13 ms·

Z-Wave Alliance Announces Z-Wave Source Code Project Now Open and Available

154 points by JeanSebTr 4y ago

solarkraft 4y ago
Sounds like a last resort for popularity. The market for IoT RF standards is consolidating and Z-Wave doesn't seem to be among the winners.
- culi 4y ago
  as someone out of the loop on IoT standards in general, are there any central orgs pushing these standards? Are open standards winning at least?
  - sigspec 4y ago
    "Matter" has basically everyone: https://csa-iot.org/members/ https://csa-iot.org/members/
    - Jochim 4y ago
      You've got to love a $7k/year fee for the privilege of paying $3k per product to say you support their standard.
- Izkata 4y ago
  Some years ago when I was getting into this it looked to me like Z-Wave was winning. Did something happen?
  - ars 4y ago
    Z-Wave is definitely the better protocol (vs Zigbee), but Matter is partially based on Zigbee so everyone expects Z-Wave to lose. I don't agree, I think Z-wave will work with Matter using bridging.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - vardump 4y ago
      Any reasoning why? My home automation is 95%+ Zigbee, and I don't see any issues. Mesh networking works very nicely, reaching far corners of the house.
      - X-Istence 4y ago
        Z-Wave's mesh networking was a giant pain to get functioning correctly, and good luck if devices were multiple hops away... things would just randomly fall off the network. With Zigbee (IKEA TRADFRI and Philips Hue) I haven' had any of those issues, nor with any of my Thread devices.
        thewataccount 4y ago
        I have nordic dev chips, esp8266's, esp32's, etc. I have some zigbee stuff with HA, and I have made some custom sensors with esphome. I'd like to try some thread stuff. How are you currently using thread/what are you using it with? Do you have any recommendations for how to get started with it now - I've been rather confused as it feels like its in limbo right now. How do you like it compared to zigbee and wifi?
        X-Istence 4y ago
        My Thread devices are all HomeKit devices, and they work incredibly well. Once they are joined to the Thread network they show up as IPv6 devices in mDNS and just work. I have a ton of Thread enabled lightbulbs, smart outlets, and sensors on Thread, and I haven't had any issues. They seem to mesh really well, store and forward for devices that are sleepy just works, but sleepy devices waking up and sending traffic is almost instant. I do not own any devices that use WiFi, other than my Ecobee thermostat. So I can't compare against that. I would put the Thread devices up there alongside the Zigbee devices in terms of reliability, if not more resilient since I have multiple thread border router capable devices (multiple HomePod mini's and Apple TV's with Thread) so a device getting restarted (unlike a Zigbee hub like Hue/IKEA TRADFRI) won't affect the network/ability for the devices to trigger responses.
  - Lendal 4y ago
    The new Thread protocol (part of Matter) is basically Zigbee on steroids which gets it up to parity with Z-wave. The reason to choose Z-wave over Thread is that Z-wave works now and has many devices available to buy, while Thread works in theory and the devices are very few in number. Thread devices are due out in force next year. So this actually is perfect timing for Z-wave to make this move now, right as the first wave of Thread devices are approaching.
    - xattt 4y ago
      There were a bunch of missed opportunities for Zigbee to become enshrined in the home. For example, the first and second-gen Nest thermostats had a Zigbee radio built-in. At acquisition by Google, Nest heavily leaned into the wifi/cloud side for control and the Zigbee radio was squandered, other than for some esoteric “Works with Nest” protocol that maybe 2 other third-party devices supported. Edit: I stand corrected by the comment below.
      - oflannabhra 4y ago
        That is an inaccurate history. Nest has always been IP-based and drove much of the initial Thread standard. Their radio was 802.15.4, but not Zigbee.
    - solarkraft 4y ago
      > Zigbee on steroids It's definitely not as proprietary, which is probably relevant to a lot of potential implementers. There's close to no public information about Zigbee implementations while Google invites people to implement Thread through OpenThread. Thread likely has more features with some pretty fully featured networking support, which some may consider positive, but some negative.
- ars 4y ago
  The owner of Z-Wave is also a major contribute to Matter. I think they can work together. See: https://z-wavealliance.org/matter-1-0-is-here-and-z-wave-is-accelerating-which-is-why-bridging-will-matter-to-both-protocols-and-smart-home-consumers-everywhere/ https://z-wavealliance.org/matter-1-0-is-here-and-z-wave-is-... Also: https://www.silabs.com/blog/bridging-non-matter-devices-to-a-matter-network https://www.silabs.com/blog/bridging-non-matter-devices-to-a...
- bluSCALE4 4y ago
  The problem with Z-Wave is the price and consistency. I bought an extender so it worked in the garage but it never worked. I've spent hours/days trying to get them to work by closely following instructions and buying dongles to better manage nodes. Still, I never got my lock and switch to work. I'll likely just end up replacing them with wifi devices at a fraction of the cost.
pzo 4y ago
The title is confusing and sounds like just PR. I thought they mean "Z-Wave project is Open Source now" but looks like source code is still in private github repository and you need to be a "member" to get access. What "Source Code Project" supposed to even mean? Any source code is part of some project(s).
- hedora 4y ago
  The article links to this: > The goal of the source code project is to provide a rich development environment containing relevant source code and sample applications under BSD 3 License. The Z-Wave source code project will enable members to contribute code to the project under the supervision of the new OS Work Group (OSWG). Which doesn't clarify at all. Is OS "open source" or "operating system", or something? Is the relevant source code also BSD licensed? What does it include? My guess is that this is a teaser article for an event that happened last month, and the repo is open now (or they forgot to open it). Anyway, I came here to figure out what Z-Wave is, and why it is better than other smart home networks. Any ideas?
  - synergy20 4y ago
    z-wave is kind of competing with zigbee for low power mid-range wireless standard for smart home or smart building since like 20 years ago? then we have low power bluetooth and low-power wifi joined the party. z-wave was proprietary which did not help its deployments, but still I recall it was the most deployed low power wireless devices for IoT. I worked on zigbee and never liked it. I wish z-wave was more open back in time. Did not track what's going on these days for low power mid-range wireless, general feeling is that zigbee did not take off, zwave is used as before(you license it and put it to your sensors), and more and more are using low-power wifi and even bluetooth instead.
    - zamalek 4y ago
      > general feeling is that zigbee did not take off Z-Wave's primary advantage is, ironically, the openness of the ecosystem. Due to the lack of a stringent certification process Zigbee vendors can (and routinely do) lock devices to their proprietary hub. I'm guessing that is one main motivator for its failure. Though, keep in mind that Hue (one of the most successful IoT vendors) is all open Zigbee. Zigbee's main advantage is that it's cheap. Thread (the new standard to fix the old standards) is apparently just "Zigbee, the good parts". We will see if vendors drive it into uselessness like before.
nicolaslem 4y ago
With all tech giants putting their weight behind a competing (open) standard, z-wave is probably feeling the pressure to adapt or become irrelevant.
- VLM 4y ago
  Firmware for Matter is going to be enormous, zwave is a lot simpler. Lots of pessimism in the market about the interoperability of Matter. No mfgr is going to be motivated to encourage their customers to interoperate with a competitors gadget. My prediction is everything will ship with a "matter" icon on it, but support will only be vertical silo, maybe even worse than things are now. Thread is basically a full wifi-ish TCP/IPv6 stack, so, again, pretty huge compared to a tiny little zwave firmware. Interesting angle to think about: Is the middle or end of a chip shortage the worst possible time to ship a HUGE new standard, or is it the best possible time because there's no stockpile of smaller memory smaller CPU legacy microcontrollers?
  - daenney 4y ago
    > My prediction is everything will ship with a "matter" icon on it, but support will only be vertical silo, maybe even worse than things are now. There's already available evidence that contradicts that prediction. Eve[1] is rolling out a firmware update for Matter support that makes their devices usable across all Matter supported platforms. There are some features that aren't yet available at the Matter level so those will remain in their own app for now. Despite being iOS-only previously with Matter support they're now also reaching Android devices and are working on an Android app for it too to cover the missing features in Matter. [1]: https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/12/23505097/matter-eve-firmware-update-available-now https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/12/23505097/matter-eve-firm...
    - Dayshine 4y ago
      Why wouldn't there be a race to the bottom as soon as some company finds a way to stamp out cheap white label components?
slimginz 4y ago
Now that Matter and Thread are finally starting to roll out, is there really any good reason for new products to still use Z-Wave? Or am I just crazy to see this as Z-Wave trying to continue a format war (first started with Zigbee) that they're almost certainly going to lose?
- worldmerge 4y ago
  Do Matter and Thread use wifi or are they a different radio freq?
  - ihattendorf 4y ago
    Thread is a mesh IPv6 based network that operates over the 2.4 GHz ISM band but is not WiFi. Matter is a communication protocol built on top of Thread, WiFi, and BLE (and potentially others in the future).
    - vineyardmike 4y ago
      > Matter is a communication protocol built on top of... Matter is a communication protocol built on top of IP, with a special blessing to Ethernet, Wifi, BLE, and Thread.
  - petre 4y ago
    Thread and ZigBee operate in the 2.4 Ghz and also 833/915 Mhz although in practice I've never seen any devices that explicitly claim to be using the sub Ghz bands. It's not WiFi, it's IEEE 802.15.4. Matter supports devices connected through WiFi, Thread and Ethernet with BT provisioning.
  - dwaite 4y ago
    Thread is a mesh protocol on 6LoWPAN, which in turn is based on the same underlying 802.11.4 as Zigbee in the 2.4 Ghz spectrum. Its claims to fame is having reasonable response times/batteru life and being based on IPv6. Being based on IP allows devices to talk to one another, and for bridging those devices to the broader network and potentially to the internet with clear layer separation. Matter is a IP-based IoT discovery and use standard. Devices advertise Thread and/or Wifi support for wireless support. It also standardizes onboarding (I know BLE is an option there) and the underlying security, and mandates certain capabilities such as supporting multiple 'admin' software at once. Devices using other wireless tech can also theoretically work with Matter with a gateway that does protocol translation, supports device onboarding, and then exposes them onto the network.
ksec 4y ago
What is Z-Wave. Are there any competing IEEE 802 standards?
- netr0ute 4y ago
  Z-wave uses lower frequencies compared to something like Matter so it you can use a lower power or get more range. One competing 802 standard is 802.11ah, or WiFi HaLoW which barely exists right now but should be the best thing available.
  - philsnow 4y ago
    Using lower frequencies also means you're not stepping on the 2.4GHz band, so you won't have interference from wifi or microwaves or whatever else.
- darkhelmet 4y ago
  First, there was X10. There was appetite for something better. There were several candidate replacements, including: * UPB - Universal Powerline Bus (powerline) * Insteon (powerline + wireless) * Z-Wave (wireless) * Zigbee (wireless) Of these, Zigbee seems to be in the best position these days. Z-Wave is/was a closed system - you had to get compatibility testing/certification in order to sell products using the tech. It's fairly lightweight, reliable, and well respected by users.
cherioo 4y ago
One thing i have read but not seen brought up here yet is that zwave has so far only have one hardware soc vendor (silicon labs). This would seem like how they have been able to enforce certification compliance. And it’s probably leads to higher cost (hardware and software?) and thus lower adoption. This open source project reportedly will start allowing more chip vendor as well, so it will be interesting how that affects the ecosystem.
X-Istence 4y ago
I installed Z-Wave all over my house. Replaced all the switches, got the sensors, light bulbs where necessary, everything was Z-Wave... and it was a nightmare. I ended up selling the house with everything Z-Wave still in it, and the new owners were happy to have a "Smart Home" capable home, but I will never again touch Z-Wave. Once your Z-Wave network grows past a certain number of devices it becomes too chatty and devices will be unable to communicate data. That led to motion sensors being incredibly slow and or not triggering when needed. Light bulbs wouldn't change colors until seconds or sometimes minutes later when the network was freed up enough to send the commands. These days I have three systems: Zigbee (through Ikea TRADFRI and Philips Hue), Lutron (Caseta wireless), and Thread (through HomeKit). I have a bunch of sensors on both Zigbee and Thread and they fire in HomeKit and HomeKit takes actions to turn on/off lights as necessary. Lights turn on/off almost instantly, motion sensors just work (the Thread ones especially are incredibly fast), I've got temperature sensors/lightbulbs on Thread as well. I am looking forward to seeing what Matter/Thread bring next as that is definitely where I will be concentrating my purchases. Z-Wave had a chance, and unfortunately it did not seem architected/high bandwidth enough for the amount of devices I ended up having on my Z-Wave network (~200 devices)...
- montjoy 4y ago
  Sounds like you had some non-zwave+ devices or you were using a lot of s0 encryption. Both are known to slow down the network. Like everything it’s gotten better over time. The 700 series stuff is pretty quick.
  - WXLCKNO 4y ago
    Encryption was insanely slow when I first tried it on my Inovelli Red Series switches. Without encryption it was an instant (feeling) response time.
  - oceanplexian 4y ago
    I'm also running a Zwave network and it's highly responsive with around 50 devices. A friend of mine is running a few hundred devices and I haven't heard him complain much about it, all of his actions/triggers/etc seem to execute pretty much instantly. I'm going to guess that his network topology has a lot devices that are only accessible by repeaters, or aren't using Zwave+. Zwave is pretty much _the standard_ for large professional smart home installations and scales pretty well if implemented properly.
oflannabhra 4y ago
I see a lot of confusion in the thread regarding IoT, and to clear up some of that, IoT operates across multiple different layers of the OSI model: PHY, Network, Application. PHY is how data is modulated (think radios, etc), Network is how data is shared / routed (think WiFi), Application is the contents of the data across the network (ie, Light: Off) IEEE 802.15.4 - a PHY standard, equivalent to 802.11 standards that WiFi is built on top of. Z-Wave - a recently acquired technology that vertically slices the entire OSI model, defining PHY interaction, network communication, and application. SiLabs recently acquired it, but it has always only offered chips from a single company. Zigbee - multiple versions of several standards: the most popular used the 802.15.4 standard for the PHY, but used custom networking and custom application layers. Thread - a 6LoWPan mesh network protocol, built on top of 802.15.4. It provides the Networking layer, but does not define application layers. Allows for IPv6 traffic. It also defines some security and BLE interop. Lots of companies make Thread chips and offer their own Thread stacks Matter - an Application layer standard that defines the shape and behavior of messages sent across a variety of different networking technologies: Thread, WiFi, etc. Requires IPv6, and potentially border routers to translate the PHY differences.
- Tcepsa 4y ago
  Thank you for pulling this all together here, it really helped me understand what everyone is talking about!
coreyp_1 4y ago
Everybody here keeps talking about how reliable Z-Wave is, and I absolutely HATE mine, and was telling someone last week that I would never recommend them to anyone. Have I just had a bad experience? I have 3 Z-wave switches, and once a month at least one of them needs to be reset. They just stop responding until the air gap switch is pulled. I hate them and I can't rely on them at all. Conversely, I have 30+ Zigbee switches, and they are quite reliable. The only reason that I have the 3 Z-wave switches is that I needed paddle switch fan controllers with an almond color, and I could only find them in Z-wave by Enbrighten. (Side note: why are almost ALL the smart switches only available in white?) Of course, as I type this, my RPi with HomeAssistant got bricked with the latest update, so now my SmartHouse is not merely dumb, it's stubborn!
- ugh123 4y ago
  I had a regular resetting problem with a switch once. Bugged me for months. Turned out the button switch would occasionally get stuck in the pressed position and cause the reset. Bad design, but wasn't the protocol/firmware's fault.

154 points by JeanSebTr 4y ago

Sounds like a last resort for popularity. The market for IoT RF standards is consolidating and Z-Wave doesn't seem to be among the winners.

culi 4y ago
as someone out of the loop on IoT standards in general, are there any central orgs pushing these standards? Are open standards winning at least?
- sigspec 4y ago
  "Matter" has basically everyone: https://csa-iot.org/members/ https://csa-iot.org/members/
  - Jochim 4y ago
    You've got to love a $7k/year fee for the privilege of paying $3k per product to say you support their standard.
Izkata 4y ago
Some years ago when I was getting into this it looked to me like Z-Wave was winning. Did something happen?
- ars 4y ago
  Z-Wave is definitely the better protocol (vs Zigbee), but Matter is partially based on Zigbee so everyone expects Z-Wave to lose. I don't agree, I think Z-wave will work with Matter using bridging.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - vardump 4y ago
    Any reasoning why? My home automation is 95%+ Zigbee, and I don't see any issues. Mesh networking works very nicely, reaching far corners of the house.
    - X-Istence 4y ago
      Z-Wave's mesh networking was a giant pain to get functioning correctly, and good luck if devices were multiple hops away... things would just randomly fall off the network. With Zigbee (IKEA TRADFRI and Philips Hue) I haven' had any of those issues, nor with any of my Thread devices.
      - thewataccount 4y ago
        I have nordic dev chips, esp8266's, esp32's, etc. I have some zigbee stuff with HA, and I have made some custom sensors with esphome. I'd like to try some thread stuff. How are you currently using thread/what are you using it with? Do you have any recommendations for how to get started with it now - I've been rather confused as it feels like its in limbo right now. How do you like it compared to zigbee and wifi?
        X-Istence 4y ago
        My Thread devices are all HomeKit devices, and they work incredibly well. Once they are joined to the Thread network they show up as IPv6 devices in mDNS and just work. I have a ton of Thread enabled lightbulbs, smart outlets, and sensors on Thread, and I haven't had any issues. They seem to mesh really well, store and forward for devices that are sleepy just works, but sleepy devices waking up and sending traffic is almost instant. I do not own any devices that use WiFi, other than my Ecobee thermostat. So I can't compare against that. I would put the Thread devices up there alongside the Zigbee devices in terms of reliability, if not more resilient since I have multiple thread border router capable devices (multiple HomePod mini's and Apple TV's with Thread) so a device getting restarted (unlike a Zigbee hub like Hue/IKEA TRADFRI) won't affect the network/ability for the devices to trigger responses.
- Lendal 4y ago
  The new Thread protocol (part of Matter) is basically Zigbee on steroids which gets it up to parity with Z-wave. The reason to choose Z-wave over Thread is that Z-wave works now and has many devices available to buy, while Thread works in theory and the devices are very few in number. Thread devices are due out in force next year. So this actually is perfect timing for Z-wave to make this move now, right as the first wave of Thread devices are approaching.
  - xattt 4y ago
    There were a bunch of missed opportunities for Zigbee to become enshrined in the home. For example, the first and second-gen Nest thermostats had a Zigbee radio built-in. At acquisition by Google, Nest heavily leaned into the wifi/cloud side for control and the Zigbee radio was squandered, other than for some esoteric “Works with Nest” protocol that maybe 2 other third-party devices supported. Edit: I stand corrected by the comment below.
    - oflannabhra 4y ago
      That is an inaccurate history. Nest has always been IP-based and drove much of the initial Thread standard. Their radio was 802.15.4, but not Zigbee.
  - solarkraft 4y ago
    > Zigbee on steroids It's definitely not as proprietary, which is probably relevant to a lot of potential implementers. There's close to no public information about Zigbee implementations while Google invites people to implement Thread through OpenThread. Thread likely has more features with some pretty fully featured networking support, which some may consider positive, but some negative.
ars 4y ago
The owner of Z-Wave is also a major contribute to Matter. I think they can work together. See: https://z-wavealliance.org/matter-1-0-is-here-and-z-wave-is-accelerating-which-is-why-bridging-will-matter-to-both-protocols-and-smart-home-consumers-everywhere/ https://z-wavealliance.org/matter-1-0-is-here-and-z-wave-is-... Also: https://www.silabs.com/blog/bridging-non-matter-devices-to-a-matter-network https://www.silabs.com/blog/bridging-non-matter-devices-to-a...
bluSCALE4 4y ago
The problem with Z-Wave is the price and consistency. I bought an extender so it worked in the garage but it never worked. I've spent hours/days trying to get them to work by closely following instructions and buying dongles to better manage nodes. Still, I never got my lock and switch to work. I'll likely just end up replacing them with wifi devices at a fraction of the cost.

pzo 4y ago

The title is confusing and sounds like just PR. I thought they mean "Z-Wave project is Open Source now" but looks like source code is still in private github repository and you need to be a "member" to get access. What "Source Code Project" supposed to even mean? Any source code is part of some project(s).

hedora 4y ago
The article links to this: > The goal of the source code project is to provide a rich development environment containing relevant source code and sample applications under BSD 3 License. The Z-Wave source code project will enable members to contribute code to the project under the supervision of the new OS Work Group (OSWG). Which doesn't clarify at all. Is OS "open source" or "operating system", or something? Is the relevant source code also BSD licensed? What does it include? My guess is that this is a teaser article for an event that happened last month, and the repo is open now (or they forgot to open it). Anyway, I came here to figure out what Z-Wave is, and why it is better than other smart home networks. Any ideas?
- synergy20 4y ago
  z-wave is kind of competing with zigbee for low power mid-range wireless standard for smart home or smart building since like 20 years ago? then we have low power bluetooth and low-power wifi joined the party. z-wave was proprietary which did not help its deployments, but still I recall it was the most deployed low power wireless devices for IoT. I worked on zigbee and never liked it. I wish z-wave was more open back in time. Did not track what's going on these days for low power mid-range wireless, general feeling is that zigbee did not take off, zwave is used as before(you license it and put it to your sensors), and more and more are using low-power wifi and even bluetooth instead.
  - zamalek 4y ago
    > general feeling is that zigbee did not take off Z-Wave's primary advantage is, ironically, the openness of the ecosystem. Due to the lack of a stringent certification process Zigbee vendors can (and routinely do) lock devices to their proprietary hub. I'm guessing that is one main motivator for its failure. Though, keep in mind that Hue (one of the most successful IoT vendors) is all open Zigbee. Zigbee's main advantage is that it's cheap. Thread (the new standard to fix the old standards) is apparently just "Zigbee, the good parts". We will see if vendors drive it into uselessness like before.

nicolaslem 4y ago

With all tech giants putting their weight behind a competing (open) standard, z-wave is probably feeling the pressure to adapt or become irrelevant.

VLM 4y ago
Firmware for Matter is going to be enormous, zwave is a lot simpler. Lots of pessimism in the market about the interoperability of Matter. No mfgr is going to be motivated to encourage their customers to interoperate with a competitors gadget. My prediction is everything will ship with a "matter" icon on it, but support will only be vertical silo, maybe even worse than things are now. Thread is basically a full wifi-ish TCP/IPv6 stack, so, again, pretty huge compared to a tiny little zwave firmware. Interesting angle to think about: Is the middle or end of a chip shortage the worst possible time to ship a HUGE new standard, or is it the best possible time because there's no stockpile of smaller memory smaller CPU legacy microcontrollers?
- daenney 4y ago
  > My prediction is everything will ship with a "matter" icon on it, but support will only be vertical silo, maybe even worse than things are now. There's already available evidence that contradicts that prediction. Eve[1] is rolling out a firmware update for Matter support that makes their devices usable across all Matter supported platforms. There are some features that aren't yet available at the Matter level so those will remain in their own app for now. Despite being iOS-only previously with Matter support they're now also reaching Android devices and are working on an Android app for it too to cover the missing features in Matter. [1]: https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/12/23505097/matter-eve-firmware-update-available-now https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/12/23505097/matter-eve-firm...
  - Dayshine 4y ago
    Why wouldn't there be a race to the bottom as soon as some company finds a way to stamp out cheap white label components?

slimginz 4y ago

Now that Matter and Thread are finally starting to roll out, is there really any good reason for new products to still use Z-Wave? Or am I just crazy to see this as Z-Wave trying to continue a format war (first started with Zigbee) that they're almost certainly going to lose?

worldmerge 4y ago
Do Matter and Thread use wifi or are they a different radio freq?
- ihattendorf 4y ago
  Thread is a mesh IPv6 based network that operates over the 2.4 GHz ISM band but is not WiFi. Matter is a communication protocol built on top of Thread, WiFi, and BLE (and potentially others in the future).
  - vineyardmike 4y ago
    > Matter is a communication protocol built on top of... Matter is a communication protocol built on top of IP, with a special blessing to Ethernet, Wifi, BLE, and Thread.
- petre 4y ago
  Thread and ZigBee operate in the 2.4 Ghz and also 833/915 Mhz although in practice I've never seen any devices that explicitly claim to be using the sub Ghz bands. It's not WiFi, it's IEEE 802.15.4. Matter supports devices connected through WiFi, Thread and Ethernet with BT provisioning.
- dwaite 4y ago
  Thread is a mesh protocol on 6LoWPAN, which in turn is based on the same underlying 802.11.4 as Zigbee in the 2.4 Ghz spectrum. Its claims to fame is having reasonable response times/batteru life and being based on IPv6. Being based on IP allows devices to talk to one another, and for bridging those devices to the broader network and potentially to the internet with clear layer separation. Matter is a IP-based IoT discovery and use standard. Devices advertise Thread and/or Wifi support for wireless support. It also standardizes onboarding (I know BLE is an option there) and the underlying security, and mandates certain capabilities such as supporting multiple 'admin' software at once. Devices using other wireless tech can also theoretically work with Matter with a gateway that does protocol translation, supports device onboarding, and then exposes them onto the network.

ksec 4y ago

What is Z-Wave. Are there any competing IEEE 802 standards?

netr0ute 4y ago
Z-wave uses lower frequencies compared to something like Matter so it you can use a lower power or get more range. One competing 802 standard is 802.11ah, or WiFi HaLoW which barely exists right now but should be the best thing available.
- philsnow 4y ago
  Using lower frequencies also means you're not stepping on the 2.4GHz band, so you won't have interference from wifi or microwaves or whatever else.
darkhelmet 4y ago
First, there was X10. There was appetite for something better. There were several candidate replacements, including: * UPB - Universal Powerline Bus (powerline) * Insteon (powerline + wireless) * Z-Wave (wireless) * Zigbee (wireless) Of these, Zigbee seems to be in the best position these days. Z-Wave is/was a closed system - you had to get compatibility testing/certification in order to sell products using the tech. It's fairly lightweight, reliable, and well respected by users.

cherioo 4y ago

One thing i have read but not seen brought up here yet is that zwave has so far only have one hardware soc vendor (silicon labs). This would seem like how they have been able to enforce certification compliance. And it’s probably leads to higher cost (hardware and software?) and thus lower adoption. This open source project reportedly will start allowing more chip vendor as well, so it will be interesting how that affects the ecosystem.

X-Istence 4y ago

I installed Z-Wave all over my house. Replaced all the switches, got the sensors, light bulbs where necessary, everything was Z-Wave... and it was a nightmare. I ended up selling the house with everything Z-Wave still in it, and the new owners were happy to have a "Smart Home" capable home, but I will never again touch Z-Wave. Once your Z-Wave network grows past a certain number of devices it becomes too chatty and devices will be unable to communicate data. That led to motion sensors being incredibly slow and or not triggering when needed. Light bulbs wouldn't change colors until seconds or sometimes minutes later when the network was freed up enough to send the commands. These days I have three systems: Zigbee (through Ikea TRADFRI and Philips Hue), Lutron (Caseta wireless), and Thread (through HomeKit). I have a bunch of sensors on both Zigbee and Thread and they fire in HomeKit and HomeKit takes actions to turn on/off lights as necessary. Lights turn on/off almost instantly, motion sensors just work (the Thread ones especially are incredibly fast), I've got temperature sensors/lightbulbs on Thread as well. I am looking forward to seeing what Matter/Thread bring next as that is definitely where I will be concentrating my purchases. Z-Wave had a chance, and unfortunately it did not seem architected/high bandwidth enough for the amount of devices I ended up having on my Z-Wave network (~200 devices)...

montjoy 4y ago
Sounds like you had some non-zwave+ devices or you were using a lot of s0 encryption. Both are known to slow down the network. Like everything it’s gotten better over time. The 700 series stuff is pretty quick.
- WXLCKNO 4y ago
  Encryption was insanely slow when I first tried it on my Inovelli Red Series switches. Without encryption it was an instant (feeling) response time.
- oceanplexian 4y ago
  I'm also running a Zwave network and it's highly responsive with around 50 devices. A friend of mine is running a few hundred devices and I haven't heard him complain much about it, all of his actions/triggers/etc seem to execute pretty much instantly. I'm going to guess that his network topology has a lot devices that are only accessible by repeaters, or aren't using Zwave+. Zwave is pretty much _the standard_ for large professional smart home installations and scales pretty well if implemented properly.

oflannabhra 4y ago

I see a lot of confusion in the thread regarding IoT, and to clear up some of that, IoT operates across multiple different layers of the OSI model: PHY, Network, Application. PHY is how data is modulated (think radios, etc), Network is how data is shared / routed (think WiFi), Application is the contents of the data across the network (ie, Light: Off) IEEE 802.15.4 - a PHY standard, equivalent to 802.11 standards that WiFi is built on top of. Z-Wave - a recently acquired technology that vertically slices the entire OSI model, defining PHY interaction, network communication, and application. SiLabs recently acquired it, but it has always only offered chips from a single company. Zigbee - multiple versions of several standards: the most popular used the 802.15.4 standard for the PHY, but used custom networking and custom application layers. Thread - a 6LoWPan mesh network protocol, built on top of 802.15.4. It provides the Networking layer, but does not define application layers. Allows for IPv6 traffic. It also defines some security and BLE interop. Lots of companies make Thread chips and offer their own Thread stacks Matter - an Application layer standard that defines the shape and behavior of messages sent across a variety of different networking technologies: Thread, WiFi, etc. Requires IPv6, and potentially border routers to translate the PHY differences.

Tcepsa 4y ago
Thank you for pulling this all together here, it really helped me understand what everyone is talking about!

coreyp_1 4y ago

Everybody here keeps talking about how reliable Z-Wave is, and I absolutely HATE mine, and was telling someone last week that I would never recommend them to anyone. Have I just had a bad experience? I have 3 Z-wave switches, and once a month at least one of them needs to be reset. They just stop responding until the air gap switch is pulled. I hate them and I can't rely on them at all. Conversely, I have 30+ Zigbee switches, and they are quite reliable. The only reason that I have the 3 Z-wave switches is that I needed paddle switch fan controllers with an almond color, and I could only find them in Z-wave by Enbrighten. (Side note: why are almost ALL the smart switches only available in white?) Of course, as I type this, my RPi with HomeAssistant got bricked with the latest update, so now my SmartHouse is not merely dumb, it's stubborn!

ugh123 4y ago
I had a regular resetting problem with a switch once. Bugged me for months. Turned out the button switch would occasionally get stuck in the pressed position and cause the reset. Bad design, but wasn't the protocol/firmware's fault.