Jump to content

Welcome to Smart Home Forum by FIBARO

Dear Guest,

 

as you can notice parts of Smart Home Forum by FIBARO is not available for you. You have to register in order to view all content and post in our community. Don't worry! Registration is a simple free process that requires minimal information for you to sign up. Become a part of of Smart Home Forum by FIBARO by creating an account.

 

As a member you can:

  •     Start new topics and reply to others
  •     Follow topics and users to get email updates
  •     Get your own profile page and make new friends
  •     Send personal messages
  •     ... and learn a lot about our system!

 

Regards,

Smart Home Forum by FIBARO Team


ZigBee + HomeKit: A dark future for Z-Wave...


chaicka

Recommended Posts

Amazon, Apple, Google, Zigbee Alliance and board members (such as IKEA, Legrand, NXP Semiconductors, Resideo, Samsung SmartThings, Schneider Electric, Signify (formerly Philips Lighting), Silicon Labs, Somfy, and Wulian) form working group to develop open standard for smart home devices. The industry working group will take an open-source approach for the development and implementation of a new, unified connectivity protocol. The project intends to use contributions from market-tested smart home technologies from Amazon, Apple, Google, Zigbee Alliance, and others. The decision to leverage these technologies is expected to accelerate the development of the protocol, and deliver benefits to manufacturers and consumers faster.

 

 

References:

Please login or register to see this link.

Please login or register to see this link.

Please login or register to see this link.

Edited by chaicka
Additional References
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not so dark 

8 hours ago, chaicka said:

Connected Home IP

Silicon bought zwave for a reason and are pushing Z/IP for a reason. I can see no reason why Zwave and Zigbee will not merge under a single IP interface.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Topic Author
  • 10 hours ago, robmac said:

    Not so dark 

    Silicon bought zwave for a reason and are pushing Z/IP for a reason. I can see no reason why Zwave and Zigbee will not merge under a single IP interface.

     

    Oh...Silicon Labs owns Z-Wave IPs now? If so, as they are also part of this 'Connected Home IP' consortium, then you are right where likelihood the 3 largest automation platforms converging into one interoperable platform. Cool...

    Link to comment
    Share on other sites

    28 minutes ago, chaicka said:

    Silicon Labs owns Z-Wave IPs now? If so, as they are also part of this 'Connected Home IP' consortium, then you are right where likelihood the 3 largest automation platforms converging into one interoperable platform. Cool...

     

    Yes, Silabs is the owner of everything Z-Wave related, and they are the sole manufacturer of Z-Wave chips at the moment.

     

    As @robmac pointed out, they have a free product called Z/IP which exists since... I guess around 2016... might be even older (but wasn't made public before that date). It is an IPV6 internet standards based bundle of software (thatt can be built eg on a Raspberry Pi but also on Linux and macOS) that turns a "Z-Wave network" into an "IP network". I haven't met many people understanding what it is all about but @robmac and I run such a network (experimental) so we can tell a lot more about it.

     

    Silabs has been pushing the Z/IP solution with their new "Series 700" controllers.

     

    The reason you have not heard about Z/IP before imho is simple... No "gateway" software exists to talk to Z/IP, only demo tools written by Sigma and updated by Silabs and they are by no means comparable to eg a HomeCenter. And as a OpenZWave contributor I can say none of the developers currently have plans to add support for Z/IP.

     

    So I am curious to know how Z/IP fits into this new initiative. Will it be part of it? Will they ditch everything in favour of other protocols?

    Link to comment
    Share on other sites

    4 hours ago, petergebruers said:

    Yes, Silabs is the owner of everything Z-Wave related, and they are the sole manufacturer of Z-Wave chips at the moment.

     

    Doh! Breaking news!

     

    Merely a few hours I've made this statement... The Z-Wave Alliance posted this topic...

     

    Please login or register to see this link.

    I quote...

     

    "Silicon Labs (NASDAQ: SLAB) and the Z-Wave Alliance announce plans to open the Z-Wave® Specification as a ratified, multi-source wireless standard available to all silicon and stack vendors for development. With this change, semiconductor and software suppliers will be able to join the Z-Wave ecosystem, contribute to future advancements of the leading smart home standard, and develop and supply sub-GHz Z-Wave radio devices and software stacks."

     

    And...

     

    "Expected to be available in the second half of 2020, the opened Z-Wave Specification will include the ITU.G9959 PHY/MAC radio specification, the application layer, the network layer and the host-device communication protocol. Instead of being a single-source specification, Z-Wave will become a multi-source, wireless smart home standard developed by collective working group members of the Z-Wave Alliance."

     

    The  ITU.G9959 PHY/MAC is already "open" but "the application layer, the network layer and the host-device communication protocol" are not really open right now (though lots of information are available but under "Silabs License" - see their website for details).

     

    If they do this (they merely say they "plan" to do this) it would indeed allow second sources of Z-Wave compatible "System On Chip".

     

    I am not sure what they mean by "software stacks" - are they talking about alternatives to their SDK and/or Z/IP?

    Link to comment
    Share on other sites

    This could be everything, but for me it seems that they will stop development in the next month and invite "the community" for further development.

    May be helpful to get cheaper devices, as the price for zwave product seems to be higher then it must be......

    Link to comment
    Share on other sites

    Join the conversation

    You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

    Guest
    Reply to this topic...

    ×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

      Only 75 emoji are allowed.

    ×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

    ×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

    ×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

    ×
    ×
    • Create New...