Smart Home Blog

The Danish company QEES announced two new Z-Wave products – Keyring Pendant and Wall Switch. They allow to consumer to control Z-Wave devices in the home individually or grouped into four groups. The Keyring Pedant will be ideal for car owners to open or close a garage door. It has an operating range up to 120 meters (400ft) and it is enough compact to take it always with you.

The wall switch can be used as a fixed remote control for Z-Wave devices. It’s battery powered and can therefore be installed anywhere without additional wiring.

Both QEES Z-Wave Keyring Pendant and Wall Switch available from Homeestore and Zwave4u.

[via AutomatedHome]

Z-Wave is a standard de-facto for modern DIY home automation (don’t forget then X10 is still alive). thanks to good compatibility between devices from different producers, wide range of devices and support by many commercial and open source home automation systems. While ZigBee is used widely in the energy monitors and power meters. To fill the gap between those two Sigma Designs produced the Bulogics Smart Grid Home Controller. That controller will allow to join your home automation system with power meter to monitor and reduce energy consumption.

There is no any words about the price or date availability of the Bulogics Controller. But I hope it won’t take more then one-two mothes have it in production.

Good news for all professional installers and smarthome enthusiasts in Europe. Everspring is the first Asian manufacturer of Z-Wave products which launched its appliances in the European market. Those products include dimmers, switches, ON/OFF modules, flood and temperature sensors, smoke detectors and indoor/outdoor sirens. Unfortunately there is no information about availability and price. But I hope it’ll be reasonable.

[via AutomatedHome]

Somfy offers an easiest way to integrate motorized interior and exterior stuff into your home automation system using its ILT Z-Wave interface. The interface allows a simple connection to the ILT 2-way communicating motor head and can be setup in less than a minute. After that you may control roller/solar, pleated/cellular, 2-inch horizontal blinds, sheer horizontals and roman/woven shades from touchscreen console, remote control or keypad via Z-Wave. Z-Wave is supported by many commercial and open source smarthome systems (LinuxMCE is one of them).

The Somfy ILT Z-Wave interface will be suitable and for home theaters to roll up/out projector’s screen.

Unfortunately I didn’t found any information about the price of the Somfy ILT Z-Wave interface and availability for Europe. If you have such information or maybe know the same device from other producer, please, drop the comment.

[via Mavromatic]

HomeSeer produced an European version of its Z-Wave motion detector HSM100 – HSM100-EU. Additionally to the motion detection it provides an information about illumination and temperature. The HSM100-EU has a range of 10 meters and requires 3 AAA batteries to operate. The motion sensor should work in any Z-Wave certified system. But the temperature and illumination sensors are supported by the HomeSeer software only. That really not good if you use some other home automation system.

The HSM100-EU is available on the HomeSeer site and tagged at $80.95.

[via eHomeUpgrade]