusiasts!
I’d love to get the group’s feedback on a product I am working on bringing to market. I, like many of you, am surprised at the lack of high-quality Z-Wave scene controllers in the market currently. So I decided to build one myself.
The current prototype features 5 wide buttons stacked vertically (scene/room toggles) plus 2 smaller buttons arranged side-by-side at the bottom (raise/lower). It fits into a standard Decora-style opening. Custom text engraving will be available for the 5 wide buttons.
There have been similar products in the past but at this time there doesn’t seem to be anything available for purchase in this space. Keypads with similar designs are super popular in the high-end lighting market (Crestron, Lutron, etc) so I was surprised when I went to buy scene controllers to pair with my 80-ish Z-Wave dimmers/switches that there isn’t anything available.
As a temporary fix I put in a bunch of the ugly Zooz ZEN32 scene controllers but I hate them for the following reasons.
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The four small buttons on the Zooz are too small to custom engrave text onto.
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The single large button frequently sticks if not pressed in the middle of the button. This can be a nightmare; in my case, my wife and I were out of the country and my mother-in-law flew in to babysit/housesit for us. The zooz button which toggles a scene in the guest bedroom got stuck, causing the lights in the bedroom to toggle on and off every few seconds. She ended up sleeping on the couch in the living room because she couldn’t get the bedroom lights to turn off.
What is the interest level in this product? Any features that are make-or-break that I should consider including that I might not have thought of yet? This is your opportunity to help design a product that you will be able to use in your own environment. I am all ears to the incredibly bright and creative HA community!!
Thanks in advance!
Brian Gunderson
President / CTO
Channel One Labs, Inc.
www.channelonelabs.com (new website is a work in progress)