Happy Earth Day! How ubisys contributes to making our planet a better place

At ubisys we develop technology that helps reduce our customers' energy consumption and consequently carbon footprint. Huge direct savings of primary energy are possible with our thermostat products, contributing to a reduced consumption of fossil fuels like oil and gas. Ideally suited for mentioned savings are the ubisys H1 smart thermostatic radiator valve and our versatile 10-zone underfloor heating/cooling controller ubisys H10. Not only do these energy savings directly translate into cost savings, but they also have a great impact on our environment. Both feature wireless connectivity based on Zigbee 3.0. These thermostats being smart and connected, you can always monitor the heating or cooling demand they are asking for.

But most impressive is that you actually don't have to lift a finger but can let the system do all the work. The good news is that these products automatically increase comfort by employing high quality thermal regulation algorithms as you can tell from the flat temperature curves.

What's more, they are also fun to use, for example using voice control via Alexa and Siri, or the ability to remotely set the target temperature from your favorite app while on the road.

In addition, our mains powered actuators are all equipped with energy metering functionality, letting you know exactly which devices consumed how much energy at what times. The dashboard hosted on the ubisys G1 provides customers with a ranking of those devices that consume the most energy on a daily, monthly or yearly basis. This knowledge is key to lowering the energy bill by providing easy to grasp information that helps deduce actionable items. For example, looking at devices that consumed considerable amounts of energy, which ones would be worth replacing with newer, higher efficiency alternatives? Or, looking at all the entertainment equipment in a typical living room, cutting stand-by power and turning it back on quickly and conveniently is super easy with products like the ubisys S1 and S1-R.

Primarily in commercial buildings, but also in residential homes, automated lighting control helps harvest daylight and reduce energy bills. Artificial light is only used to the extent required to attain the specific light level for e.g. an office environment, lowering light levels in unoccupied areas. Our automation engine additionally provides the heartbeat for Human Centric Lighting applications steering tunable white lights throughout the day for improved comfort and wellbeing of workers and ultimately benefitting planet earth as well.

Zigbee Green Power is a cool and award-winning ultra low-power technology that enables battery-less, wireless, self-powered, energy-harvesting products. All our mains powered actuator products (S1, S1-R, S2, S2-R, D1, D1-R, LD6, J1, J1-R, H10) support Zigbee Green Power switches and environmental sensors directly. For example, you could pair an indoor-solar powered Green Power temperature sensor directly to provide the current temperature for one or more H10 zones. Our gateway G1 supports all kinds of Green Power sensors and is able to translate compact Green Power messages to classic Zigbee messages for devices that do not have built-in Green Power support. And your applications built on top of our Zigbee USB dongle U1 may do this, too. In addition, all our permanently powered products (e.g. R0, C4, C2 mini in addition to the actuators listed above) serve as access points for these sensors into the wireless Zigbee mesh network. Due to a recent upgrade some of our own switch coupler products (C4 and C2 mini) now also are able to talk Green Power, i.e. operate either as a classic Zigbee router or as a Green Power switch, creating more options for system integrators to choose the best approach for any given deployment scenario. It goes without saying that leveraging Zigbee as the leading and ubiquitous wireless mesh standard these IoT products are all fully interoperable across a vast range of eco-systems and manufacturers.

You have certainly heard of or read about the emerging Matter open-source standard developed by members of the Connectivity Standards Alliance. We have been participating in this effort from the beginning to ensure that all our existing and deployed products will be supported in Matter eco-systems by virtue of our ubisys G1. Next to the already existing HomeKit bridge and Alexa Smart Home Skill, which provide similar integrations today, an upcoming G1 firmware will support Matter whenever it is released and ready for the market.

Over time, this Zigbee/Matter bridge will likely replace the HomeKit bridge and Alexa Skill and provide integrations into eco-systems that we did not support yet, for example Google Home. This underlines the sustainable approach we practice day to day, keeping products relevant and up-to-date for decades - we recently celebrated 10 years of firmware updates for our initial set of Zigbee 3.0 devices, which were the first Zigbee 3.0 devices ever certified!

Customers who have invested in ubisys products and solutions over the past years and continue to do so in the future can rest assured that their investment is protected as all their ubisys products will become members of the Matter family seamlessly, effortlessly and free of charge. This does not only provide peace of mind to consumers today but is another example of how providing long-term support reliefs our planet from electric component waste.

In addition to utilizing these technologies in our very own product portfolio, we also license our stack components, which have been awarded multiple Golden Unit designations, as well as connectivity modules and even entire product designs to partners and customers all over the world and support them with our expertise to help build smart products that make a difference.

We look forward to continue our path towards a brighter future for everyone.

Happy Earth Day!