Agenda
Tues., Sept. 29th
1:00pm – 4:00pm
4:00pm – 4:45pm
5:00pm – 8:00pm
UnPlug Fest (Z-Wave Alliance Members Only) | Sponsored by Aeotec & Alarm.com
Presenter: Eric Ryherd, DrZWave.Blog
The UnPlug Fest is where Z-Wave Alliance members can engage in unofficial device-to-device interoperability for Z-Wave and Z-Wave Long Range products. Take advantage of an invaluable opportunity to collaborate, exchange knowledge, and uncover new possibilities for seamless integration with the Z-Wave ecosystem.
Z-Wave Feature Demo (open to all)
Presenter: Eric Ryherd, DrZWave.Blog
Fast Commissioning, No Popcorn, Low Latency
Z-Wave expert Eric Ryherd (aka Dr. Z-Wave) presents a live demonstration of a few of the key features of Z-Wave. Rapid commissioning via SmartStart, predictable low latency of Z-Wave Long Range, simultaneous Z-Wave Mesh and Z-Wave Long Range networks on the same controller, immunity from the crowded 2.4GHz spectrum, among other Z-Wave features.
Welcome Reception – Hosted by ADT
Join us at ADT’s HQ to kick-off the Z-Wave Fall Summit with drinks, food, an insightful panel, tour of their “Callahaun Smart Home” and networking.
Panel: Open Standards, Intelligent Homes
Moderator: Tai Nguyen, ADT, Senior Director, Product Engineering
Panelist: Gilles Drieu – ADT, Senior Vice President & Chief Technology Officer
Paulus Schoutsen, President, Open Home Foundation
Avi Rosenthal, Chairman, Z-Wave Alliance
Jennifer Touhy, The Verge
Join leaders from ADT, the Open Home Foundation and the Z-Wave Alliance to discuss how open standards are shaping the future of the connected home. From interoperability and professional security to AI and consumer trust, the panel will explore what comes next for smarter, more connected living.
Callahan Family Home Tour
ADT will offer tours of the Callahan Family Home, a product demonstration space located inside the company’s Boca Raton headquarters. Named after ADT founder Edward Callahan, the space features a replica home with fully operational ADT and smart home technologies, allowing visitors to experience the company’s products as they would be used in a real home environment. The home also showcases how Z-Wave devices work with the ADT+ platform as part of a connected smart home experience.
Wed., Sept. 30th
8:00am – 8:30am
Registration & Coffee/Breakfast
8:30am – 9:00am
Fall Summit Welcome: The Road Ahead of Z-Wave
Presenter: Avi Rosenthal – Chairman, Z-Wave Alliance
Our kick-off session opens with a welcome address from Z-Wave Alliance Chairman of the Board, Avi Rosenthal, setting the tone for the days ahead while providing a forward-looking perspective on the direction the Alliance is headed over the next several years. From new programs and organizational milestones to expanded market opportunities and ZWLR growth, this address charts the trajectory of the mature, member-driven organization the Alliance has become with clear momentum.
9:00am – 10:00am
Z-Wave’s Next 25 Years Start Here
Moderator: Janet Collins – Marketing Director, Z-Wave Alliance
Panelists: Tai Nguyen – Director of Firmware Engineering, ADT
Olivier Beaujard – Sr., Director LoRa Ecosystem, Semtech
Colin Cureton -Product Line, Vice President, Silicon Labs
Agnes Lorenz – Vice President, Zooz
Attendees will then hear directly from IoT industry leaders shaping the Z-Wave protocol through their membership in an intimate fireside chat moderated by Janet Collins, Director of Marketing for the Z-Wave Alliance. Alliance both new and legacy, including board members, silicon providers, and manufactures, will discuss why membership matters. Panelists will share real-world stories of how participation in Z-Wave Alliance impacts their companies, and why it is important to them to have a voice in the future development of Z-Wave. They will also share their perspectives on prevailing market trends: where the Internet of Things is going, and how Z-Wave must evolve to meet the moment.
10:00am – 10:30am
Networking & Coffee Break | Sponsored by Trident IoT
10:30am – 11:00am
Unplug Fest 2026 Download
Presenter: Eric Ryherd – Dr.Z-Wave
11:00am – 12:00pm
Label of the Land: Navigating the U.S. CyberTrust Mark and the EU Cyber Resilience Act (Regulations Roundtable)
Moderator: Jennifer Kent, Ph.D. – SVP and Senior Analyst, Parks Associates
Panelists: John Bartucci – VP Technology Alliances & Partnerships, Fortune Brands
Grace Burkard- Director of Operations, ioXT Alliance
Mark Umina – Staff Field Application Engineer, Silicon Labs
Cybersecurity regulations for smart home and other connected devices is becoming a two-front reality. In Europe, the Cyber Resilience Act’s enforcement clock is ticking. In the U.S., the Cyber Trust Mark program is entering a decisive new chapter under the FCC’s newly appointed lead administrator, the ioXt Alliance. The path to that label is taking shape now.
In this panel discussion, moderated by a leading industry analyst group, experts from across the regulatory and certification group will deliver a status report on both programs. Discussions will cover where each program stands today, what’s required to comply, and what timelines manufacturers should be planning against.
Building on the Spring Summit’s deep dive into the CRA, this session will further reveal how Z-Wave’s architecture positions members to satisfy both programs, and how to turn compliance into a competitive edge.
12:00pm – 1:00pm
Lunch Break | Sponsored by Zooz
1:00pm – 1:45pm
Wake-On-Event End Nodes (WOEEN): Powering the Future of Battery Free Z-Wave
Moderator: Agnes Lorenz – Vice President, Zooz
Panelists: Danielle Hicks – VP of Marketing, WePower
Mark Umina – Staff Field Application Engineer, Silicon Labs
Mirko Klefker – CEO, MK Logic
In this panel, we’ll highlight the key characteristics of the new Wake On Event End Node device type, helping members envision an ecosystem that goes beyond traditional power methods. You’ll learn how this initiative took shape within the Z-Wave Alliance Technical Working Group and what it means for future innovations driven by member ideas. The session will also conclude with an opportunity to ask questions about certification, power-harvesting technology, and other practical considerations for developing around this new device type.
1:45pm – 2:45pm
Living with the Smart Home: What Consumers Really Want
While the industry spends a lot of time discussing protocols, certifications, and ecosystems, consumers of smart home tech and gear are having different conversations altogether.
In this session, Jennifer Pattison Tuohy, senior reviewer, smart home for the Verge and one of the most prolific voices covering the connected home opens with a focused look at what is actually driving purchase decisions, what makes consumers hesitate, which features consumers genuinely value, and which barely register in their daily lives. Drawing on years of hands-on coverage and a home running on nearly every smart home protocol, she will share where the smart home experience genuinely delights customers, where it frustrates them, and where industry assumptions diverge from day-to-day reality.
She will then be joined on stage by panelists who provide smart home solutions directly to consumers, discussing firsthand what users ask for, struggle with, or return. After a brief discussion, the floor will open to audience questions for the group. For attendees, this is a rare opportunity to see the market through the eyes of those who live in it and sharpen focus on the issues that matter most to the customers everyone is building for.
Presenter
& Moderator: Jennifer Pattison Tuohy, The Verge
Panelists: Paulus Schoussen, Home Assistant / Open Home Foundation
Raj Sundar, Xthings
Larsen Webb, FireAvert
2:45pm – 3:00pm
Networking & Afternoon Break | Sponsored by Trident IoT
3:00pm – 3:45pm
Beyond the Single-Family Home: Z-Wave Growth Opportunities Across Multifamily, Hospitality & Smart Spaces
The next wave of connected living is extending well beyond the traditional single-family smart home. Multifamily communities, hospitality properties, and other professionally managed spaces are increasingly adopting connected access, automation, energy management, and property-wide IoT solutions—creating new opportunities for Z-Wave technologies and the companies that build on them.
Moderated by Jennifer Kent, SVP and Principal Analyst at Parks Associates, this panel brings together leaders spanning smart access, multifamily technology, hospitality automation, and PropTech to explore what it takes to deploy smart technology at scale. Panelists will discuss how requirements change when moving from an individual residence to hundreds or thousands of units, including interoperability, property management integration, energy efficiency, security, lifecycle management, and the resident or guest experience.
Drawing on market insights from Parks Associates and real-world deployments from panelists, the discussion will examine where adoption is accelerating, what barriers remain, and how Z-Wave can help address the needs of the growing smart spaces market beyond the single-family home.
Moderator: Jennifer Kent – Senior Vice President and Principal Analyst, Parks Associates
Panelists: John Bartucci – VP Technology Alliances & Partnerships, Fortune Brands
Sebastián Ríos – Partner & US Business Development Director, Horus Automation
John Price – Manager, R&D, SmartRent
3:45pm – 4:45pm
Installer Market: CEDIA Insights & Panel
Gain the latest insights into the installer market with new research from CEDIA, followed by a discussion with industry leaders representing the installation channel. Hear their perspectives on market trends, evolving customer expectations, business opportunities, and the technologies shaping the future of professionally installed smart home and security solutions.
Presenter
& Moderator: Mitch Klein – Strategic Advisor | Board, Growth & Partnerships, CEDIA Volunteer
Panelists: Tony Trew – Director of Product Engineering, ADT
Tim Rader – Vice President, Product & Innovation , Versa Wireless
4:45pm – 5:15pm
Real-world comparison of Z-Wave Long Range (ZWLR), LoRa, and Wi-Fi HaLow
This session presents an objective comparison of Z-Wave Long Range (ZWLR), LoRaWAN, and Wi-Fi HaLow using commercially available products tested in identical real-world operating environments across New England. We’ll walk through the complete testing methodology, including the hardware used, deployment scenarios, measurement criteria, and the processes developed to enable others to replicate the evaluation in their own environments.
Attendees will gain insight into the testing approach, learn key observations from the study, and better understand how different Sub-GHz wireless technologies perform across common Commercial IoT use cases. The session concludes with access to a comprehensive whitepaper containing the complete methodology and detailed results.
Presenter: Eric Ryherd – DrZWave.Blog
5:15pm – 5:30pm
Wrap-Up
6:00pm – 9:00pm
Evening Networking Event
Top Golf
(Shuttle provided from hotel to venue)
Thurs., Oct. 1st
8:30am – 9:00am
Networking & Coffee Break
Marketing Track
9:00am – 10:00am
Marketing the Future of Z-Wave: Strategy, Messaging, and Member Opportunities
Join the Z-Wave Alliance Marketing Director for a focused look at the strategy and messaging shaping the future of the Z-Wave ecosystem. This session goes beyond updates, you’ll learn how to leverage Alliance marketing to your advantage. Discover how to tap into co-marketing opportunities, gain visibility through events and PR, and engage in working groups that elevate your brand and influence the market. If you’re looking to increase exposure, align with the latest messaging, and maximize the value of your Alliance membership, this session will show you how to make it happen.
Presenters: Janet Collins – Marketing Director, Z-Wave Alliance
Peter Girard – Senior Vice President, Caster Communications
10:00am – 10:30am
Z-Wave Certification for Marketers
This session highlights why market certification is essential for maintaining brand integrity, ensuring compliance, and building customer trust across the Z-Wave ecosystem. Learn how to effectively use certification marks, follow branding guidelines, and align your messaging with certification requirements to avoid common pitfalls. By understanding the marketer’s role in certification, you’ll be better equipped to strengthen product credibility, support successful launches, and reinforce the value of Z-Wave in the marketplace.
Technical Track
9:00am – 9:30am
Z-Wave Certification
The Z-Wave Certification program continues to evolve, with a strong focus this year on expanding and refining our certification tools. This session will provide the latest updates to the Compliance Test Tool (CTT) and the recently refreshed Certified Product Guide. We will also discuss CTT Remote, a new addition aimed at enabling test automation and streamlining repeated test runs. We will then look ahead to the projects planned through the end of this year — most notably S2v2 / NLS support and expanded Long Range test coverage for Controllers — along with a brief status update on the move toward protocol-level certification. Finally, we will share early ideas for next year’s roadmap and invite feedback on where the program should focus next. The session is open to participants of all backgrounds and offers opportunities for both open discussion and one-on-one support.
Presenter: Mirko Klefker – CEO, MK Logic
9:30am – 10:00am
The Z-Wave Controller Doesn’t Need to Be a Hub
Putting the Z-Wave Controller Inside the Product
Presenter: Ben Garcia – Director of Technical Services, Trident IoT
10:00am – 10:30am
Advanced User Credential CC demonstration and discussion
This last year brought about the inclusion of the Key Locker commands for User Credential CC v2. We have some demos we can run on hardware that show how these commands are used in the wild by provisioning encryption keys and unlocking a door with a RFID tag, all over Z-Wave. There’s also some further discussion to be had regarding Aliro implementation in U3Cv3 and how RFID fits within the Z-Wave landscape.
Presenter: Ben Stewart – Design Engineer, CA Engineering
10:30am – 11:00am
Networking & Coffee Break | Sponsored by Trident IoT
Marketing Track
11:00am – 12:00pm
Z-Wave Long Range Global Strategy
Drawing on more than a decade of real-world Z-Wave deployment experience, Denis Paetz from Aeotec will explore how Z-Wave Long Range expands the technology’s role beyond the single-family home. The session will examine how greater range, simplified network design, and large-scale device capacity can support multifamily, hospitality, energy management, security, and commercial IoT applications. For marketers, the focus is on translating these technical advantages into compelling market positions and use cases. Denis will share deployment lessons, product strategies, and examples that show how Long Range can reduce installation complexity, improve reliability, and create new opportunities at property and portfolio scale.
Presenter: Denis Paetz – VP / Head of Product, Aeotec
Technical Track
11:00am – 11:30am
Dynamic TX Power Algorithm for Long Range
Z-Wave Long Range is designed to deliver extended wireless coverage while maintaining efficient and reliable communication. Dynamic transmit (TX) power plays an important role in achieving this balance by adapting transmission power based on link conditions rather than operating continuously at maximum power.
This presentation will explain the purpose and principles behind dynamic TX power control in Z-Wave Long Range. We will review how the legacy algorithm operates, discuss its benefits and limitations, and introduce the new dynamic TX power algorithm developed by Silicon Labs. The session will highlight the key improvements in the new approach and how they can enhance power efficiency, connectivity, and overall Z-Wave Long Range performance.
Presenter: Xavier Perraud – Senior Software Engineer, Silicon Labs
11:30am – 12:00pm
Introduction to General Diagnostics CC
Z-Wave’s new General Diagnostics Command Class gives end devices a standard way to report network health and restart history. This session walks through what the command class contains, shows it running on Z-Wave devices, and explores what the data makes possible: telling a noisy home from a faulty device, catching battery problems before they become returns, tracing issues to specific manufacturing batches, and tuning SDK retry behavior around real-world interference. Device makers and silicon provider will leave with a clear case for implementing it now.
Presenter: Andrew Hayden – Alarm.com
12:00pm – 1:00pm
Lunch Break
Marketing Track
1:00pm – 2:00pm
Z-Wave Alliance Events Roadmap: Expanding Impact for 2027
Help shape the Z-Wave Alliance’s 2027 events strategy. We’ll assess key takeaways from 2026, identify opportunities to strengthen our presence at industry events, and explore new events, audiences, and approaches that expand Z-Wave’s reach beyond the smart home. Bring your ideas as we build a more impactful events roadmap for 2027.
Presenter: Janet Collins – Marketing Director, Z-Wave Alliance
2:00pm – 3:00pm
Marketing Roundtable: Open Discussion
An open forum for members to bring forward the marketing topics, ideas, challenges, and opportunities that matter most to them. Share perspectives, ask questions, exchange ideas with fellow members, and help identify opportunities to strengthen Z-Wave Alliance marketing efforts.
Technical Track
1:00pm – 1:30pm
Wake on Critical Message
Modern Z-Wave devices may distribute functionality between a host processor and a Z-Wave co-processor. To optimize power consumption and maintain operation during events such as mains power interruptions, devices may disable selected components, including the host processor, while keeping the Z-Wave subsystem available.
This presentation introduces the Wake On Critical Message Command Class, designed to ensure that critical events can still reach and activate these partially disabled devices. The Command Class enables devices to configure which message severity levels should trigger a wake-up and allows supporting nodes to deliver notifications containing encapsulated critical payloads.
The session will cover the motivation, key concepts, and use cases for Wake On Critical Message, and demonstrate how it can improve the responsiveness and resilience of Z-Wave systems during critical events.
Presenter: Mark Umina – Staff Field Applications Engineer, Silicon Labs
1:30pm – 2:00pm
Z-Wave Protocol Controller
Z-Wave controllers are essential components of the Z-Wave ecosystems. To better support controller products, Silicon Labs is planning to release a new Z-Wave host solution that focuses on the Z-Wave domain and accelerates product development through a modern design. This presentation provides insight into the motivation behind this initiative, its roadmap, and how it can enable and enhance future Z-Wave controller products.
Presenter: Benedek Antók – Software Engineer, Silicon Labs
2:00pm – 3:00pm
Tooling Needs/ What can the OSWG work on next
There’s been a lot of muttering surrounding needs for more modern tooling for managing Z-Wave networks, provisioning or mass OTA-ing devices, or simply updating the existing PC Controller and Zniffer to a modern tech stack. I would like to get some time on the books to get feedback from installers and other developers of Z-Wave technology to see what gaps there are in tooling for Z-Wave development and what the working group can do to help.
Presenter: Ben Stewart – Design Engineer, CA Engineering
3:00pm – 3:30pm
Networking & Afternoon Break | Sponsored by Trident IoT
3:30pm – 4:00pm
Closing Keynote