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.
Good news! We have added new Tech Talks. Join us on Tuesdays and Thursdays for live virtual, technical discussions hosted by a lead engineer with time allocated for your questions. We’ll cover topics like battery optimization with BG22, using Z-Wave for your Smart Home Solutions and more. You don’t want to miss these next talks. 
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.
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.
I gave a presentation on Configuration Command Class Version 4 and all the wonderful things it can do. The most notable point is that 2/3rds of the Z-Wave Plus certified devices have at least one Configuration Parameter. Yet many hubs have no way of modifying or displaying to the user the current value of parameters. Z-Wave Plus V2 mandates support for Configuration Command Class V4 for both hubs and devices so you need to get busy! My presentation title is: “The Chicken vs Egg is over: Moving Your Product to Configuration Version 4” which can be downloaded from this link: 
Features
Sigma Designs 
Silicon Labs is a well respected semiconductor manufacturer with an array of microcontroller products from 8-bit 8051s thru modern low-power ARM CPUs. Silicon Labs has been chasing the IoT market since before IoT was a “thing”. Their low power micros have industry leading features often integrating the latest connectivity solutions like USB, Zigbee and now Z-Wave. With a market cap of nearly $4B, Silicon Labs (
In my opinion, the most interesting part of the announcement is that SiLabs is buying Z-Wave and not Sigmas primary business of Set-Top-Box processors. The announcement states: “Sigma Designs is in active discussions with prospective buyers to divest its Media Connectivity business”. The announcement goes on to say that if Sigma can’t unload its “Media Connectivity business” then SiLabs will buy just the Z-Wave portfolio for $240M thus making the rest of Sigma worth only $42M assuming someone is willing to pay that much for it.
Z-Wave was originally invented by Zensys based in Copenhagen Denmark in 1999. Originally the Z-Wave protocol used Chipcon radios (acquired by TI) and Atmel processors (acquired by Microchip). In 2003 Zensys announced its own custom designed “100 series” Z-Wave transceiver which was a complete Z-Wave capable IoT System-On-Chip. In 2008 Zensys was struggling financially. Fortunately Sigma stepped in an purchased Zensys for an “undisclosed amount”. Nine years later, Sigma has sold Z-Wave for a very nice ROI of perhaps 100X. Mergers and acquisitions in the semiconductor industry are frequent as technology and markets shift in unforeseen ways.
DrZWave 