Z-Wave Long Range and its mile-long capabilities will arrive next year
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I don't need the ridiculous range, but Shelly devices on z-wave instead of wifi? Hell yeah, sign me up!
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True, but Z-wave LR could prove useful for commercial building lighting automation, occupancy sensors, etc..
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Z-Wave Products
Buy Smart Z-Wave Products online with high quality from a proven brand - Shelly ⭐ Shop innovative Z-Wave at a great price.
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Shelly – Control Your Home with Smart Devices
Shelly provides advanced smart home automation solutions for seamless control of lighting, temperature, and energy. Make your home smarter today.
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At first read my impression was this is something new, but actually dates back to 1999, with intro to US market in 2005 (Wikipedia). Operates at 800-1000 MHz so fewer potential sources of interference as well as longer transmission range compared to ZigBee (2.4 GHz) but lower data rate topping out at 100 kbps.
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I've been using LR stuff since early this year, not sure that 2025 is really the start of it.
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Does that go through the ground well?
We've been trying to find a solution for in-ground sprinkler controllers for our site - one that doesn't require wiring up 250 individual nodes. This would be a perfect use-case.
BT won't work because, well, the controllers are generally underground and in our testing we discovered BT can't get through dirt.
We've been trying to find a solution for in-ground sprinkler controllers for our site - one that doesn't require wiring up 250 individual nodes. This would be a perfect use-case.
BT won't work because, well, the controllers are generally underground and in our testing we discovered BT can't get through dirt.
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So you get interference from everybody within a mile? Wifi is bad enough (just look at every SSID on the list: you are sharing bandwidth with all of them), but I suppose that Shelly isn't selling enough for this to be a problem?
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Not a technical person, but...If LR can be sent , well long range, then folks with bad intentions can also receive these signals. Just wondering what bad things people could do with this new tech if widely adopted.
Yes -- it is encrypted, and as you know, no one ever is able to overcome encryptions...And yes, today the applications may be turning on lights, but you know - you should know - the end uses will expand to critical infrastructure because, well, because it can.
Yes -- it is encrypted, and as you know, no one ever is able to overcome encryptions...And yes, today the applications may be turning on lights, but you know - you should know - the end uses will expand to critical infrastructure because, well, because it can.
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It's encrypted.
But assuming they beat the encryption and eavesdropped, they'd be able to....know when you toggled a light or when you opened or closed a door?
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Re: "first to market". Is this a different protocol than the long-range devices provided by Zooz? I've been running their 800LR series for a few months now and Home Assistant et al seems to think it's Z-Wave Long Range.
FWIW my personal experience has been that it is a much more solid and responsive experience compared to devices doing multi-hop mesh.
FWIW my personal experience has been that it is a much more solid and responsive experience compared to devices doing multi-hop mesh.
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Am I missing something, is this supposed to be a Shelly advertisement? Where did the first to market and coming next year originate? I have a pile of 800 series zwave devices, and they aren’t shelly.
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The article title is rather misleading. Support for ZWave LR has been around for a while and Shelly isn't even the first to market with such devices. They just happen to be one of the bigger vendors rolling out a range of devices. The title should have read something like "Shelly adds support for ZWave Long Range next year"
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Operates at 800MHz, so it's going to do better than most of the other options on the market. The general rule is, the higher the frequency, the more the signal will be dampened, but the more bandwidth it will have. So not only does Z-wave have more range, but it also has less power draw.
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"Devices automatically adjust their signal strength while on Z-Wave networks, extending the battery life of a single coin cell up to 10 years—again, under best-case circumstances."
Devices should only "shout" as much as they have to.
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Or, if they fully beat the encryption, they'd be able to... toggle a light or unlock a door. Or open the blinds. Or monitor the power draw on all your enabled lines. Or send false signals from the motion detectors.
And if someone can capture this data over time, they can build up a pretty solid profile of activity on the property. Of course, since these things aren't Internet-connected, it would be more difficult to monitor people's activity remotely. And if the person monitoring is already close enough to snoop on the signals, they can just... look to see when the lights go on or the blinds open or the door opens.
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LR is useful for things like automating a driveway gate opener without trenching, a mailbox door indicator for those with a roadside box, etc. Most folks have been using LoRa for this use case, but Zwave is much more common in home automation gateways so these are welcome products.
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Yeah, not something you want to use for streaming in your home or business. But for command and control of devices that are spread out or otherwise inaccessible to the LAN, it sounds like a cool way to avoid running cables through walls.
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Cool.
Security? Authentication? Session hijacking/anti-spoofing? If it's radio-based, someone can point a 10-element Yagi at a hub or node from miles away and try to mess with you til they get in, potentially over a regulatory border. I don't like having my keyboard broadcast keystrokes (encrypted or not), much less my doors being unlockable remotely, or having my stuff become unusable because someone left a high power SDR transmitter/jammer in a tree nearby.
Encryption? Upgradable to new ciphers, broken ciphers removable? AES256 ain't gonna hold forever.
Government-mandated backdoors forced into devices at both a hardware and software level? I don't want LEO goons or random dicks who shop at Hak5 (like me) to able to push a button to control my house.
It's a low-bandwidth IoT protocol, so people are going to install Z-Wave equipment then forget it ever exists and never upgrade it. Better get it right the first time.
Security? Authentication? Session hijacking/anti-spoofing? If it's radio-based, someone can point a 10-element Yagi at a hub or node from miles away and try to mess with you til they get in, potentially over a regulatory border. I don't like having my keyboard broadcast keystrokes (encrypted or not), much less my doors being unlockable remotely, or having my stuff become unusable because someone left a high power SDR transmitter/jammer in a tree nearby.
Encryption? Upgradable to new ciphers, broken ciphers removable? AES256 ain't gonna hold forever.
Government-mandated backdoors forced into devices at both a hardware and software level? I don't want LEO goons or random dicks who shop at Hak5 (like me) to able to push a button to control my house.
It's a low-bandwidth IoT protocol, so people are going to install Z-Wave equipment then forget it ever exists and never upgrade it. Better get it right the first time.
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900 MHz, and which specific band it uses depends on the country/region.
Edit: country not county.
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Oh no, someone's going to go through all of that trouble to....make it so the light in my pantry doesn't turn on automatically when I open the door....
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I have a couple of the wave plugs. They work well and include power monitoring.
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ZWave uses AES128 with DHKE, devices are mutually authenticated during the pairing process. Because of the pairing and S2 encryption spoofing isn't really a thing. As far as doors being remotely unlocked, then don't put in a smart lock, I haven't, though zwave is WAY more secure than the garage door protection system that would gain you access to my house so it's not like I'd be worried either. At the end of the day having motion sensors that alert my phone via push while I'm away on vacation makes my house MUCH more safe than anything I would possibly lose through technology attacks.
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A dog's water bowl and a large chew toy laying around in a visible are also great ways to make your house safer without talking about encryption. I still complain about the neighbor who lets their dog crap on my lawn though, even if it adds to the effect.
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All I want is WiFi that can make it the 15 feet from my router through the bathroom to my bedroom PC. Even after upgrading to an Orbi Mesh setup, I get the same signal strength in my living room and bedroom that I do in the opposite direction at the far side of our back acre.
/facepalm
/facepalm
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Nope, zwave has a maximum throughput of 100Kbps, you don't want your camera using it =)
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LORA is already here and works very well for my purposes out rural where extended range is important.
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Mesh isn't magic. If you have a wall or some structure that's blocking WiFi, adding more WiFi on one side isn't going to help you.
You need to run Ethernet and drop a real AP on the other side of your house.
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I would not worry to much honestly. The "common" way to stuff is breached is
1. Phish credentials from somebody
2. Get a human to install malware
3. Have crappy default credentials
4. Have NO credentials on some forgotten interface
None if these is really "breaking" encryption, it is mostly bypassing it. Actual MiM attacks on general internet traffic is kind of rare. If you feel safe doing any online shopping or banking it is kind of the same. Modern Zwave devices are paired to the network by QR code scanning, so 1 - 3 are largely eliminated. Securing a network with only "known" devices and no humans involved is a so much easier problem to solve.
And as the last point. The need for actual local targeting is a gigantic barrier for actual practical attacks. People have been using these stupidly simple garage remotes for years and years without an epidemic of breakins (yes, I am sure somebody can find cases, the point is that it has not been an epidemic of it). And those devices security is laughable to none historically. While it is a cool movie trope to have a hacker sit in a van and exploit something to gain access to a house the boring reality is that the likely "exploit" is breaking a window or a door with a crowbar.
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Place your mesh devices so they work around the obstacle, but also understand they are repeating at that point which lowers throughput on top of whatever additional signal damping blockers there are/interference. If you don't know what that obstacle could be, note that metal is the number one obstacle. After that solid stone like brick etc. Older homes built like bunkers, with years of addons that leave exterior walls intact etc... are almost always difficult vs new construction that is made out of mostly wood with airy, yet insulating, materials in between(plus they tend to have way less walls/enclosed spaces). Most houses have support beams and ducts that not only reflect the signal, but scatter it. That's your most common issue. Also, don't burry your wifi APs like so many people do because they are either ugly and/or take up valuable counter space. Think of the antenna like light bulbs in general. Imagine they are emitting very bright light that you want to reach out as far as possible knowing it can only reach so far before barely illuminating something. In the analogy, metal is like a mirror. Otherwise, the less solid the material, the more it goes from solid walls that let almost nothing through to thin curtains that only dim the light.
Of course doing wired AP's is preferrable and performs way better, but having done this on at least three homes I have lived in now, with the former career experience of knowing how to terminate cat cables,I appreciate how it's difficult for most people to initially either find someone to do that work(i.e. drilling through floors/walls often blindly) and/or learn to do it yourself. Some electricians will do this work however.
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Also the small-farm situations where you have to control things in your barn that's inconveniently located a fair distance away, as well as things like controlling your pier lights from your cottage/trailer, or even things like powering up your tree mounted solar lights, etc. Many use cases can now be bridged!
Also possible accessibility situations like a designated emergency-flashing light at a neighbor's house, for a deaf person or elderly person in an emergency situation. Especially when both homes are deaf (deaf community). Of course in addition to automatic notifications (which sometimes fails on muted devices)
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I had never considered the operating range of zigbee could cause/have interference with the other billions of 2.4GHz things. I have a network of around 30 zigbee devices at home, and growing, and it's the best super cheap investment ever though.
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Before I worry about long-range Z-wave, I'm in dire need of E26 screw base bulbs controlled by Z-wave. Z-wave E26 sockets would be useful, too. I can believe these are low-volume sales, but still... some people need them.
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Bacnet anyone?
You don't even need new tech. Infrastructure is already insecure and has been for ages. Bacnet has been around forever and is insecure as shit.
Sure, it should be standalone, sandboxed from the world, and not reachable from any outside network, but I can guarantee you that I can remote in right now and flash some lights or tweak some HVAC settings in some buildings in Philly, NYC, Boston, etc. From there, a nefarious actor can gain access to the rest of the network and wreak havoc.
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Why does the bulb need to be smart? Shelly's whole thing is making a normal switch into a smart switch with manual backup.
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