With the launch of the Thread radio protocol, I’ve already heard several people deride ZigBee and Z-wave as legacy standards for smart home networking, which petrifies me given that I have at least $2,000 invested in Z-wave gear. So I was excited to see SmartThings join the board of the Z-wave Alliance on Thursday morning, indicating that perhaps it’s time isn’t yet up. Other board members include ADT, Ingersoll-Rand, Jasco Products, LG Uplus, Nortek Security & Control, and Sigma Designs.
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Z-Wave and ZigBee aren’t going away anytime soon, but if you’re building new mesh networking devices, the clean slate approach that comes with Thread is very appealing. You can just use a Z-Wave/ZigBee edge routing device to get to an existing ZigBee or Z-Wave mesh network