Z-Wave Trying to 'Stay in the Conversation,' Certifies 4,000th Device

With the Matter protocol due to be released this fall, the Z-Wave Alliance is “doing our best to keep Z-Wave in the conversation,” Z-Wave Alliance Executive Director Mitchell Klein told us Thursday. Z-Wave isn’t directly compatible with Matter, but Z-Wave products should be able to be interoperable with Matter via “hooks” in the protocol that will allow non-Matter products to work with Matter-certified devices, Klein said. “There is a hook available to provide bridging in and out,” and Silicon Labs has done proof of concept of the Unify software developer kit software framework, said Klein, who also is Silicon Labs director-alliances strategy. The Z-Wave Alliance has a specification for building such a bridge on its roadmap, Klein said, because “the marketplace will demand some type of interoperability with Matter; otherwise, you’re talking about hundreds of millions of products going dark, or just basically resisting Matter completely.” Timing for a bridge hasn’t been made public, but Silicon Labs said last fall that more than 15 million IoT gateway products developed using Silicon Labs' Series 1 and Series 2 wireless solutions, at the core of the new Unify SDK, will be Matter-compatible once the protocol is approved for market availability. “Similarly, companies can choose to develop IoT products using the Silicon Labs Unify SDK for existing wireless protocols, including Zigbee and Z-Wave, and later leverage Unify SDK to easily activate Matter network communication on their product portfolios when the timing is right,” the company said then. The Z-Wave Alliance said Thursday the 4,000th product had been certified Z-Wave-compatible, but the Switzerland-based company, Hoppe Group, wants to delay announcing the product until its release on the market, due this fall, Klein said. The Hoppe product includes the Z-Wave Long Range specification.