Z-Wave Alliance products

[mbreeden]

Here is an interesting link with all the Z-Wave Alliance website. It list all the different areas that the partners are going in. (Lighting, Security, Audio, etc) You can drill down into each area and some even have products listed (Leviton under lighting has product descriptions but no picture)

http://www.z-wavealliance.com/content/modu...iaCM-ProReg-II/

- Mike

 

[tech-home]

Maybe this is the new USB interface??

http://www.z-wavealliance.com/content/modu...egId=7&adId=132

 

[Squintz]

That little controller looks like a USB dongle that you can plug into your laptop or PDA and carry it arround to your devices in order to load the device into the memory of that dongle. I don't know the details of it but I have heard about it and it seems to be one of the cool new feature of z-wave about to come out. Chris Walker from ControlThink may be able to elaborate on its functionality.

 

[ChrisWalker]

Yes, that CasaWorks ZPC (USB Z-Wave Controller) certainly is a lot smaller than the existing USB controllers. We support it natively in our own software (which is tricky--it doesn't have a serial port emulation driver). And it doesn't seem to suffer from any of the quality issues of the most popular USB controller.

I have seen a few of them around in prototype form, but I don't think they've hit production yet. But yes, there are a lot of new products coming out soon--and we're often lucky enough to get to play with some of them

With some of the Z-Wave products coming this fall, we will no longer have to re-setup our networks when a node fails. We will no longer need to worry about getting new remote controls to be able to play with new device functionality. We will have a full line of switches available from multiple manufacturers. It's an exciting time.

Chris

 

[mbreeden]

Chirs:

I am looking forward to all the new products that are coming to the market this fall/winter.

Can you enlighten us on this new tool that will help us trouble shoot issues, correct resetup stuff and failed nodes.

Thanks

Mike

 

[ChrisWalker]

Mike: There are even more products scheduled to come to market this fall/winter than have even been announced.

Regarding tools that will help all of us troubleshoot issues, remove failed nodes, etc. . . with a bit of updated firmware and some serious software magic, you're going to see two sets of products coming to market soon that will make life happy.

Type 1: new remote controls--manufacturers are working on new remote controls which take advantage of more of Z-Wave's true capabilities, and help you fix a number of these issues.

Type 2: our software--we have software which fixes a lot of these things for you automagically in the background, and which gives you visual tools to understand what's going on and quick-access buttons to fix things (like removing or replacing a burned-out node, and refreshing routing tables, and the like).

We have a small number of beta testers already using various builds of this software under request of confidentiality. We will have more beta testing slots coming available soon--so if you'd like to be involved with the latest and greatest in the Z-Wave world, just drop me a line through the board here (private message is okay; e-mail is better). We can even re-flash your Z-Wave controller with newer firmware to give you more functionality--or you can pick up an extra one and send it our way if you'd like to still use your existing one with the software you're using.

Chris