Developers and OEM manufacturers gathered at Linear’s Carlsbad headquarters for a first look at the new Z-Wave Next Gen 500 series chip platform, and to attend training sessions geared at helping them get products to market faster and more efficiently.
Carlsbad, CA – November 15, 2013 –
Linear LLC, a leader in residential and commercial access control, security and health and wellness solutions, recently hosted the Z-Wave Alliance Unplug Fest & Developer’s Forum session at their Carlsbad, CA headquarters on November 12-14, 2013. The Developer’s Forum & Unplug Fest is a three-day technical event with trainings, networking and a first look at the new Z-Wave Next Gen 500 series. Linear is a Principal Member of the Z-Wave Alliance, a consortium of global companies that oversees the world’s largest interoperable ecosystem for wireless home control products and services.
Linear’s offices are an ideal location for the forum because, with 2GIG, they are the largest user of Z-Wave products in the world according to Z-Wave chip maker Sigma Designs. A recent expansion to a second office in Carlsbad also equipped Linear with new facilities to support the technical and training needs of members bringing new products to test with other vendor’s equipment. In recent years, Unplug Fest has helped spread the latest information on Z-Wave protocol and platform extensions while providing a learning opportunity, both personally and professionally, for all engineers participating.
The three-day event kicked off with two days of technical sessions where attendees got a first look at the new Z-Wave Next Gen 500 series. The new product portfolio enables Z-Wave manufacturers and smart home service providers to bring new products to market substantially faster and at lower cost, with customizable reference designs and new hardware featuring higher performance and more memory. Forum attendees also learned about Z-Wave Plus certification, programming and testing as well as development tips and tricks.
“As the world’s largest user of Z-Wave products and one of the Alliance’s Principle Members, it was significant to have so many Z-Wave engineers and developers together at once sharing knowledge and collaborating on exciting new home control technologies,” said Duane Paulson, senior vice president of product and market development for Linear. “The progress made during this event is a glimpse into the future of home control.”
The next-generation Z-Wave product portfolio from Sigma Designs provides important new advantages for OEMs, developers, service providers and end users. Most notably, the new Series 500 SoC and module products represent a significant technical leap forward. The series features data rates up to 100kbs, frequency agility, four times more flash memory than the existing platform, and extended RF range performance. At the same time, the design consumes even less power than the previous generation chips, providing for industry leading battery life in products that make use of these features. The Series does all this while maintaining full backward interoperability with current generation designs.
In addition to the performance gains afforded by the new Series 500 SoC and module hardware, the Sigma Designs Next-Gen platform also includes both a new Z/IP feature and the ZIPR Gateway. The former is a software engine that transforms IP protocol commands into Z-Wave commands and vice versa. The latter is a reference design for a very inexpensive gateway that can present any Z-Wave device as an IP device, with an IP address and all IP services. These breakthrough features will further solidify Z-Wave’s position as a key enabling technology behind the Internet of Things (IoT).
Among other advances, the new Series 500 from Sigma Designs offers:
• 400% extension of flash memory over the previous generation SoC
• 67% more energy efficient
• A leap in data rate to100kbs vs. 40kbs
• Improved RF range
• Frequency agility
• Backward compatibility and interoperability with previous generation Z-Wave
For more information about the Z-Wave Alliance, please visit
. The Z-Wave Alliance can also be found on Facebook.
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or call 1-800-421-1587. Linear can also be found on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
