Custom IoT Hardware for Smart Hom Hub Controller Box

Finding the best smart home controller hub device is always a hard thing! There was once a popular post on Reddit saying that the majority of people accept their very little control over the home cooordinator they’ve purchased, and this makes some hardware enthusiasts feel annoyed. Actually, this is not a hassle for individual consumers, but also for smart home hub Gateway sellers.

There are billions of smart home solution providers looking for appropriate smart home controller at AliExpress every day. But they encounter the same thing: 99% of the brands are not actual hardware manufacturers. They are white label resellers who rename a certain home controller hub, and the testing of the internal components of the devices is limited.

Smart Home solution providers are longing for gateway controller hardware that can install self-developed software and customizable hardware components. This is the meaning of this ODM hardware story-sharing. It will show you details of how Dusun IoT, an original IoT gateway hardware provider, offers Z/IP gateway installed customized Z-wave firmware and passes the test by one of Dusun IoT smart home solution customers.

User: A Smart Living Solution Provider in the Middle East

Market Segment: Smart Home and Hospitality Room Management

Project Time: 2023

Product: DSGW-030, DSGW-210, DSGW-230

What is the Smart Home Solution Provider looking for?

The customer of this case study is a business that specializes in offering Smart Living, Hotel Guest Room Management, Building Management Automation and control solutions and services on major available platforms combined. They have already owned home sensors, thermostats, and light switches but looking for multiple Z-Wave gateways supporting the Z-Wave 700 series to connect Z-Wave end devices (700 series and 500 series).

Challenges and Solutions

1.  Finding the Locally-managed Home Hub Hardware with a Large Storage Space

Smart home hub automation can be controlled from your living room or the net, but locally controlled smart home hub solutions are always preferred since they offer greater privacy and security.

Strong processing performance: the hub itself processes automation rules, which requires large memory to maintain latency (delays) to a minimal and feature-specific software to manage various commands. For this situation, these business model usually needs at least Arm-based processors for local configuration.

Data security & privacy: locally controlled hubs, on the other hand, don’t rely on a web service; as a result, data doesn’t have to go from your device to the cloud, saving customers’ anxiety about their information being viewed by others. Thus, a substantial storage space inside the smart home hub is required.

Solution:

Dusun IoT recommended a popular smart home gateway hardware product: DSGW-210 IoT gateway device equipped with ARM-based RK3328 Quad-core Cortex A53 CPU running Ubuntu OS, up to 2GB RAM, 32GB eMMC, and 128GB SD card.

2.  Finding Appropriate Z-Wave over IP Gateway (Z/IP gateway) to connect with Z-Ware Web Portal

A Z/IP gateway is a device that enables internet Z/IP clients to communicate with and manage Z-Wave network nodes. It provides a layer above the serial API and the Z-Wave protocol operating on the Z-Wave module.

Z-Ware is a middleware for Z-Wave controllers that runs over the Z/IP (Z-Wave over IP) interface. Z-Ware Apps (Z-Apps) are web pages integrated into the Z-Ware Web Server that offer user interfaces UI for smartphones, tablets, and PCs.

Z-ware web portal integrated with ZIP gateway

In this case, what the customer needs is a cloud-platform-accessible gateway bridge running as a signal extender to the Internet. Dusun IoT recommends DSGW-030 Z-Wave for WiFi/Ethernet gateway. This product has proven to a plenty of successful cloud platform access experience, especially with Microsoft Azure certification and AWS certification.

Solution:

For any other third-party or private cloud platforms, DSGW-030 has a user manual of how to use the LuCi page to set up Cloud Platform Config and connect to your MQTT broker.

3.  Finding a Ceiling Mountable Smart Home Hub Gateway with PoE to Make Cables Invisible

Making the smart home hub controller work properly is crucial, but giving users a positive user experience is quite another matter. Nobody wants to live in a cord jungle. A good IoT gateway device enclosure design will always have the mounted switches, lights, and cables organized properly.

The customer has told us their difficulty is that a lot of customers want to home hub device to be fixed up on the ceiling, not a table, and no wires are visible. Dusun IoT’s Product Structure engineers are considering using PoE + Ceiling Mounting enclosure. The benefits of this structure lie in:

Reduced Costs of Deployment: PoE installation expenses are less than the cost of conventional wiring installation, since a single cable may transmit both power and data concurrently.

Safety from Single-power Source: installation is simplified with fewer steps and potential risks brought on by many adapters and sockets when power comes from a single source lessens.

Solution:

Dusun IoT has prepared a variety of enclosure proposals to hide wires during the entire project communication. Dusun IoT take an RPi box as a reference, dug a hole to run the cables from the ceiling to the inner board, and the base is screwed to the ceiling, then the cover part snaps on top of this base. Dusun IoT also added a cutout for the cables to go through when it’s placed on the table top.

Fianl PoE gateway ceiling mounting product installation effect show

Installation effect

Customer review:

Thank you very much for the updated design. This enclosure design looks great. I hope we can achieve the same design with 3 different sizes! For now, can we order samples?

4.  Looking for a Reliable Hardware Supplier with Strong Technical Support Capability

Field application hardware support entails having qualified professionals troubleshoot and fix any potential technological issues. This assistance should be available to facilitate technical tasks and resolve issues throughout the event. Professional hardware support services for field applications are very helpful in ensuring that projects proceed as planned with the least amount of disruption.

Examples:

Dusun IoT FAE engineers have successfully debugged the sporadical disconnection between the Z-Ware portal and the ZIP gateway. They found the issue caused by the Z-ware program and gave the customer a command to stop it. Furthermore, the DusunIoT DQA (Design Quality Assurance) team has also included this fix in the latest firmware.

5.  Seeking for the Capability of Adding Additional Zigbee and Thread to the PCBA Board

You can find a lot of articles telling you to choose the best smart home protocols, but Dusun IoT is capable of integrating them all onto a single carrier board. Smart home solution providers can choose what they prefer, and remove the ones they do not use, or keep some for future expansion. This kind of modular design is also what the smart home solution providers prefer most and what Dusun IoT outperforms in the market.

Z-Wave: Since 20 years ago, Z-Wave technology has been effectively grabbing the market. Many well-known companies produce and market Z-wave products and solutions. Z-Wave enjoys high interoperability, and additional Security 2 standards, and operates on a lower frequency, less vulnerable to other environmental devices.

Zigbee: Zigbee has gained more and more market share due to its much faster speed at getting data to and from your device than Z-Wave.

Thread: The Thread Group, which includes Google Nest, Amazon, Apple, and a number of other businesses, created the newest protocol. Thread operates at the same 2.4 GHz frequency as Zigbee. The fact that Thread is IP-based, which makes it simpler for it to interface with Wi-Fi networks and cellular networks, is its main point of differentiation.

Solution:

DSGW-230 gateway uses EFR32MG21 Series 2 Multiprotocol Wireless SoC, which is optimized for line-powered Zigbee and Thread applications. Meanwhile, DUSUN added a Z-Wave 700 module on the board. To make customers easily use it, DUSUN  updated the firmware via OTA.

Summary

It takes a lot of work to create a real, physical hardware product for your IoT environment and make sure it aligns with your ultimate goal. You must determine the performance requirements, the required hardware and software, and then the specifications for the components chosen after taking the environment and the application to be used into account.

As a full-fledged IoT hardware development company, Dusun IoT can handle the complete hardware development process including idea ideation, prototype design, manufacturing design, firmware development, and quality assurance. Dusun IoT are dedicated to providing Dusun IoT clients with professional hardware-as-a-service business. Don’t hesitate to schedule a meeting with Dusun IoT!