WiFi & Bluetooth are the most popular wireless protocols for home automation, alternatives like Zigbee and Z-wave have also been widely adopted, at least in some countries.
And if you are interested in the latter, Aeotec has just introduced the Z-Pi 7 gateway development kit that lets you add Z-Wave connectivity to Raspberry Pi boards or Orange Pi Zero SBC with an expansion board connected over UART through the GPIO header.
Aeotec Z-Pi 7 Z-Wave expansion board (ZWA025) specifications:
- Z-Wave connectivity
- Silicon Labs EFR32ZG14 Arm Cortex-M4 SoC @ 39 MHz with Series 700 and Gen7 technology
- Frequencies
- ZWA025-A: US Frequency 908.42 Mhz
- ZWA025-B: AU Frequency 921.42 Mhz
- ZWA025-C: EU frequency 868.42 Mhz
- TX Power – US: +9.3 dBm; EU: +4.8 dBm
- RX sensitivity – -97.5 dBm
- Range
- Indoor – US: 70+ meters; EU: up to 60 meters
- Outdoor – Up to 200 meters
- SmartStart native integration and S2 security.
- Z-Wave Plus Certified
- SBC compatibility (tested) – Raspberry Pi 3 and greater, Orange Pi Zero
- Power Supply – 3.3V DC via GPIO
- Max Operating Current – 75mA
- Dimensions – 42 x 35 x 12 mm
- Weight – 6.5 grams
- Temperature Range – Operating:: 0°C to 40°C; storage: -20°C to 70°C
The expansion board was clearly designed for Raspberry Pi in mind, as while it’s compatible with the Orange Pi Zero board, it takes more area than needed due to the required orientation.
Z-Pi 7 Z-Wave controller board was apparently inspired from RaZBerry V2 board, the successor of the RaZberry board introduced in 2015, as shown in the photo above with the Raspberry Pi 3 board taken from Aeotec’s user guide.
The kit supports the Z-Wave SDK 7.11.0 or later, and the configuration instructions on Raspberry Pi and Orange Pi Zero boards are pretty similar, with the installation of Raspberry Pi OS or Armbian Linux distributions and the need to enable UART. Note that you’ll also be asked to disable Bluetooth on the Raspberry Pi board. The Z-Wave connection will be handled by your host software, and in some cases, the new device will be automatically detected. I’ve been told the board is compatible with the “Z-Wave JS” (node-zwave-js) project in Z-Wave 500 backward compatibility mode which, among other open-source projects, is used by Home Assistant.
Aeotec Z-Pi 7 Z-wave devkit can be purchased for $54.99, but I could only find the 868.4 MHz version suitable for Europe. Further information may be found on the product page. If you prefer using a USB dongle, the company also recently launched Aeotec Z-Stick 7 (ZWA010) with the same features and specifications as the Raspberry Pi “HAT”.
Thanks to Hedda for the tip.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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You wrote:
> “WiFi & Bluetooth are the most popular wireless protocols for home automation”
I like to question that statement. Do you have any statistics on that? I am pretty sure that if you would look at devices defined as “home automation” sold and already deployed/installed in people home then Z-Wave and/or Zigbee devices would have a higher total number than at least Bluetooth and maybe even WiFi. Remember that Z-Wave and/or Zigbee has been available almost as long as WiFi and Bluetooth. Sure it depends on your definition of home automation, but I know there are not a lot of devices defined under “home automation” that use Bluetooth. I do not think it is fair to count voice assistant speakers as “home automation” since most people do not actually use them to control other home automation devices but instead just use them to play music or let them know about things like the weather report. That simply does not meet the definition of not “home automation”.
I did look before posting, but market share reports are paid for. I did see, some study about public knowledge of WiFi, Bluetooth, Zigbee and Z-wave, and the last two are far behind. In addition, I seldom see products based on Zigbee or Z-Wave, but often see WiFi or Bluetooth products including smart lightbulbs, smart switches, air quality monitors, etc…
Z-Wave 700 chips like EFR32ZG14 do not have an external crystal for RF frequency. EFR32ZG14 can modulate the RF frequency so the same chip san support any sub-1GHz frequency can the RF region can be set via software as the RF region is configured when the gateway application initializes the Z-Wave network. As such you can use the same part anywhere in the world as long as you reset it and set the correct RF region on initialization.
Also, Aeotec Z-Stick 7 (ZWA010) is based on Silabs ZGM130 so not sure it has the exact same specs.