Z-Wave Alliance touts newly licensed Z-Wave Lengthy Vary units

The Z-Wave Alliance—a corporation that promotes the event and use of the open-source Z-Wave normal in good houses and good buildings—is celebrating the expansion of the usual’s newest iteration: Z-Wave Lengthy Vary (ZWLR).

Earlier this week, the consortium introduced the milestone of 125 Z-Wave Lengthy Vary licensed units being out there available on the market. Whereas Z-Wave is just not a part of the Matter good dwelling normal, the expertise affords a formidable set of options and advantages, beginning with its potential to speak immediately with a Z-Wave Lengthy Vary hub over distances as much as 1.5 miles (line of sight, that’s).

Z-Wave Lengthy Vary units can function on a star community, the place every gadget communicates immediately with the hub, decreasing latency and simplifying community habits. A single Z-Wave Lengthy Vary hub can help as much as 4,000 community nodes on a star community, enabling a lot bigger networks than have been doable with the previous-generation expertise, which is proscribed to 232 nodes. This issue alone renders ZWLR engaging for business deployments in addition to in very giant good houses.

And since ZWLR units dynamically modify their transmit energy primarily based on their distance from the hub, they exhibit far more conservative vitality consumption; that’s nice for battery-powered units equivalent to sensors and good locks. The Alliance says sensor-type units can function on coin-cell batteries for so long as 10 years.

Z-Wave Lengthy Vary is backward suitable

ZWLR units are additionally backward suitable with the sooner era of Z-Wave merchandise, and the 2 gadget lessons can coexist and interoperate on both a star or a mesh community. This implies you possibly can combine and match outdated and new Z-Wave units on the identical community, whether or not that community’s hub relies on ZWLR or previous-generation Z-Wave expertise.

Xthings

There are just a few caveats: First, the Z-Wave hub will need to have a ZWLR chip to ship all the advantages of Z-Wave Lengthy Vary. Second, no matter which kind of chip is contained in the hub, ZWLR units received’t route visitors for traditional Z-Wave mesh-network units, and basic Z-Wave units likewise don’t take part in ZWLR star community communications. So, a basic Z-Wave gadget can function on a Z-Wave star community–and a ZWLR gadget can function on a Z-Wave mesh community–however non-ZWLR units received’t ship the identical prolonged vary that ZWLR units can.

And while you add ZWLR units to a Z-Wave mesh community, you stay restricted to the older expertise’s 232-node restrict (versus the 4,000-node restrict on a ZWLR star community). For the standard good dwelling, nevertheless, 232 nodes needs to be greater than sufficient.

Developer selections

Whereas Ring has rolled out a complete new era of good dwelling sensors and different units engineered to make use of Amazon’s Sidewalk community, the place its earlier sensors relied on  Z-Wave expertise, the corporate isn’t rendering these older units out of date; they’ll proceed to function as legacy units in dwelling safety programs primarily based on its Ring Alarm and Ring Alarm Professional good dwelling hubs.

Xthings

Different corporations, together with ADT, are standing by Z-Wave. The brand new ADT Good Residence Safety System I reviewed in October 2025, for instance, is engineered with Z-Wave and ZWLR, and ADT helps many third-party Z-Wave units, together with the Yale Guarantee Lock 2 Contact with Z-Wave 800 good lock that I mentioned in that overview.

In the meantime, Silicon Labs, the fabless semiconductor producer that owned the Z-Wave specification and supply code (by way of its acquisition of Zensys, the corporate that invented Z-Wave), after which open-sourced it in 2019, is at CES demonstrating how builders can design for each ZWLR and Amazon Sidewalk ecosystems with a single answer; specifically, the corporate’s ZG28 system-on-a-chip (SoC) platform.

A sampling of latest and not too long ago launched ZWLR units

Zooz

Listed below are just a few of the brand new merchandise that help Z-Wave Lengthy Vary (you possibly can see photographs of a few of these above):

• 2GIG GC Contact Safety Panel: A ZWLR-powered good dwelling hub with a 7-inch touchscreen aimed toward customized installers.
• Aeotec SmokeShield: A smoke detector for the European market that boasts wi-fi vary of as much as 1 kilometer (3,281 ft). It really works with Residence Assistant, LG Homey, and Samsung SmartThings good dwelling hubs (notice that’s not suitable with the SmartThings Station, which doesn’t have a Z-Wave radio).
• Alfred DB1 Professional Good Door Lock: Just like the Yale Guarantee Lock 2 Contact talked about above, Alfred’s good locks—together with the DIY-oriented DB2S mannequin—are outfitted with sockets that may accommodate varied kinds of radio modules, together with Wi-Fi and ZWLR.
• Residence Assistant Join ZWA-2: A ZWLR adapter with a 12-inch antenna for including Z-Wave units to Residence Assistant-based good houses.
• Jasco Slim Door and Window Sensor: A skinny contact sensor for dwelling safety that senses whether or not a door or window is open or closed that may face up to being put in open air, and the Jasco Z-Wave Lengthy Vary (800LR) In-Wall Good Dimmer for good lighting management.
• Ultraloq Bolt Z-Wave: Some of the discrete good locks we’ve encountered, the Ultraloq Bolt Z-Wave boasts wi-fi vary of as much as 1,300 ft when paired with a ZWLR good dwelling hub (it’s additionally backward suitable with earlier Z-Wave hubs).
• Zooz ZWLR Siren & Chime: Customers can add customized sounds to this good dwelling gadget and use sensors and different triggers play them on its 90dB onboard speaker.