Summit

Z-Wave Summit 2024 – Austin TX

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The Z-Wave Summit & UnPlugFest took place last week in Austin TX. If you missed it, here is a quick Recap. I organized the UnPlugFest on Tuesday which included an RF Range test down the Colorado River right in downtown Austin. The Z-Wave Alliance Reference Application Design (ZRAD) won the maximum range with a distance of 1.1miles (1.7km) which wasn’t quite line-of-sight (LOS). I produced a video of the event which you have to be a member of the Alliance to gain access. Virtually all of the other Z-Wave Long Range Devices tied in a close second place at 0.7mi (1.1km) however we had limited LOS points to test at bridges across the river. We proved that PCB antennas and shipping Z-Wave devices in a noisy RF environment can easily achieve over a kilometer of range. Note that we measured the range where we are getting 100% corruption free, fully encrypted packets at 100kbps. Obviously we could go much farther if we are just trying to get a NOP to ACK but that’s not useful even though other protocols use that as their yardstick.

The Open Source Work Group met in-person in the afternoon to work on finalizing User Code Command Class. Additional Range testing was measured inside the hotel (with concrete floors) where most devices were able to pass thru several floors. Late in the afternoon was the Fireside Chat where we aired our hope, desires and disappointments for Z-Wave. Watch for a survey coming out soon!

Tuesday evening is the network event which was hosted by Silicon Labs where all the Z-Wave personalities meet and renew friendships and business relationships.

My presentation on the Z-Wave Alliance (ZWA) Reference Application Design (ZRAD) is a preview of the soon to be released github project. There were lots of presentations on all sorts of IoT related topics. You can find the presentation on the ZWA members web site.

FUN! Electric Shuffle

After the UnPlugFest and a full day of presentations it was time to relax and join the competition at Electric Shuffle.

Summit Takeaways

This is my personal set of takeaways. Please add yours in the comments below!

  • Z-Wave is very much alive!
    • Lots of new products have been certified and more are in the pipeline
    • Most are Z-Wave Long Range
  • Z-Wave spec and Open Source Code continues to improve
  • Z-Wave Long Range is indeed Long Range!
    • Over 1mi LOS in downtown Austin – over 2mi proven in NH
  • Certification for an SDK Update is Review ONLY!
    • No need to redo the entire certification process to update the Z-Wave SDK
    • Previously a full re-cert was required ($$$!)
    • Now you can get the latest bug fixes/security patches and just file paperwork for cheap
  • Can add Z-Wave Long Range (ZWLR) to a device and keep the same FCCID
    • Can OTA devices already in the field to add ZWLR!
    • Requires working with the “right” FCC test house and FCC must be redone with the new frequencies
    • Talk to Trident for more details
  • Why is the RF range so short in the EU for many devices?
    • 500 series devices can only transmit at -1dBm (hardware limitation)
    • 700/800 can transmit at +14! More than twice the range!
    • Update those EU devices!
  • USB Zniffer firmware can capture BOTH ZWLR frequencies
    • Select US_LR_END_DEVICE for the region to get ONLY the 2 ZWLR channels (no mesh channels)
    • Select US_LR_BACKUP to get the ZWLR B channel and mesh channels
    • Select US_LR to get ZWLR A channel and mesh channels
  • Z/IP Gateway has a maintenance release expected in June but there will probably only be 1 more maintenance release before it EOLs
    • Switch to Unify or Z-Wave JS soon!

Who is Trident IoT?

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Trident IoT is the Host sponsor of the 2023 Z-Wave Members Meeting and UnPlug Fest in Orlando Florida September 18-20. But you may be wondering, who is Trident IoT?

Z-Wave Summit 2023

Trident IoT is a technology and engineering company focused on simplifying RF development for connected device manufacturers.

Trident is a brand new company that has just come out of stealth mode today. Founded by Mariusz Malkowski (CTO), Michael Lamb (President), and Bill Scheffler (VP Sales), three IoT industry pioneers with decades of success who understand the complexity of bringing connected products to market. Mariusz and Bill were integral parts of Zensys, the company that invented Z-Wave back in 2000. Michael is an industry veteran bringing hundreds of IoT devices to market at companies like EcoLink, Ring, Comcast, and Honeywell.

Trident has hired several of the key Z-Wave engineering experts in Copenhagen which Silicon Labs recently closed. This talent and additional Trident engineering resources are focussed on bringing additional silicon sources and software to Z-Wave and eventually other wireless IoT protocols. The goal is to provide a much faster and easier path to bring wireless IoT products to market. They will be providing an alternative protocol stack, new footprint compatible modules, second source silicon, certification testing and engineering expertise to quickly bring your new products to market.

Read more details in the Trident press release or better yet, come to the Z-Wave Summit in Orlando in September and talk with the founders in person. Early Registration ends this week so snap up the registration, book the inexpensive hotel and flights and meet us for a good time in Florida! Bring your new devices and hubs to Summit on Monday during UnPlugFest where we plan to test just how far Z-Wave Long Range can reach with real commercial products. Naturally we’ll be testing interoperability as well – you can read more about the proposed agenda for UnPlugFest via this link (this is a link to an Alliance Members only page so you need a login which you can get for free if your company is an Alliance Member).

Z-Wave Alliance is Now an SDO

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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!

Register for the Works With Conference by clicking here. Learn how to integrate into Amazon, Google, Apple an other IoT ecosystems.

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.

Z-Wave Works With Amazon, Google, Samsung, Apple, Comcast Virtual Conference

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Silicon Labs is hosting what was intended to be an in-person conference in Austin Texas but is now a virtual online conference on IoT ecosystems – the Works With Smart Home Developer Event September 9-10. The best part is it is now FREE to attend any of the in-depth technical sessions and you don’t have to wear a mask. The downside is that we don’t get to experience all that great music down in Austin – well, there’s always next year!

Virtual IoT Works With EcoSystems from Google, Amazon, Apple for Z-Wave development engineers
https://workswith.silabs.com/

I am hosting the Z-Wave track and will be making several presentations including a detailed look at Silicon Labs latest release of Simplicity Studio V5 which just came out yesterday. We’ll also have presentations on developing Z-Wave Smart Hubs and Z-Wave Certification. I’ll also be describing some IoT failures – you learn more from your failures than your successes. We have speakers and engineers from all of the ecosystem partners, not just Silicon Labs folks. Learn from the experts from across the industry!

What is Works With 2020? The smart home developer’s virtual event where you will have the opportunity to interact with our ecosystem partners from Amazon, Google, Samsung, and Z-Wave to connect devices, platforms and protocols and be able to immerse yourself in keynotes, a panel discussion on Project CHIP, hands-on, and technical sessions led by smart home engineers who are building the latest advanced IoT devices. The Works With event is live, all-online, free of charge, and you can join from anywhere around the world.

Works With Z-Wave Apple, Google, Amazon, Samsung IoT SmartHome conference 2020

Click here to Register Today and feel free to forward to the rest of your team.

Here’s an overview of what you won’t want to miss:

Specialized Engineer-Led Tracks – Educational sessions and technical training designed for engineers, executives, developers, business development and product managers.

Hands-On Workshops More than 12 workshops and hands-on sessions to give you experience, knowledge and confidence to develop and accelerate smart home development.  

One-on-One Developer Meetings – Schedule a meeting with Silicon Labs or an ecosystem partner to get 1:1 technical guidance.

Join me in September and learn how to smoothly get your IoT device plugged into any and all of the ecosystem partners. Register today, it’s totally free and you can join from anywhere in the world. See you September!

Z-Wave Summit 2019

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ZWaveSummit2019

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.PANO_20190509_160327.vr

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!

IMG_20190509_175126

 

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.

This is just a fraction of the turnout at the US Summit in Oct 2019

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.

The Z-Wave band “Interoperables” are back with a wide repertoire of classic rock

Pilgrimage to the Z-Wave Homeland

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I finally made the trip to the home of Z-Wave, Copenhagen Denmark. Z-Wave began as Zensyszensys-logo 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.

ZWaveCPHThe 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.

z-wave_spring_summit_19

 

 

Z-Wave Summit Fall 2018 Philadelphia

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The Z-Wave Summit is usually held only once each year in the USA and it is not to be missed. I’ll give a brief overview of what was discussed at the summit in the short post below. But if you didn’t attend in person, you missed the most valuable aspect of the summit which is the chance to meet and talk to other Z-Wave developers. This year the summit was hosted by Bulogics in the city of brotherly love,  Philadelphia PA. Bulogics is a Z-Wave certification house so they know everything about Z-Wave and how to have a good time!

2018ZWaveSummitMitch.jpg

Summit Notes

The 700 series was officially “revealed” at the summit with many presentations talking about the new ARM based Z-Wave transceiver. The summit has over 140 attendees from 70 companies not including all the Silicon Labs and Alliance employees. This is the largest attendance of a summit to date and reflects the rapidly growing world of Z-Wave.

Matt Johnson, IoT Sr. VP, described the roadmap for multiprotocol chips which include Z-Wave, zigbee, BLE and Wifi as well as proprietary protocols. For the immediate term though the focus is on getting the 700 series shipping. The real key for Z-Wave is the interoperability and certification ensuring every Z-Wave device can communicate with every other device.

Z-Wave product manager Johan Pedersen presented the important improvements in the 700 series over the 500 series:

  • ARM M4 32-bit CPU
  • 150% RF range improvement in the US and more in EU/Asia
  • Lower power and faster wakeup time making coin cell operation a reality
  • Lower cost due to elimination of the external NVM & SAW
  • Single HW build for all regions due to elimination of the SAW filter
  • Longer battery life with 1.8-3.6V operation
  • Serial debugging

By far my main interest as a developer is that we finally have a real CPU with an M4 and serial debugging so I can finally single step my code and figure out where I went wrong!

The next natural question of course is when will the 700 series be a reality? The answer is “soon”. Ugh. Developers kits are supposed to be available soon and the parts will be shipping in early 2019.

Technical Track

On the second day of the summit the groups are split between marketing and technical geeks like me. More presentations on things like the new Z-Wave Plus V2 requirements which will go into effect with the 700 series release. The V2 requirements significantly ups the bar for support for various command classes with the goal of making Z-Wave devices to fully inform the hub of their capabilities. There should be little or no custom coding to support most V2 devices – the device will tell you everything it can do.

The presentation by Alex Capecelatro, founder of Josh.ai, described the future of voice control which sounds amazing. Alex described just how hard voice control really is and has a long way to go before it really works the way we all want it to. I liked his quote from the New York Times: “We overestimate what technology can do in 3 years but underestimate what can be done in 10 years”. Z-Wave has come a long way in the dozen years it’s been around.

Configuration Command Class

2018summitERI 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: Z-WaveAlliance2018EricRyherd.

Interoperables Band

Once again the band The Interoperables played at the evening get together at a local brewery. These guys are really good for having only practiced a couple of times!

2018ZWaveSummitInteroperables

DrZWave joins Silicon Labs

That’s right, I have officially joined Silicon Labs as an FAE covering the Eastern US. I can be contacted at drzwave@Silabs.com.

 

 

 

 

EU Z-Wave Summit 2018 – Amsterdam

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2018EUSummit1IoT Device Testing Best Practices by Eric Ryherd

Click  HERE to see the entire presentation including my notes. If you are a Z-Wave Alliance member a video of the presentation is usually posted on the members only section of their web site. The main takeaways from my presentation are:

  • Have a written test plan
  • Use the Compliance Test Tool (CTT) as the START of your test plan
  • Vary the environmental conditions during testing
  • Test using real world applications
  • Test using complex Z-Wave networks with routing and marginal RF links
  • Test with other hubs and devices
  • Automate testing using tools like the ZWP500
  • Code firmware with failure in mind
  • Utilize the WatchDog timer built into the Z-Wave chip

The presentation goes into detail on each of these topics so I won’t duplicate the information here. I also go thru several failures of devices I’ve been working with. You learn more from failures than you do when everything just works. This is the same presentation that gave last fall in the US summit.

Z-Wave Summit Notes

2018EUSummit4There were nearly 200 attendees at the Summit – a significant increase over last year. One of the main purposes of the summit is to learn what’s new in Z-Wave and what Silicon Labs is planning for the future. The most important news at this year’s summit is the 700 series which was announced at CES in January. Unfortunately we will have to wait a bit longer to get our hands on the chips due to the purchase of Sigma Designs by Silicon Labs. The 700 series chip has been updated to match the other SiLabs microcontrollers so the silicon has been delayed a bit but they expect to ship parts before the end of 2018. Z-Wave will benefit tremendously from a real CPU instead of the very resource constrained 8051 in the 500 series. The feature I can’t wait for is the hardware debugger. We’ll finally be able to single step our C code and inspect variables and set breakpoints. No more PRINTF! Yeah!

Time for hubs to switch to Z/IP and ZWare

The very clear message of the summit is that Z/IP and ZWare are now mature and is THE gateway interface going forward. My initial brief trials with Z/IP were frustrating with poor documentation and the software really wasn’t quite ready. But with the recent release of 2.81 it would appear it is ready for prime time and I’ll have to give it another look. I was surprised by the number of gateway developers that were at the summit and most were already using at least Z/IP and many also using the ZWare abstraction layer. The SerialAPI is the interface most gateway developers have used in the past but this is a very low-level interface. There are many nuances of handling sleeping devices and the complexities of the encrypted security encapsulation when using such a low-level interface. This is where Z/IP comes in which handles nearly all of these lower level details for you. Z/IP is planned to be the only supported interface in the near future and certification costs will be significantly higher if it is not used. ZWare adds another layer on top of the Z/IP which provides much easier C++ objects relieving the developer from having to learn the details of each Z-Wave command class. See the Z-Wave Public web site for more details.

The internal Z-Wave Technical Site (ZTS) is now also available to everyone but you still have to click on “accept terms” to gain access. However the access is granted immediately so you don’t have to wait for “approval”. So anyone wanting to learn about the inner guts of Z-Wave can now do so without buying a DevKit.

Summit isn’t all work, work, work

Maker:L,Date:2017-8-26,Ver:5,Lens:Kan03,Act:Kan02,E-YThe Summit isn’t all work all day even though the days are long and filled with lots of technical information. This summit had an evening at the Rosarium park. The park has room for team building games like a maze run, archery, volleyball among other games and of course lots of food and drink. It was a nice ice breaker and a good way to get to know your fellow Z-Wave developers. The networking opportunities are a very large part of the value of attending the summit in person. The evening highlight was a performance by the “Interoperables” Z-Wave Rock and Roll band lead by Alliance chairman Mitch Klein.

CES 2018

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The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is THE trade show for smart home technology and all things cool and new and geeky. It’s a massive show and I only spent one day there and never made it out of the Sands convention center which is one of the smaller venues. If you’ve never been to CES it is something to see. The crowds are enormous and the tech is brand new. So new, some of it will never actually make it to market as there is plenty of smoke and mirrors.

Eric Ryherd wireless IoT consultant expert

My purpose is obviously to seek out the latest news about Z-Wave and chat with my clients. The Z-Wave Alliance invited me to man the “Ask the Expert” desk at the show for a few hours which I was happy to do. My expert knowledge of Z-Wave answered simple questions like “what’s Z-Wave?” (It’s like wifi but low power) to complex questions about the rules around Security S2 and SmartStart.

The most common question is always what’s the difference between Z-Wave and Zigbee? My short answer is that Zigbee is like silos. If you can develop an app, gateway and all the devices you need, then Zigbee will work OK. Z-Wave however was a mesh network from day one and every Z-Wave device can talk to every other Z-Wave device regardless of the manufacturer. Z-Wave is built around standardized command classes so every hub knows precisely what format a temperature sensor is sending the data. Is it in celcius or Fahrenheit? Tenths of a degree or hundredths? With Z-Wave, the format is fully specified. The other protocols let you decide the format which is fine if you have the huge budget to do it all. But if your investors have you on a shoestring budget then Z-Wave is the way to go. I have much longer answers to the Z-Wave vs. Zigbee question but much too long to keep your interest in a quick blog post.

The big announcement for Sigma (other than the acquisition by Silicon Labs) is the announcement of the 700 series. Unfortunately details remain shrouded in secrecy but Sigma has put a stake in the ground of having developers kits by summer 2018. Finally having a real 32 bit ARM processor will be a huge productivity improvement for us IoT developers.

I had limited time to walk the floor but it does seem that smart home has finally taken off. There are so many companies making cool gizmos it’s overwhelming. From sun tracking solar powered umbrellas to cameras of every size and resolution to lots of new hubs there is no way one person can take it all in. You’ll just have to see for yourself.

The Z-Wave Alliance booth is even bigger this year filled with companies hawking the latest IoT thingamagiggy using Z-Wave. Every one of them able to talk to all the other Z-Wave doodads. The booth was busy all day long. I did wander past the tiny Zigbee booth buried in the back of the hotel with a few people in it but nothing like Z-Wave.

Z-Wave Summit 2017 at Jasco in Oklahoma City

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“IoT Device Testing Best Practices” by Eric Ryherd

Summit1Click HERE to see the entire presentation including my notes. If you are a Z-Wave Alliance member a video of the presentation is usually posted on the members only section of their web site. The main takeaways from my presentation are:

  • Have a written test plan
  • Use the Compliance Test Tool (CTT) as the START of your test plan
  • Vary the environmental conditions during testing
  • Test using real world applications
  • Test using complex Z-Wave networks with routing and marginal RF links
  • Test with other hubs and devices
  • Automate testing using tools like the ZWP500
  • Code firmware with failure in mind
  • Utilize the WatchDog timer built into the Z-Wave chip

ZWaveSummit2017aThe presentation goes into detail on each of these topics so I won’t duplicate the information here. I also go thru several failures of devices I’ve been working with. You learn more from failures than you do when everything just works. Feel free to comment and let me know what topic you’d like to see for next years summit.

Z-Wave Summit Notes

One of the main purposes of the summit is to learn what’s new in Z-Wave and what Sigma is planning for the future. The most important news at this year’s summit is SmartStart. The goal for SmartStart is to simplify the user experience of installing a new device on a Z-Wave network. The concept is that a customer will open the package for a device, plug it in, the hub is already waiting for the device to be joined and the device just shows up on their phone without having to press a button or enter the 5 digit pin code. This is a “game changer” as Sigma pointed out many times during the summit. Typically a user has to put their hub into inclusion mode, read the product manual to determine the proper button press sequence to put the device into inclusion mode, wait for the inclusion to go thru, write down the NodeID number, with an S2 device they have to read the teeny-tiny 5 digit PIN code printed on the product (or scan the QR code) and then MAYBE the device is properly included. Or more often, they have to exclude and retry the process all over again a couple of times. SmartStart as you can see will make the user experience much easier to get started with Z-Wave.

SmartStart enables “pre-kitting” where a customer buys a hub and several devices as a kit. The hub and the devices in the kit are all scanned at the distribution warehouse and are all white listed on the hub web site. When the customer plugs all the devices in, they automatically join and all just magically show up ready to be used without the frustration of trying to get all the devices connected together. Unfortunately there are no devices that support SmartStart and there are no hubs that support it either – yet. We’ll get over that eventually but I suspect it’ll take a year before any significant numbers of SmartStart supported devices show up on Amazon.

SmartStart is enabled in the SDK release 6.81 which occurred during the summit. There are some other handy features in this release. The main new feature (after SmartStart) is the ability to send a multi-cast FLiR beam. One problem with FLiR devices is that they are all sleeping devices and briefly wake up once per second to see if someone wants to talk to them. Prior to 6.81 you had to wake up the devices one at a time and each one would take more than one second to wake up. If you have battery powered window shades like I do, there is a noticeable delay as the shades start moving one at a time instead of all together. Both the shades and the remote (or hub) will need to be upgraded to 6.81 before we can use this new feature. That means it’ll be again probably another year before this feature is widely available, but it’ll get there eventually.

There are rumors that Sigma will be announcing a new generation of the Z-Wave transceiver chip in early 2018. I am hoping it will will finally include the upgrade from an 8-bit 8051 CPU to a more capable 32-bit ARM CPU.  The current 500 series relies on the ancient 8051 with very limited debugging capabilities which significantly slows firmware development. With an ARM CPU developers like Express Controls will find it easier to hire engineers who can code and debug firmware and thus we’ll be able to bring more Z-Wave products to market in less time.

A new web site, Z-WavePublic.com, has been populated with the Z-Wave documentation as well as images for the Beagle Bone Black and Raspberry Pi loaded with Sigmas Z/IP and Z-Ware. With one of these boards and a USB Z-Stick anyone can start developing with Z-Wave without having to sign a license agreement. Nice way to get started with Z-Wave for you DIY nerds out there. There were many other presentations on Security S2, Certification, The CIT, Z/IP, HomeKit and many other topics on the technical track of the summit. The marketing track had a different set of presentations so I recommend sending both a technical person and a marketing person to the summit.

Summit isn’t all work, work, work

IMG_20170927_090355The Summit isn’t all work all day though the days are long and tiring. Tuesday evening was a reception at Coles Garden which is a beautiful event venue. Unfortunately it was raining so we couldn’t wander thru the gardens much but Mitch, the Alliance Chairman, kept us entertained.

Wednesday evening was the Members Night at the Cowboy museum. Oil profits made a lot of wealthy Oklahomans who were able to make sizable donations to this huge museum. There is a lot more to see than we had time to explore so I’d recommend spending more time here if anyone is visiting Oklahoma City. Lots of food and drink made for an ideal networking environment with your fellow Z-Wave developers.