First, we want to acknowledge something important: we’ve been too quiet. Over the past couple of years, we haven’t engaged with our user base as much as we should have, and we know many of you have been wondering what’s next from HomeSeer. We’re committed to changing that. You may have noticed an increase in social media activity, blog posts, and participation in local events lately. This is a part of these efforts, and we will be continuing to work hard at this proceeding with this announcement.
We want to share two products we’ve been working on. The ZNET Pro represents our thinking about where network interfaces should go, and the WS300 brings us back to the wall switch market after we had to stop production a couple of years ago when manufacturing costs became prohibitive.
Product image is digitally edited to more closely represent the final look
The ZNET Pro: Dual-Network Interface
Coming Soon: 3-5 months | Production begins: Mid-August
The ZNET Pro is our new dual-network (Z-Wave and Zigbee) IP interface. We believe this is the first device in the smart home market to offer both protocols in a single IP interface. It’s the next generation of our ZNET Z-Wave interface, and we are very excited to be releasing it..
The most significant change is that we’ve added Zigbee capability alongside the existing Z-Wave functionality. Like the previous generation, it provides remote interface access over IP networks, but now you can manage both Z-Wave and Zigbee devices from a single interface. We’ve also made the new model significantly smaller and more compact than the previous generation. One change that might matter to some users: we removed the USB ports. With Zigbee built-in, we felt this was less critical, but we’d love to hear from you if you have specific USB use cases we should consider.
The ZNET Pro has three LED indicators now instead of just one – they show power, Z-Wave, and Zigbee states at a glance, and we’ve spent considerable time on reliability, particularly making sure it recovers gracefully from power failures every time. We know many of you have off-grid homes, second homes, or family systems that you can’t easily get to for troubleshooting, so this device absolutely has to work reliably.
We’re also moving away from a Raspberry Pi base for the first time at HomeSeer, using a specialty single-board computer instead. Raspberry Pi boards don’t have good ground planes, and we’ve found that to be one of the more important aspects for a hub that needs to hear devices well. The specialty SBC we are using gives us much better Z-Wave and Zigbee range.
The WS300: Our Flagship Wall Switch Returns
Coming Soon: 3-5 months | Full Production: September
It’s been a couple of years since we released a new wall switch, and we know many of you have been waiting. Wall switches have always been some of our flagship products, and the WS300 represents our return to this market.
We’re going back to separate product lines for switches (WS) and dimmers (WD) after the WX300 became too expensive to produce. The WS300 focuses specifically on on/off switching and is very similar to the WS200, but we’ve made some focused improvements in durability, button feel, and LED performance. We switched from the triac design used in the WX300 back to the relay design used in previous WS versions..
We also spent a lot of time on the LED – getting the color balance and brightness just right. Most smart switches either don’t have RGB LEDs, don’t let you control the LED, or have LEDs that are too dim to be useful. We wanted something bright enough to be effective as an indicator light without being blindingly bright when you’re trying to sleep.
We felt it was important to make the white color more warm white than cool white since blue tends to be a little too disruptive in a dark room
Current Status
The WS300 is currently in production with an initial run of 200 units to test our manufacturing and quality assurance processes. Both products are going through final certifications, with the ZNET Pro completing final testing and the WS300 going through Z-Wave certification.
PS – We are planning on working on a WD300 dimmer following the WS300. Expect an update on this sometime next year.
Available for Preorder Now!
We’re excited to announce that both of our products are available for preorder today with special launch pricing:
Something else is on the horizon...
There is one more thing we will be sharing with you this week. Keep a lookout for another blog. Sign up for our newsletter to make sure you don’t miss it.
