5 Thanks for the lemonade, Wink! Posted by Arthur Emerson on May 29th 2020

Wink's announcement that they were going to start charging everyone a monthly fee with just 7 day's notice was a wake-up call for a lot of us. I took the opportunity to see how far the HA industry had progressed since I installed Wink (and all of its limitations) in 2015. I decided on Hubitat to replace Wink, and noticed a large number of posts by the Hubitat user community praising Inovelli products. Long story short, I discovered my home automation "holy grail" when I looked at the Inovelli web site for the first time...a one-wire ceiling fan and light controller switch that works on Z-Wave (aka: Project Hurricane). I broke out my credit card and pre-ordered one on the spot! All four main rooms in my house have ceiling fans, and my indoor HA abilities have been stifled for years by not having an alternative. Back to the Red Series Switch. Before I put my credit card back into my wallet, I continued on the Inovelli web site and read all about these feature-packed switches with scene and button controller options, a programmable notification LED, and upgradable firmware from a small company and not a mega-conglomerate like GE/Jasco. I ordered three switches to cover all of my outside lighting needs, and waited patiently for a few days for them to arrive. I have one wired up to a lamp cord in a surface-mount PVC outlet box to experiment with, and it will ultimately control the back yard flood lights. In Hubitat, I programmed it so that the notification light was off when the lights were off. One tap of the switch up/down turns the back yard floods on/off and sets the notification LED on steady blue (to match the behavior of our being-replaced ancient GE/Jasco switches for WAF purposes). Two taps up/down turns on/off *all* outside floods (front yard and detached garage), and sets the notification LED to slow flashing blue. Press+hold the switch up/down enables the flood lights for 5 minutes, and fast-flashes the LED indicator blue. This should be useful when taking the garbage out, or departing from home after dark. Anyway, I've been having so much fun tinkering with all of the available options that the Red Series Switch presents that I haven't even gotten around to installing them in place yet after a whole week with them in my hands! My brief experience with these switches was enough to make me break out my credit card again, to place another pre-order for three more fan/light switches for every other occupied room in our house. I have no reservations that Inovelli will deliver an awesome product in the near future. We only have six "dumb" switches left in our house, and most of them are in closets or low-traffic rooms. I can see another 6-switch purchase heading in Inovelli's direction in the near future.....