Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] multi-protocol (Zigbee, Z-Wave, BLE, LightwaveRF) home automation

[CEL]

Hi Daniel,

Zigbee
------

so, Zigbee runs atop of IEEE802.15.4, and with gr-ieee802-15-4 there's
a relatively mature implementation of that, which can actually talk to
a couple of sensors. 802.15.4 bandwidths are rather benign, so a
LimeSDR would work. Whether or not a Pi is fast enough to process the
data at sufficient speeds to make things work: I don't know; the Pi
probably wouldn't be my first choice for prototyping this (as it's, for
a low power device, not *all* that low power, i.e. afaik sleep modes & 
power consumption leaves things to be desired, and its efficiency at
high load isn't all that stellar, either); I'd probably start
developing this on a cheap (used) laptop (maybe even some ARM one, e.g.
a chromebook) or a cheap µATX x86 board.

Bluetooth Low Energy
--------------------

BLE is, like classical BT, a frequency-hopping system; you'd have to
teach your LimeSDR the tricks necessary to hop through a sequence of
frequencies quickly, because there's no way to digitize the full
bandwidth that is hopped through at once. I don't know if the Lime
chipsets support that, and atop of that, their drivers support that.

Z-Wave
------

Z-Wave: don't know how prolific that one is, but it's based on ITU
G.9959[1], so it's an FSK system with a separation of I think 40 kHz,
so this should be rather easy to capture with about any modern SDR
device. I'm not aware of any pre-existing GNU Radio module to do this,
but oh, well, from skimming the PHY specs from [1] it doesn't look like
the most complex format. Sooo: Might just work with a bit of work :)¹

LightwaveRF
-----------

huh, never heard of that one, but it seems to be company rather than a
standard?

Hope this helps,
Marcus

¹ That means that yeah, someone would have to write that PHY and a MAC
and some infrastructure to make it useful to external software. But
hey, would you be interested in doing that, or advising a student doing
that for GSoC?

[1] https://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-G.9959-201501-I/en
On Thu, 2018-11-08 at 21:26 +0000, Daniel Pocock wrote:
> Hi everybody,
> 
> How feasible is it to implement multiple home automation protocols (e.g.
> Zigbee, Z-Wave, BLE, LightwaveRF) and run them on low cost, low power
> hardware, e.g. Raspberry Pi + LimeSDR?
> 
> If that particular hardware combo can't handle it, is there any other
> permutation that may be viable?
> 
> I realize this may be wishlist stuff but it could be interesting to
> gather any comments or suggestions in a thread for anybody who wants to
> attack this.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Daniel
> 
> 
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