If you missed the Spring Z-Wave summit in Amsterdam, you won’t want to miss the fall summit in Austin Texas this fall! The Z-Wave summit is a great place to meet other Z-Wave developers and hear about the latest technology and marketing advances Z-Wave has to offer. The summit is a three day event that is packed with valuable information and learning for both developers and marketing people. The first day is an evening networking get together, the 2nd day is mostly roadmap presentations and information about how Z-Wave is doing and where it is going. The final day splits into two tracks with developers learning about details of the Z-Wave technology and marketing folks learning how to leverage the Alliance resources and all the events coming up.

Join us October 2-4, 2019 for the Z-Wave Fall Summit 2019 in Austin. Hot topic will be the 700-series! The 3-day event features a keynote & reception on the evening of the 2nd by 2-days of informative and insightful Developer’s Forum Technical Track and a Business / Marketing Track and a member networking evening event on the 3rd. All members are invited to attend!

Date:	10/2/2019 to 10/4/2019
When:	10/2/19 – 5pm-9pm – Opening Reception 10/3/2019 – 9am-5pm – Developers/Marketing forums and Evening Reception 10/4/2019 – 9am-4pm -Keynote & forums – UnPlugFest
Where:	W Hotel 200 Lavaca Street Austin, Texas  78701 United States

Notes from EU Summit in May

The EU summit was right on the heels of the 700 series general release so it’s been a very busy time for everyone. The Z-Wave roadmap has major releases every 6 months and minor between them. Silicon Labs plans on a long life and improving volume shipments for Z-Wave and is investing in the technology to realize these gains. Attendance at the summit was up again with attendees from around the world.

Certification costs recently went up but adding frequencies (countries/regions) is now just paperwork and free. The all important Certification Test Tool (CTT) was recently updated to version 2.8.4. If you are heading to certification with your new whiz-bang product you’ll want to test it with the latest version of all the scripts. The CTT is actively being improved so future releases will be even more powerful.

All 700 series Certifications must be Z-WavePlus V2. The logo remains the same but V2 raises the bar on several fronts. The main upgrade for V2 is that devices largely advertise their capabilities without the need for Hubs to write custom drivers for each and every device. Specifically, Configuration Command Class now requires the name/default/min/max values as well as some text describing the function of the parameter to be returned via a GET command.  However, 500 series are not required to support V2 but are recommend if you have the code space for it. For Hubs the bar has been raised significantly with Security S2, SmartStart and many interoperability improvements that will require some resources to achieve certification.

Expect the RF range minimums to go up from the current 40m (132′)  with the improved radio of the 700 series. The range requirement hasn’t changed yet but there are lots of discussions on the topic. Most of the devices I’ve worked on (over 3 dozen) have consistently achieved over 100m of line-of-sight RF range so I expect the minimum to probably double. This does make testing a bit more difficult as finding a location with 100m of open space can be a bit of a challenge, especially in winter!

Presentations

The presentations at the EU summit (and most of the previous ones) can be viewed from the Alliance web site. You need to be a member to gain access to them. My presentation (along with Axel Brugger) was a deep dive on using the 700 series and getting familiar with Simplicity Studio for developing end devices. Hans Kroner gave a similar presentation on developing gateways using ZIPGW/ZWare. While you can view the presentation online I highly recommend attending in person so you can ask questions and get straight answers right there on the spot.

Fun and Games

The members night was at The Beach which is an indoor beach games facility with lots of crazy stuff. Great food, Great music, Great games made for an enjoyable evening after a long day of stuffing information in your brain!

 

The US Summit was held in Austin Texas Oct 2-4

The US summit was held at the Silicon Labs office and at the nearby W Hotel in Austin Texas. Another excellent turnout with lots of informative sessions from technical training to marketing by leveraging the Z-Wave Alliance.

Interoperables are BACK

Mitch Klein received a Lifetime Achievement award from CEDIA a few months back. As the leader of the Interoperables band we had quite the show all to ourselves along with plenty of food, drink and excellent conversation. By far the most beneficial part of the Summit is the chance to talk to your fellow Z-Wave developers, marketers, executives and enthusiasts.