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Z-Wave chips add AV-control support

Zensys has introduced a new generation of its Z-Wave chips for wireless home-control applications; in this generation, it has added features specifically for control of audio-visual and other entertainment products. The ZW401 is the generic part in the series; the company has added variants—ZW402av and ZW403av—that it designed for universal RF-plus-IR remote controls and RF control of AV/CE devices. The 400 series enables interoperability between devices from multiple manufacturers and multiple applications both within and between the AV-control and home-control domains. The company says it is providing consumer- electronics manufacturers a superior alternative to IR technology that will allow them to create ultra-low-cost RF remotes and RF support in AV devices to replace and augment IR for AV control. Single-chip solutions offer USB 2.0 controllers and transceivers; 30 GPIOs; hardware support for key scan matrixes; IR coding and learning; ADC, PWM, and Triac controllers; plus 64 kbytes OTP, 16 kbytes RAM, and NVRAM. Silicon area is 2.5
2.5 mm, yielding an RF-module size of 8
8 mm. Zensys includes features it designed to make the end-product remote control as easy to set up as a standard IR remote control that comes with a consumer product today.

The chips operate in the “low” band— under 1GHz—and in the 2.4 GHz band, and they can avoid RF channels that already carry heavy traffic. Compared to Zensys’ previous generation of chips, power consumption is lower; designers of networks in which battery-powered devices communicate—for example smoke detectors—can reduce power to one-third of previous levels.

Zensys, www.z-wave.com