souliss, an open-source alternative to ZigBee and Z-Wave

[legacy]

It takes advantage of the Arduino ecosystem to have thousand of variants available for your smart objects around your home, souliss is an open-source alternative to ZigBee and Z-Wave. All designs (firmware, application and boards) are released in open source.

have a look 

[timb]

Problem: There are 14 competing standards...

Solution: We'll create a new, open standard that encompasses all their abilities!

Problem: There are 15 competing standards...

[legacy]

good point 

I was just curious to know if someone is following the souliss project of if he/she finds it useful or just interesting.

[dferyance]

At least from a brief look at the web site I don't see it competing with the wireless standards. It tries to describe itself as that, but I don't see it doing that. Instead, it looks like a messaging protocol with some client and server code. 

system based on Ethernet and RS485

It piggy-backs on existing networking / wireless standards. Sounds a bit like it hides what networking layer is used. This makes sense to me but a lot of network libraries do the same.

Souliss code is distributed under license GNU GPLv3

I personally like the GPL, but this is a deal-breaker for most companies.

[free_electron]

how is this a competitor for Z-wave ?

- it has no radio's apart from wifi (wifi space is already very congested)
- not a low power solution( these sp82xx is power hungry... zwave can run for two years off double-a cells )
- requires one of the 'approved' hardware boxes
- only android app...
- not a headless system like z-wave ( zwave does not require a central controller)
- no mesh network with packet forwarding ( zwave nodes are also routing capable and can forward packets to out-of-reach nodes)

i'd like to see a small board with a radio that can sip power from mains and be built into a lightswitch. kind of like all the z-wave commercial lightswitches/dimmers out there.

[mark03]

If a hobbyist really wants to "compete" with Z-Wave, IMO the best course of action would not be to develop a new standard, but rather to continue the reverse-engineering work and produce an interoperable (yet open-source) Z-Wave implementation on CCxxxx or other commodity wireless hardware.  This would be of immense value to the community, and a great way to "stick it to the man" at the same time.  I also think it is quite feasible, with the exception of the secure/encrypted aspects, which most off-the-shelf devices don't (didn't?) use anyway.

Also, here's the xkcd cartoon referenced above, in case someone didn't catch the allusion
https://xkcd.com/927/