Sigma Designs Opens up Z-Wave Interoperability with Public Spec, No Licenses or Fees

[rmasonjr]

Interesting article...


http://www.cepro.com/article/sigma_d...78&bid=1514619

[mrhappy]

Interesting/worrying IMHO, is this a sign they are worried about the influx of wifi type devices which might remove the need for Z-Wave? I've had a look at the 196 page command/device class document and it is quite interesting. What I think is more interesting the Pi image they are offering that appears to be a complete controller interface over HTTP - could we see a third party Z-Wave plugin for HS3 now? I don't know if people who had access to the SDK before had prior notice of this but I think I would be slightly concerned if I was HST that one of the main selling points of HS (the extensive Z-Wave support) could now be rivaled with a third party plugin.

[mikaluch]

Pushing everything towards wifi is a mistake. The most valuable commodity in the communications business is bandwidth. Fortunes are won and lost on gaining access to it. It's best to use higher frequencies (wifi is 2400 and 5000 MHz) for higher data rates and lower frequencies (zwave is 900 MHz) for simple commanding.

[Mountainman]

That might be true about efficient use of bandwidth but Z-Wave needs a serious overall so that every message is acknowledged so it's more reliable. With giant processing power now consuming very little space and consuming little electrical power, there is no excuse not using a full blown network stack that was invented 20 years ago. The thing holding back wifi is the number of devices that can quickly access the RF spectrum. I have doubts that a house with 200+ wifi devices would work well even with high RF signal quality to each. Hopefully one of the new wireless protocols that the IEEE has been working on for the last few years will solve that problem.

I wonder what the maximum number of wifi devices anybody has actually tried in a real house and had satisfactory results...