I recently moved into a newer house with a more classical style than my last home. I was happy with my vera3 and leviton zwave switches in my last house, but my wife wants to keep the toggle switches.
I’m looking at two options: going with the aeotec micro switches and using the existing toggles or buying an insteon modem and using insteon toggles, which appear to be nice quality and reasonably priced compared to the levitons I’ve bought in the past.
I’m leaning toward the insteon option since the microswitches seem to be a bit unknown… not many reviews or companies selling them. Will I regret not going pure zwave?
If I’m not mistaken, Fibaro are about to enter the US market (I’m in Europe myself). The Fibaros are a bit nicer than the micro switches, but are missing power meetering.
Might be worth checking out/ wait for?
do you have a link for more info on Fibaro entering the US market? The newest information I can fund was posted in late 2011. I wouldn’t mind waiting a few months as long as it didn’t turn into waiting indefinitely/ years.
To be clear, I did find two or three anecdotal reviews of the microswitches, and one of the anecdotal reviews was less than glowing. I usually try to buy well-vetted products, and this definitely doesn’t have that feel to it.
I have three (I think) of the micro energy switches for my under floor heating and a electric towel heater (I’m sure there’s an English word for that contraption ). They are quite nice when you are using them for this, since you can see when the under floor thermostats go on/off. They are quite big though (comparing to my fibaros), and the soldering on my units where… horrible. I think I got some pre-production units as they where hand soldered.
But anyway, they have been working just fine as installed for over a year.
The plugin versions (energy dimmer and switch) are much nicer on the board level, and (at least mine) has great soldering and over all quality feel to them. Hopefully the later micro-xx are as nice.
I have one of the micro dimmers in active use as well; and like it. I was going to reply to @grybrd’s topic at some point, but held off until the issue with the Leviton VRCS1 is fixed. (In my setup I have a VRCS1, a VRCS4 and a VRCZ1 talking to the same micro dimmer. The issue with the VRCS1 should be unrelated to the micro switch though.)
). They are quite nice when you are using them for this, since you can see when the under floor thermostats go on/off. They are quite big though (comparing to my fibaros), and the soldering on my units where… horrible. I think I got some pre-production units as they where hand soldered.