Control the home with a wireless network (Z-wave)

electron

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Staff member
Recently, wireless home-control products such as light switches, thermostats, blinds/drapes and appliance controls have reached the market. To have a true mass-market for these products, it is important to have a low-cost technology that is easy to install and operate. This requires a lightweight system that, from the end-user or installer perspective, is easy to install and requires no ongoing network management. The network must be a self-organized mesh network that ensures error-free communication and, in the case of malfunction, uses self-healing mechanisms to re-establish a reliable network.

To support a full home-control system, the technology must support horizontal applications, enabling different product types from various vendors to communicate with each other and use each others' functionalities. To reach low cost points, the RF platform must be highly integrated, manufactured in low-cost processes and the associated software protocol must be lightweight.


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The home-control protocol must address the required network traffic pattern while supporting network flexibility, reliability and ease-of-use. A home-control network is characterized by relatively few nodes (20 to 200) within a 150m² to 600m² area where each node communicates relatively infrequently (e.g. every 5 to 15mins).

That ain't true, the 5 to 15 minutes part. In a typical real world system, there is a fair amount of actively, far more than that. If they believe that, then they've required all their units to send out status change info. Otherwise, you have to poll them which means you are talking them as fast as you possibly can.
 
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