Zigbee 4.0 launches with massive upgrades for wireless standard

Zigbee 4.0 launches with Suzi wireless standard, on the HomeKit Insider Podcast

HomeKit Insider Podcast

On this week's episode of the HomeKit Insider podcast, we cover the release of Zigbee 4.0 and the new long-range Suzi wireless standard with special guest Genie Peshkova from the Connectivity Standards Alliance.

The big news for this episode was the launch of both Zigbee 4.0 and Suzi — the latter, a new wireless standard built on the back of Zigbee. To help walk through the update, we have Genie Peshkova who serves as the Zigbee Marketing Product Group Chair at the Connectivity Standards Alliance.

This update has been a long time coming and delivers a huge array of new features for the wireless standard. There are vast improvements to security, the ability to bulk onboard devices, battery gains, and more in this release while still retaining backwards compatibility.

On top of that, the CSA is also releasing Suzi. Suzi is a new sub-GHz standard designed for long range use cases that should cover most of a residential property for remote lights or sensors.

Both specs are finalized now. The Zigbee 4.0 certification program is currently live and the Suzi certification program is coming in the first half of 2026.

Outside of Zigbee, we had a few pieces of news this week. Both Aqara and SwitchBot released wireless presence sensors that work with Apple Home and Matter.

Additionally, AIDot has updated its $15 Matter smart bulb, bringing Matter 1.4 support. Also in that update is compatibility with Apple's Adaptive Lighting feature that automatically tunes the color balance throughout the day.

As a programming note, there will be a special edition of HomeKit Insider coming out on Thursday, November 20th with a special unannounced guest. Be sure to check it out when it goes live.

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Comments

dewme · 6328 comments · 12 Years About 5 months ago

I find the acronym/namespace slamming by the Connectivity Standards Alliance, i.e., CSA, to be unsettling and designed to promote confusion. The Canadian Standards Association (CSA) is a globally recognized safety standard that has been in place since 1919. The use of CSA as a recognizable entity is tightly enforced through certification and compliance testing. It actively exists in millions of products . The Connectivity Standards Alliance must be operating in a total vacuum of engineering and safety standards knowledge to not recognize the obvious confusion they have wrought, especially when there will be overlap of the two "CSA" standards in actual products. This clash may seem trivial to some, but it introduces unnecessary confusion and noise where none previously existed. Why set out from the start to create more confusion?

On the technical side, Suzi is obviously designed to kneecap the one big advantage that Z-Wave maintains in this market segment. It will interesting to see if this proves to be the case. I do know that existing standards (open and proprietary) are always difficult to unseat. One of the reasons why I've supported Z-Wave is to provide a layer of heterogeneity in home automation and security system design. It is not subject to the same common mode failure possibilities that all of the IP based network standards are (at least theoretically) vulnerable to. It is not tied to the 2.4 GHz spectrum, is less susceptible to obstructions, and has greater range. Suzi now brings those advantages to Zigbee and Matter. I'm not a fan of gateways and bridges as a means to interconnect disparate standards, but these will probably be a very common reality for the next decade or so.

VictorMortimer · 503 comments · 2 Years About 5 months ago

dewme said:

I find the acronym/namespace slamming by the Connectivity Standards Alliance, i.e., CSA, to be unsettling and designed to promote confusion. The Canadian Standards Association (CSA) is a globally recognized safety standard that has been in place since 1919. The use of CSA as a recognizable entity is tightly enforced through certification and compliance testing. It actively exists in millions of products . The Connectivity Standards Alliance must be operating in a total vacuum of engineering and safety standards knowledge to not recognize the obvious confusion they have wrought, especially when there will be overlap of the two "CSA" standards in actual products. This clash may seem trivial to some, but it introduces unnecessary confusion and noise where none previously existed. Why set out from the start to create more confusion?

WAY too late. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSA

That three letter combination has been reused so many times that without context it's impossible to know what it refers to.

(I've got a history minor, when I see it the initial association is the Confederate States of America - the bad guys in the US civil war.)

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Zigbee 4.0 launches with Suzi wireless standard, on the HomeKit Insider Podcast

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