Sigma Designs unveils next gen Z-Wave 700 platform

LAS VEGAS—Sigma Designs, a provider of intelligent system-on-chip (SoC) solutions for smart home IoT, unveiled at CES earlier this month its new 700-Series Z-Wave platform, which includes numerous performance and technological enhancements in energy-efficiency and RF performance.

"Sigma's Z-Wave 700-Series chip will completely reshape the meaning of smart home. It solves for many of today's technological barriers, while being the most flexible, interoperable platform, bringing smart home functionality to a new level,” Raoul Wijgergangs, VP of Sigma Designs' Z-Wave Business Unit, said in the announcement. “700-Series opens opportunities for new classes of sensors that weren't possible before, while making remarkable improvements to existing device categories. 700-Series is creating a path to full home installations, moving from tens of Z-Wave devices to hundreds of Z-Wave devices per home. Our new platform assures the environment that will take homes from smart to truly intelligent.”

Z-Wave 700-Series is a long range, low power and future-proof hardware platform with integrated software tools and building blocks “enabling a whole new generation of Z-Wave sensor devices,” according to the press release. “The 700-Series will drive the battery-powered device trend, empowering Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning systems to utilize sensor data and make smart homes smarter, safer, and more connected.”

In the announcement, Sigma highlighted key features of the 700-Series platform, including:

·      Low power: 700-Series will have low power radio performance enabling multiyear battery lifetime and more than 10-year sensor lifetime on a coin-cell.

·      Long range: 700-Series platform will enable range of more than 300 feet, covering multiple stories in a house and the far end of the yard.

·      Low cost and fast time to market: 700-Series gets developers started fast with low cost developer kits, tools and readymade certified reference code ensuring minimum time from prototype to certified product.

·      High performance: Powerful ARM-based platform with large memory on the chip and many peripherals, enabling intelligence at the edge with fast, energy efficient computation and secure inclusion in less than one second.

·      Certified interoperable and every 700-Series device will have the highest level of security in the smart home with Z-Wave Security 2 (S2) framework and consistent easy install with Z-Wave SmartStart. Backwards compatible.

The energy-efficient and long-range wireless communication means that smart homes can extend to the yard, the end of the driveway and seamlessly cover multiple stories in a home, the announcement read, noting, “The extremely low power consumption enables new small form factor Z-Wave sensors, which can be embedded into new places such as into furniture, windows and even behind dry walls.”

The 700-Series platform will continue to utilize and build on top of core Z-Wave features such as S2 and SmartStart. Sigma's Security 2 (S2) architecture combines existing and new security features, while SmartStart is an easy way to automatically create and configure Z-Wave networks for instant device installation success. Comprising the new Z-Wave protocol and gateway software layers, SmartStart pre-configures devices to the network before they reach the home, reducing installation time, and thereby costs, to maximize return on investment for installers and remove difficulty of DIY installations for homeowners, according to the press release.