Z-Wave not concerned about potential threats from Project CHIP

This year marks the 20th anniversary of Z-Wave being introduced to the world. The smart home wireless protocol was originally proposed by Danish company Zensys and its birth can be traced back to 2001.

Back then, it was one of many technologies developed to support and drive the boom in the home automation market, and today, it has stood the test of time.

There are over 100 million Z-Wave devices in smart homes around the world, and the market currently offers over 3,300 Z-Wave certified products.

“The first product actually came out in 2004,” Mitch Klein, executive director and head of strategic partnerships at the Z-Wave Alliance, told the media in a recent video call.

“And it still works today. It’s backwards compatible and interoperable. That’s really the main difference between all these different technologies.”

Z-Wave, along with Zigbee, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Thread, and numerous proprietary wireless protocols, has played a major role in the smart home revolution over the past two decades.

However, the multitude of communication methods can sometimes lead to confusion and incompatibilities for end users in a smart home.

That's where the much-touted Project CHIP comes in. Intended as a way to simplify development for manufacturers and increase compatibility for consumers, CHIP has companies like Amazon, Apple, and Google, as well as the Zigbee Alliance, as part of its work.

Recent news indicates that the first products certified by the CHIP project will begin to hit the market later this year.

About Project Connected Home over IP

The lack of Z-Wave's presence in this high-profile initiative could therefore be seen as a threat to the standard that has dominated the smart home for 20 years.

But, according to Mitch Klein, that’s not the case.

“It’s incorrect to think that Z-Wave is on the other side of this situation, and that’s not the case,” he explained. “I’m not going to get into some of their challenges because we all have them. But CHIP is focused on IP. Show me a device that can use IP that’s battery-powered.”

“To avoid going down a rabbit hole, let’s just say it’s not just Z-Wave, but Zigbee needs to develop some type of CHIP communication pathway, so we’re actually communicating with them and working with them.”

Powerful Allies

Yale University president Jason Williams and Asda Abloy agreed.

“I’m involved in several technical committees, including Z-Wave,” he explained to us. “I’m also on the board of Thread, which is driving the CHIP initiative. However, we don’t dictate the technology, we work with partners around the world.

“But I would say there is still a lot of work to be done with CHIP because Z-Wave has the most devices deployed today in the residential security and home automation market, so far, and there is still a lot of room for exploration.”

“So I think even with the arrival of CHIP, Z-Wave will continue to remain relevant through the installed base and technology of major companies that have chosen to deploy Z-Wave devices.”

“On the silicon side, there’s still a lot of work to be done and not even close to being solved,” Williams added. “We’ve seen other technologies like Thread come out, and, yes, they’ve gained some traction. But you can’t ignore the fact that there are millions of Z-Wave devices out there, and they’re working really well.”

future

So, as the smart home becomes more mainstream, facing both threats and huge opportunities, what’s next for Z-Wave?

In addition to enhancing existing technology with the introduction of technologies like Z-Wave Long Range, which promises four times the wireless range of regular Z-Wave signals, the big news for Z-Wave over the past year or so is that the Z-Wave Alliance is now a Standards Development Organization (SDO), opening up the Z-Wave network layer and communications protocol to the Z-Wave specification.

Essentially, this means the Z-Wave Alliance has more freedom.

“It was a process, and the first process was actually getting the Z-Wave Alliance and the whole Z-Wave as a standalone platform out of Silicon Labs. You can imagine that was quite an effort. The fact that we achieved it in eight months is nothing short of a miracle,” explained Mitch Klein.

“The next step is to create the Z-Wave open stack, which will allow other chip companies to participate.”

Klein is enthusiastic about the possibilities that the technology is opening up. “We know for a fact that there is a lot of interest from silicon manufacturers that maybe no one has really thought of by the name, and that’s not yet in the smart home or IoT business.

“That will enable rapid entry for other chip companies that have been looking for ways to enter the Internet of Things.”

Z-Wave prides itself on being ultra-secure, and Mitch is keen to point out that Z-Wave has "never been hacked outside of a lab."

He stressed that open platforms do not lead to security vulnerabilities.

“The standardization process does not mean a reduction in quality,” he explained. “We will still have the same protections in place on the products that we have always had; they need to go and get certified.”

That's not what they care about either.

“If you look at the history of Z-Wave, there’s been innovation in terms of security within interoperability. I mean, they continue to make incremental improvements along the way. That’s why we’ve grown from 300 to 500 to 700 to get all of these incremental improvements.

“Security is very important, but from a Z-Wave perspective we don’t have to worry about it because we’ve been using it for so long, it’s rock solid, and we know it’s only going to get better.”