What does an SDO mean you might ask? An SDO is a Standards Development Organization and the Z-Wave Alliance has now legally become a non-profit SDO. What this means to you is that Silicon Labs no longer control the progress of Z-Wave, the members of the SDO now control it. Read more details about the SDO in the Z-Wave Alliance Press Release.

There are seven founding members: Alarm.com, Assa Abloy, Leedarson, Ring, Silicon Labs, StratIS, and Qolsys. If you’re employed by one of these companies, join a working group and make your ideas known! There are six different membership levels with varying “voting rights” and costs so your organization can choose a level based on interest and budget.

How will this impact you and your IoT device development? In the short term probably not much, early next year however, expect to see the first Z-Wave product pass thru the new certification requirements based on the specifications produced by the SDO. Longer term this is all part of Z-Wave becoming an open standard with more silicon providers and software stack provides implementing new features all to make Z-Wave last for years to come.

The goal is to make Z-Wave THE sub-GigaHertz radio standard for IoT devices. Z-Wave is simple, low power, doesn’t require a lot of FLASH/RAM (IE: it runs on cheap MCUs) and most of all interoperable all the way back to devices released over two decades ago. Sub-GigaHertz means the radio passes thru walls and travels longer distances with less interference than the 2.4GHz protocols.

I want to remind everyone to register for the Works With Virtual Conference coming up in just a few weeks! Click below to check it out – HEY it’s FREE!

Works With is much more than just Z-Wave. All the key eco-system players are there explaining in detail how to be a part of their world. This is a technical conference so don’t miss it. I’ll be giving a demo of the latest version of Simplicity Studio V5 and how to quickly build, debug and certify Z-Wave applications.