Silicon Labs Announces Next-Gen Z-Wave 700 Platform for Smart Home

Silicon Labs announced the Z-Wave 700 platform for the smart home, touting S2 security, improved energy efficiency and longer RF range. The Z-Wave 700 chipset uses Silicon Labs’ Wireless Gecko platform, said to allow developers to build smaller, “more intelligent” smart home products at a lower cost and faster time to market. Sensors enabling artificial intelligence and edge computing applications will drive future smart home growth, said IDC analyst Adam Wright in the release, and Z-Wave 700 is one of the wireless solutions driving a battery-powered sensor trend designed to make devices easier to install and deploy. The 700 combines an ARM processor-based platform with “large on-chip memory to enable greater intelligence at the edge and secure inclusion in less than one second” with 10-year coin-cell battery life, said the company. RF range is said to extend to "the edge of the yard” and throughout a multistory home, it said. The chipset is shipping to 150 beta customers in the Z-Wave Alliance; production quantities are planned for late Q1.