Z-Station is a Z-Wave and Zigbee USB adapter. A controller software compatible to the Silicon Labs Z-Wave Serial API (for example Z-Way) and Zigbee NCP is required to use the functions of the device.

Z-Station adapter supports Z-Wave and Zigbee / Thread / Bluetooth Low Energy (on your choice, selected by firmware update).

The device implements two virtual serial interfaces used by the Z-Wave and Zigbee / Thread / BLE application respectively. Linux and Mac OSX has a built in device driver for the stick and will create a new device named like /dev/ttyUSB* (Linux) or /dev/cu.SLAB_USBtoUART (OSX). Windows enumerates a new COM port device but might require a device driver by Silicon Labs.

This device supports Z-Wave Security S2, Smart Start and Long Range technologies as well as Zigbee HA 3.0 protocol.

Compared to the standard firmware design used by almost all Z-Wave USB Sticks and other Z-Wave Host Interface hardware, the this device firmware offers several extensions and enhancements:

• Embedded Z-Wave and Zigbee sniffer tool
• Backup and recovery function including network topology
• Optimised transmitting queue handling to speed up transmitting process
• Firmware update from the OS level in the field
• Extended Wakeup Notification to extend battery life time of battery-operated devices in the network
• Advanced statistics about network actual usage
• Allows switching frequencies from software

Z-Station can be used together with Z-Way software or any other third party software that uses Z-Wave Serial API and Zigbee NCP Serial API. There are firmwares for static controller (for Z-Way and most of third party software) or bridge (for Z/IP). It supports firmware upgrade feature.

Z-Station adapter comes in two different versions depending on the transmitting frequency used:

• ZMEEZSTATION_ZW_ZB: Version for all frequencies around 868 MHz (EU, Russia, India, China).
• ZMEUZSTATION_ZW_ZB: Version for all frequencies around 908-921 MHz (USA, Australia, Brasil, Japan, Korea)