New Shelly smart devices have one-mile range, thanks to Z-Wave

Smart home devices compatible with the Matter standard have garnered most of our attention lately, but the compelling features in the latest generation of Z-Wave chips convinced the IoT developer Shelly Group to build no fewer than 11 new products powered by Z-Wave technology.

The new collection includes a smart plug, in-wall dimmers, relays, and various sensors aimed at DIYers, installers, and commercial builders.

Citing the ability of Z-Wave 800 (aka Z-Wave Long Range or LR) chips to operate IoT devices over extremely long range—up to 1 mile, line of sight—while running on battery power for up to 10 years, Shelly Group CTO Leon Kralj said “Shelly is helping break down smart home connectivity barriers, empowering homeowners, security installers, and commercial property owners and managers with unmatched range, scalability, and energy efficiency to redefine their automation experience.”

While some of the new Shelly products, including the smart plug, motion sensor, and door/window sensor, will look familiar to any smart home dweller, Shelly takes a different approach to its in-wall lighting controls. Rather than wholesale replace your existing devices, as a Leviton or Lutron would have you do, Shelly’s dimmers and relays mount inside the electrical box and behind your existing device. Hiding the controls from view helps you avoid being left with a visual hodgepodge of dimmers and switches on your home’s walls.

Shelly

While most homeowners won’t need to worry about the number of IoT devices their networks can support, commercial builders will appreciate the scalability of Z-Wave 800-powered devices–namely, you can deploy as many as 4,000 nodes on a single star network. That’s a 20x increase over what was possible with previous generations of the chip. And since Z-Wave LR is backward compatible with those previous generations, there should be no worries about integrating the new devices into existing networks.

Shelly says all 11 of its new Z-Wave 800-powered IoT devices will be available in the first half of 2025.

Earlier this month, Shelly announced that it had attained SmartThings Certification for nine more of its existing Z-Wave smart home products, including power-metering smart plugs and smart switches.

While Samsung dropped the Z-Wave radio from its own most recent SmartThings hub, the SmartThings Station, it is still supported as an option and can be found in the SmartThings-powered Aeotec Smart Home Hub.

Correction, December 23, 2024: This article was corrected to report that Z-Wave Long Range (LR) chips operate on star networks in which each device communicates with a hub. Other types of Z-Wave chips operate on mesh networks, where data can be relayed through from node to node until it reaches its destination. We regret the error, but would like to Mark Colegrove at HomeSeer for bringing it to our attention.