Nero’s self healing Mesh
Nero devices are built on the Z-Wave Plus standard. Z-Wave is a low power mesh networking protocol specifically designed for the Smart Home, allowing devices to run on batteries for long periods and standardising how commands are sent around the network. That means that any certified Z-Wave device is able to be paired to a network of a certified Z-Wave controller. Unfortunately that doesn’t guarantee compatibility though. All Nero devices are customised to work together well, this is why we created the Nero ecosystem.
Why Z-Wave and not WiFi?
WiFi is almost ubiquitous in the modern home and has great advantages for our personal devices like high bandwidth and simple connectivity. It also comes with a series of trade offs that make it unsuitable for reliable smart home infrastructure.
WiFi is a centralised system, requiring additional access points and specialised control software to extend the network area. While WiFi devices can communicate with each other over the network they are not able to extend the range of their neighbours devices like Z-Wave can. This means the resiliency of your network is based entirely on the reliability of that access point. Additionally, most WiFi networks will degrade in performance as devices are added compared with Z-Wave which becomes more resilient.
To support that high bandwidth and range WiFi chips utilise significantly more power than Z-Wave chips, draining batteries quickly. In a smart home the devices with battery power, like locks and sensors, are frustrating is the battery needs to be replaced every couple of weeks compared with every couples of months or years.
What’s the advantage of Z-Wave Plus over Z-Wave?
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Greater Range
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Better Battery Life
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More Bandwidth
Turning on the light
When you ask the gateway to turn on the light it works out the best route, relaying it through nodes in between if it can’t reach it directly.
When a node fails
If one of the nodes fails or is removed from the network the message will need to be re-routed. This causes a slight delay as the nodes recalculate the most efficient route to the node you want to control. The message gets to the node via the new route and the gateway notes it as the current best route.
The delay you are likely to notice at this stage will generally improve and become less noticeable as the other nodes on the network also update their routing.
User Device
Internet
Nero Gateway
Z-Wave Mesh
Nero Device
Linking Z-Wave and your home devices
Nero is a fully self contained system, all of your automations and devices will continue to operate regardless of whether the Nero gateway has any access to a local network or the Internet. You get optimal functionality by connecting your Nero gateway to your home network which will allow you local or remote connections to the gateway from the My Nero app.
Internet down? No problem! All you will lose is remote access until it is restored, your system won’t suddenly stop processing events. That’s the way we believe all automation should be.