Smart Lighting
Smart lighting refers to any lighting product that you can control remotely such as from your smartphone. This can include light bulbs, light switches, dimmers, relays, plug-in modules, or outlets. Smart lighting with Z-Wave allows you to remotely control your lights, turn them on, turn them off, dim them, or brighten all from your couch while using your smartphone or when outside of the home. You can also create schedules for your smart lights to turn on at certain times, or even to turn on when your smart door lock is unlocked as you arrive home. Smart lights allow you to truly control your smart home’s energy usage. No more worrying about if you left the lights on! All that is required is a Z-Wave gateway, or Z-wave expansion card in any of our security panels.
Benefits of Smart Lighting
- Save money on energy bills – use with motion detectors to automatically turn lights on/off
- Simplify your life by controlling your lights from your couch – even via voice control (controller specific)
- Control lights remotely from anywhere making it look like you are home, even when you’re away
- Creating and building scenes is easy and saves you time – with only one touch your movie night can start
What’s The Z-Wave Protocol?
Z-Wave is a wireless communications protocol used primarily for home automation. It’s a mesh network using low-energy radio waves to communicate from appliance to appliance allowing for wireless control of residential appliances and other devices, such as lighting control, security systems, thermostats, windows, locks, swimming pools and garage door openers. Like other protocols and systems aimed at the home and office automation market, a Z-Wave automation system can be remotely controlled via the Internet from a wireless keyfob, a wall-mounted keypad or through your smartphones, tablets or computers, with a Z-Wave gateway or central control device serving as both the hub controller and portal to the outside. It provides interoperability between home control systems of different manufacturers that are a part of its alliance. As of May 2017, there are over 1,700 interoperable Z-Wave products.
Do I need a Z-Wave Hub, Gateway, or Controller?
The simple answer to that question is, “yes.” Because these terms all refer to essentially the same thing: a central router-like device that not only communicates with and controls all of your smart devices, but also acts as the point of contact between you and your home automation devices. All of the panels we sell can act as a Z-Wave hub. For hardwired panels such as the Honeywell Vista series an external module with just a few connections is required. For wireless panels its just inserting a Z-Wave expansion card in the side of the unit. The hub and its corresponding interactive app (example Honeywell Total Connect 2.0 or SecureNet) allows you to manage and monitor devices even when you’re not home. The hub not only allows you to control all of your devices from one interface (be it your smartphone or a dedicated touch screen in the home) they also allow all of your Z-Wave devices to communicate with one another, so you can create automated “scenes” that give your tech a life of its own giving you convenience and comfort without lifting a finger.