I
t’s hard not to get excited about the pace of
“smart home” innovation. Things have advanced
enough to support actually useful smart lights,
vacuums, thermostats, cameras, washers,
dryers, and a ton of other devices. But that same
early energy means that companies enter and
exit the market constantly, leaving a lot of our
homes full of zombie gadgets. And even the
working ones all seem to require a new account
with a new password, maybe another hardware
gateway, and probably a recurring subscription
fee. Underneath a thin veneer of consistency
offered by Google or Alexa, things are pretty crazy.
Mostly that’s just part of the process. But it
bugs me when companies bait-and-switch,
adding recurring charges for functionality they
sold as a one-time purchase. That happened with
my Wink gateway last year, leaving me with a
house full of no-longer-smart lights. Annoying —
but fixing it gave me a good reason to dive into the
underlying tech and generate some fun code.
Z-What?
Most of the chaos around smart devices comes
down to the network — how do they connect to
the world? Increasingly this is just Wi-Fi, and
that’s probably where things will end up. But
118 makezine.com
Take control of smart
home gadgets — and
revive those zombie
bulbs — with a Z-Wave
hat for Raspberry Pi
Written by Sean Nolan
SKILL BUILDER: Z-Wave with RasPi
Sean Nolan, Z-Wave.Me
TIME REQUIRED
1–2 Days
DIFFICULTY
Moderate
COST
$75 for Pi + RaZberry; plus any Z-Wave devices
MATERIALS
» Raspberry Pi mini computer any model with
header block
» RaZberry Z-Wave shield for Raspberry Pi, from
z-wave.me/products/razberry
» Z-Wave smart lights eBay is a great resource;
search for “z-wave light bulb.”
SEAN NOLAN
is a longtime
software guy who lives on Whidbey
Island in Washington State and
spends his days building stuff with
code and driftwood. Stop by and say
hello at his blog, shutdownhook.com.
RAZBERRY
RESCUE
M83_118-23_SB_Z-Wave_F1.indd 118M83_118-23_SB_Z-Wave_F1.indd 118 10/11/22 12:16 PM10/11/22 12:16 PM
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