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Z-Wave Alliance Announces Z-Wave Source Code Project Now Open and Available

z-wavealliance.org

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Re: Z-Wave Alliance Announces Z-Wave Source Code Project Now Open and Available

#11

Post by ihattendorf »

slimginz wrote: post #5

Now that Matter and Thread are finally starting to roll out, is there really any good reason for new products to still use Z-Wave? Or am I just crazy to see this as Z-Wave trying to continue a format war (first started with Zigbee) that they're almost certainly going to lose?

Z-Wave devices are almost universally better (longer battery life, longer range, more reliable, etc.) than Zigbee (I have both). Not sure if this is based on price (Z-Wave devices being more expensive), certification, different radio frequency, or something else.

With the investment into Thread (still sharing frequency with 2.4 GHz WiFi) I could see this changing.

Re: Z-Wave Alliance Announces Z-Wave Source Code Project Now Open and Available

#12

Post by dwaite »

worldmerge wrote: post #8
slimginz wrote: post #5

Now that Matter and Thread are finally starting to roll out, is there really any good reason for new products to still use Z-Wave? Or am I just crazy to see this as Z-Wave trying to continue a format war (first started with Zigbee) that they're almost certainly going to lose?

Do Matter and Thread use wifi or are they a different radio freq?

Thread is a mesh protocol on 6LoWPAN, which in turn is based on the same underlying 802.11.4 as Zigbee in the 2.4 Ghz spectrum.

Its claims to fame is having reasonable response times/batteru life and being based on IPv6. Being based on IP allows devices to talk to one another, and for bridging those devices to the broader network and potentially to the internet with clear layer separation.

Matter is a IP-based IoT discovery and use standard. Devices advertise Thread and/or Wifi support for wireless support. It also standardizes onboarding (I know BLE is an option there) and the underlying security, and mandates certain capabilities such as supporting multiple 'admin' software at once.

Devices using other wireless tech can also theoretically work with Matter with a gateway that does protocol translation, supports device onboarding, and then exposes them onto the network.

Re: Z-Wave Alliance Announces Z-Wave Source Code Project Now Open and Available

#13

Post by VLM »

nicolaslem wrote: post #3

With all tech giants putting their weight behind a competing (open) standard, z-wave is probably feeling the pressure to adapt or become irrelevant.

Firmware for Matter is going to be enormous, zwave is a lot simpler. Lots of pessimism in the market about the interoperability of Matter. No mfgr is going to be motivated to encourage their customers to interoperate with a competitors gadget. My prediction is everything will ship with a "matter" icon on it, but support will only be vertical silo, maybe even worse than things are now.

Thread is basically a full wifi-ish TCP/IPv6 stack, so, again, pretty huge compared to a tiny little zwave firmware.

Interesting angle to think about: Is the middle or end of a chip shortage the worst possible time to ship a HUGE new standard, or is it the best possible time because there's no stockpile of smaller memory smaller CPU legacy microcontrollers?

Re: Z-Wave Alliance Announces Z-Wave Source Code Project Now Open and Available

#14

Post by manv1 »

nicolaslem wrote: post #3

With all tech giants putting their weight behind a competing (open) standard, z-wave is probably feeling the pressure to adapt or become irrelevant.

Yeah,it's going to be tough. However, the one good thing about Z-Wave (even relative to zigbee) is interoperability - devices pretty much work for the most part, even with generic drivers.

At some point there'll be a matter/thread bridge to z-wave.

The big question about matter/thread devices is cost.

The second is going to be security. If they're IPv6 then they're globally addressable, which is bad bad bad. How is that going to be mitigated? Is the hub going to be the router for those devices and block all incoming connections?

I'm sure this is all in the docs somewhere.

Re: Z-Wave Alliance Announces Z-Wave Source Code Project Now Open and Available

#15

Post by zamalek »

synergy20 wrote: post #7
hedora wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article links to this: > The goal of the source code project is to provide a rich development environment containing relevant source code and sample applications under BSD 3 License. The Z-Wave source code project will enable members to contribute code to the project under the supervision of the new OS Work Group (OSWG). Which doesn't clarify at all. Is OS "open source" or "operating system", or something? Is the…

z-wave is kind of competing with zigbee for low power mid-range wireless standard for smart home or smart building since like 20 years ago? then we have low power bluetooth and low-power wifi joined the party. z-wave was proprietary which did not help its deployments, but still I recall it was the most deployed low power wireless devices for IoT. I worked on zigbee and never liked it. I wish z-wave was more open back…

> general feeling is that zigbee did not take off

Z-Wave's primary advantage is, ironically, the openness of the ecosystem. Due to the lack of a stringent certification process Zigbee vendors can (and routinely do) lock devices to their proprietary hub. I'm guessing that is one main motivator for its failure. Though, keep in mind that Hue (one of the most successful IoT vendors) is all open Zigbee.

Zigbee's main advantage is that it's cheap.

Thread (the new standard to fix the old standards) is apparently just "Zigbee, the good parts". We will see if vendors drive it into uselessness like before.

Re: Z-Wave Alliance Announces Z-Wave Source Code Project Now Open and Available

#16

Post by petre »

gorbachev wrote: post #6
pzo wrote: post #2

The title is confusing and sounds like just PR. I thought they mean "Z-Wave project is Open Source now" but looks like source code is still in private github repository and you need to be a "member" to get access. What "Source Code Project" supposed to even mean? Any source code is part of some project(s).

The title is truncated. The full title is: "Z-Wave Alliance Announces Z-Wave Source Code Project is Complete, Now Open and Widely Available to Members" The three last words are the key. I was getting excited as well, but looks like Z-Wave is still going to a closed group thing.

At least it's under a BSD 3-clause license.

"The goal of the source code project is to provide a rich development environment containing relevant source code and sample applications under BSD 3 License."

https://z-wavealliance.org/z-wave-alliance-completes-z-wave-...

Re: Z-Wave Alliance Announces Z-Wave Source Code Project Now Open and Available

#17

Post by daenney »

manv1 wrote: post #14
nicolaslem wrote: post #3

With all tech giants putting their weight behind a competing (open) standard, z-wave is probably feeling the pressure to adapt or become irrelevant.

Yeah,it's going to be tough. However, the one good thing about Z-Wave (even relative to zigbee) is interoperability - devices pretty much work for the most part, even with generic drivers. At some point there'll be a matter/thread bridge to z-wave. The big question about matter/thread devices is cost. The second is going to be security. If they're IPv6 then they're globally addressable, which is bad bad bad. How is t…

> If they're IPv6 then they're globally addressable, which is bad bad bad. How is that going to be mitigated?

I think you need to read up on IPv6 a bit. There are whole IPv6 ranges set aside that are not globally routable / part of the global unicast range[1].

Thread has link-local and mesh-local addresses. The global is only gained through SLAAC/DHCP or manual configuration by an administrator so by default no, your devices aren't accessible to the outside world. And if you do have routable IPv6 in your network, you should already have a firewall on your network edge for this because all your existing devices would already be exposed. The addressing primer[2] for Thread also applies to Matter for further details.

[1]: https://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv6-address-space/ipv6-add...

[2]: https://openthread.io/guides/thread-primer/ipv6-addressing

Re: Z-Wave Alliance Announces Z-Wave Source Code Project Now Open and Available

#18

Post by infogulch »

gorbachev wrote: post #6
pzo wrote: post #2

The title is confusing and sounds like just PR. I thought they mean "Z-Wave project is Open Source now" but looks like source code is still in private github repository and you need to be a "member" to get access. What "Source Code Project" supposed to even mean? Any source code is part of some project(s).

The title is truncated. The full title is: "Z-Wave Alliance Announces Z-Wave Source Code Project is Complete, Now Open and Widely Available to Members" The three last words are the key. I was getting excited as well, but looks like Z-Wave is still going to a closed group thing.

"Z-Wave Alliance: Source Code Now Open and Widely Available to Members"

Re: Z-Wave Alliance Announces Z-Wave Source Code Project Now Open and Available

#19

Post by daenney »

VLM wrote: post #13
nicolaslem wrote: post #3

With all tech giants putting their weight behind a competing (open) standard, z-wave is probably feeling the pressure to adapt or become irrelevant.

Firmware for Matter is going to be enormous, zwave is a lot simpler. Lots of pessimism in the market about the interoperability of Matter. No mfgr is going to be motivated to encourage their customers to interoperate with a competitors gadget. My prediction is everything will ship with a "matter" icon on it, but support will only be vertical silo, maybe even worse than things are now. Thread is basically a full wifi-…

> My prediction is everything will ship with a "matter" icon on it, but support will only be vertical silo, maybe even worse than things are now.

There's already available evidence that contradicts that prediction. Eve[1] is rolling out a firmware update for Matter support that makes their devices usable across all Matter supported platforms. There are some features that aren't yet available at the Matter level so those will remain in their own app for now. Despite being iOS-only previously with Matter support they're now also reaching Android devices and are working on an Android app for it too to cover the missing features in Matter.

[1]: https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/12/23505097/matter-eve-firm...

Re: Z-Wave Alliance Announces Z-Wave Source Code Project Now Open and Available

#20

Post by ars »

slimginz wrote: post #5

Now that Matter and Thread are finally starting to roll out, is there really any good reason for new products to still use Z-Wave? Or am I just crazy to see this as Z-Wave trying to continue a format war (first started with Zigbee) that they're almost certainly going to lose?

Z-Wave has a much better range, and uses a less congested radio band.

Matter and Thread can work with Z-Wave devices with the help of a bridge, so it's not as bad as you might think.

But yes, this is an attempt to compete with Zigbee.

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