Overview#

The Serial Applications Programming Interface (Serial API) allows a host to communicate with a Z-Wave chip. The host may be a PC or a less powerful embedded host CPU, e.g., in a remote control or in a gateway device. Depending on the chip family, the Serial API may be accessed via RS-232 or USB physical interfaces.

Sample applications demonstrate how to communicate with a Z-Wave chip via the Serial API.

The following host-based sample applications are available on the SDK:

  • Z/IP Gateway: Gateway application using Serial API features of the bridge controller API

  • PC Controller: Demonstrates Serial API features of the bridge controller API

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The host-based sample applications are described in the respective SDK overview documents. For details, refer to [2] and [4] for 500 and 700 SoCs respectively.

The serial API leverages the Z-Wave Protocol API. The serial API introduces additional messages related to inter-host communications. Mapping of serial API commands to the Z-Wave Protocol API calls can be found in [3]. See Serial API Commands for dedicated commands. A Z-Wave Alliance document describing the Serial API commands will also soon be available.

Serial API based applications MUST ensure that the required features are available in the actual Z-Wave library, using the Capabilities Command. See Serial API Commands.