I finally made the trip to the home of Z-Wave, Copenhagen Denmark. Z-Wave began as Zensys back in 2001. My journey with Z-Wave began shortly after that in 2003 when I was disgusted with my highly unreliable X10 home automation experiments. I just couldn’t get that X10 junk to work! It was cheap, but it wasn’t worth my time and frustration so I was looking around for other technologies that would be reliable. I experimented with several custom baked wireless solutions but quickly realized that wireless is really hard and complicated. Z-Wave caught my eye because it was a real mesh network and actually worked. From there I have continued to be impressed by the technology improvements always with full backward compatibility and wide choice of fully interoperable products from many manufacturers.

My purpose is to meet the engineering team and to learn in much greater depth the details of Z-Wave and especially the new 700 series. We have an intense group of smart engineers working diligently on the many aspects of a wireless system as complex as Z-Wave. One team is busy with the gateway specific parts of the protocol and the Z/IP Gateway and Z-Ware code. Another team is working on the protocol and solving very complex issues that we find are happening in the real world. The support team (of which I am part) helps customers get their products to market quickly by answer their questions and providing training. And of course there are the marking and sales folks who make sure you all know about the benefits of Z-Wave.

The Z-Wave team in Copenhagen resides in this modest building. Danes love to bicycle to work or take the excellent train/bus system. Only a few travel via car unlike those of us in the US who just love sitting in traffic for hours. The food in Copenhagen is wonderful with plenty of international choices as well as the Danish favorites. My hotel room is more of a spaceship pod than a boring room with the Danish penchant for efficient minimalism. The view of the windmills in the distance and the quaint classic European architecture are beautiful.

Z-Wave EU Summit

The other purpose of my visit across the pond is to attend and speak at the Z-Wave EU Summit. If you are a Z-Wave developer, I highly recommend attending as you’ll learn about the latest Z-Wave technology and best practices to build robust IoT products. We have two technical tracks in addition to the marketing track. Meeting with your fellow Z-Wave developers to share your experiences and learn from theirs is the main value of the summit. The only way to get that experience is to attend in person. See my other postings about last years EU summit and the US summits to get a feel of what goes on.

The summit is next week in Amsterdam. Click HERE for more details on the summit.