Z-Wave is a home-automation wireless communications specification designed to allow devices in the home to communicate with each other.
Z-Wave is a home-automation wireless communications specification designed to allow devices in the home to communicate with each other.
It's designed to be easily embedded in consumer electronics products, including battery operated devices such as remote controls, smoke alarms and security sensors.
The Z-Wave technology minimizes power consumption so that it is suitable for battery-operated devices and is designed to provide, reliable, low-latency transmission of small data packets at data rates up to 100kbit/s, unlike Wi-Fi and other IEEE 802.11-based wireless LAN systems that are designed primarily for high data rates.
The protocol operates in the sub-gigahertz frequency range, around 900 MHz. This band competes with some cordless telephones and other consumer electronics devices, but avoids interference with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and other systems that operate on the crowded 2.4 GHz band.
Z-Wave works in the industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) band on a single frequency using frequency-shift keying (FSK) radio. The throughput is up to 100 kbit/s (9600 bit/s using older series chips) and suitable for control and sensor applications.
Each Z-Wave network may include up to 232 nodes, and consists of two sets of nodes: controllers and slave devices. Nodes may be configured to retransmit the message in order to guarantee connectivity in the multipath environment of a residential house. Average communication range between two nodes is 30.5 m (100 ft), and with message ability to hop up to four times between nodes, this gives enough coverage for most residential houses.
The Z-Wave Alliance is a group of companies (over 250 as of 2014) who have agreed to manufacture wireless home control products based on the Z-Wave standard.
As of 2014, Z-Wave is supported by over 250 manufacturers worldwide and appears in a broad range of consumer and commercial products in the US, Europe and Asia. The lower layers, MAC and PHY, are described by ITU-T G.9959 and fully backwards compatible.
Some Z-Wave product vendors have open source options for the hobbyist communities. They require users to start with a complete Z-Wave transceiver from a Z-Wave OEM. The windows-only xPL project also provides open source support for Z-Wave products.
Since 2010, there has been a project called Open-zwave that seeks to offer development support without expensive software development kits. Another open-source project, RaZberry, provides a Z-Wave daughter board for the Raspberry Pi.
Original source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-Wave
