SMART HOME

Smart Home Switches

Develop energy-efficient, intelligent, and secure wireless switches for any smart home ecosystem

Home switches were once simple devices on the wall in every room for turning lights on or off or dimming. Modern smart home switches offer advanced features like geo-fencing, scheduling, and touchless controls like motion detection or voice commands. All of those advanced features can enhance sustainability and provide convenience and energy savings for the end user. Integrating these switches with popular smart home ecosystems, such as Amazon Alexa, Apple Home, Google Home, and Samsung SmartThings, gives users a unified interface and experience.

See how LEEDARSON uses Silicon Labs MG24 to simplify Matter development for home IoT devices such as smart switches, lighting, and more.

Silicon Labs Solutions for Smart Home Switches

With Silicon Labs’ portfolio, you can build the best-performing wireless smart home switches in the market. Our portfolio covers all protocols for smart switches: Wi-Fi, Thread, Bluetooth, Matter, Z-Wave, Zigbee, and Proprietary. An integrated AI/ML accelerator can enable  you to outsmart any competing product with sheer intelligence. Our Secure Vault is certified up to the highest PSA Level 3, ensuring your switches won’t be the weakest link in smart home security. Our portfolio offers the most energy-efficient wireless  SoCs for multi-year battery life and neutral-less capability for both line and battery-powered switches. Our portfolio also includes RF-certified modules with integrated antennas that can cut your time-to-market by up to 9 months!


Smart Home Switches Design Considerations

What to consider when designing wireless smart switches? Here are our top bits of advice.

  • What kind of RF performance and coverage area is needed?
  • What is the latency activation and responsiveness required?
  • What are your Multi-node/large-node and scalability requirements for reliable operation?
  • Do you want easy onboarding with Dynamic Multi-Protocol (DMP) Bluetooth?
  • Do you want to be Matter compliant?
  • Do you want to enable multi-way support activation from multiple switches?
  • Do you want to allow self-installation without an electrician?


How to Improve Wireless Performance on Smart Switches?

Home is a challenging RF environment for switch designers. Switches can only sometimes be placed in the most optimal spots for signal strength. Multiple lighting elements may be far apart or behind walls and must be controlled simultaneously. How do we ensure fast and reliable switching with low latency and activation?

Silicon Labs provides several solutions for maximizing wireless capabilities:

   - High transmit (TX) power of up to +20 dBm without external components – See these examples: BG21, BG24, MG24, and ZG23.

   - Exceptional receiver (RX) sensitivity on SoCs such as BG27 and MG22, reducing re-transmissions, latency, and output power.

   - Sub-GHz protocols for long-range and efficient wall penetration.

   - The lowest-power Wi-Fi 6 SoC, SiWx917, combined with reliable connectivity.

   - Our products are also tested in large-scale industrial settings, ensuring seamless operation in dense environments.

The superior wireless performance enables you to enhance user experience, decrease negative customer reviews and returned products, improve brand image, and increase sales.


How to Simplify Multiprotocol Smart Switches?

Smart switches with a multiprotocol capability allow you to address several wireless regions to maximize revenue. But how do we simplify multiprotocol development? With Silicon Labs' dynamic multiprotocol solutions, you can create a single wireless design for a switch while enabling multiple wireless protocols – Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Bluetooth mesh, Thread, Zigbee, Matter, Proprietary, Z-Wave, and more.


How to Simplify Device Setup for the Users?

Silicon Labs supports several solutions to simplify device setup so you can help users avoid frustrating onboarding experiences. DMP Bluetooth and Bluetooth LE co-existence with other protocols allows a quick switch setup using a mobile app. The Z-Wave SmartStart and Amazon Frustration-Free Setup (FFS) are also supported.


How to Improve the Security of Smart Switches?

How do you build wireless products that comply with security regulations like California SB 327/NIST 8259A and EU 303645? Secure Vault is the most advanced IoT security solution (up to PSA Level 3), and we’re the only silicon vendor offering customized security. We deliver security updates with up to 10 years of longevity, enabling you to differentiate through the most secure smart switches.


Integrating Smart Switches with Smart Home Ecosystems

Smart home ecosystems, including Amazon, Apple, and Google, are popular ways to control home lighting. Silicon Labs’ Matter solution enables you to develop a single SKU and quickly certify it for multiple smart home ecosystems. Unify SDK simplifies multiprotocol software development for the Matter Bridge, allowing you to connect Z-Wave and other protocols to Matter.


Switches Block Diagram

Additional Products and Services

Explore your IoT Training with Works With 2023 On-Demand Sessions

Works With 2023 featured expert-led IoT training, including more than 40 technical sessions across six tracks, and you can watch all of them on-demand here. This curriculum features the latest trends, tools, and design techniques for developers and will dive deep into the technologies driving the IoT. You can start with your wireless technology by clicking the links below.

Additional Resources and Documentation 

Close
Loading Results
Close