Lightwave’s hardware integration with Honeywell Home is particularly unique, and since we’re getting into the thick of the heating season here in the UK, there’s no better time to take a deep dive into what makes this partnership and integration so impressive.
Market Leaders in Smart Heating
Honeywell Home by Resideo produces some of the most reputable and reliable smart heating devices under their Evohome brand. As Trusted Reviews states, “it is without doubt the most comprehensive and accurate smart heating system we have seen“, and PC Advisor thinks that “Evohome is the best smart heating system we’ve tested”.
There are several reasons why the Evohome smart heating system achieves standout performance against other heating brands such as Nest, Hive, Tado and Netatmo – and the key foundation of their success lies within the RAMSES II 868MHz wireless protocol. Wouldn’t you know it, the LightwaveRF protocol also functions within the 868MHz frequency band, meaning that the Link Plus gateway hub can communicate directly with select Evohome smart heating devices.
868MHz – what’s the big deal?
For UK homeowners, it is no great shock to say that the reliability of WiFi (2.4GHz and 5.0GHz) inside a standard British household is poor. Of course, mesh networks are a popular workaround for the limitations presented by WiFi and are becoming ubiquitous now that more people are working from home. Unfortunately, mesh networking has notable implications in the world of Smart Home such as latency and general overloading of wireless signals. This is where 868MHz confidently struts in to put things right, relying on its much longer wavelength and a lower rate of interference to improve penetration of building materials, increase reliability and allow your smart home to perform in the way you would expect – it just works.
The Engineering behind the integration
Lightwave is the first brand that has been given complete access to the RAMSES II protocol, which has culminated in our ability to dedicate an entire radio transceiver within the Link Plus. Lightwave and Honeywell Home engineers worked together to achieve this integration, leading to many synergistic ideas on implementation, features and improvements.
A standout feature of this integration is our ability to collect event data from Evohome devices and incorporate this data into the Lightwave app in line with the rest of our Smart Series devices. This includes tracking ambient and target temperatures which are vital to understanding the behaviour and performance of your smart heating system. This data collection and presentation is key to helping users understand and reduce their environmental impact, and your gas bill!
Benefits to Lightwave Users
Since the launch of Lightwave’s second-generation Smart Series range of devices, developing and manufacturing smart heating devices in-house that perform against industry giants such as Resideo is a challenge. This integration allows existing Lightwave users to incorporate class-leading smart heating hardware into their Lightwave system, and control lighting, power and heating all from one app.
The Honeywell Home Wireless Thermostat and Wireless Radiator Valve are focus products that complement the recently released Lightwave Smart Heating Switch. When used together, these three products allow for every room to be independently set to its optimal temperature throughout the day. If you’re working from home, save on your gas bill by specifically heating your study instead of the entire house.