Z-Wave is the incredibly common wireless communication protocol at the backbone of many home automation systems. To date there hasn't been any in-kernel Z-Wave Linux kernel drivers for this low-energy mesh network standard, but a SUSE developer has prototyped an initial driver and currently exploring the in-kernel possibilities, including what could end up being a Z-Wave subsystem.

There seemingly hasn't been much interest for mainline Z-Wave Linux kernel drivers, but Andreas Färber was inspired to do some experimental work following the recent successes of LoRa and other kernel networking advancements.

For this initial attempt, Andreas was using a Pine64 Z-Wave module based upon a SiLabs ZM5304 module and his initial Z-Wave code is a serial device driver that can be attached using Device Tree. He's still exploring a more complete implementation including potentially leaving the node communication to user-space and potentially making a Z-Wave driver subsystem, but for now he posted his basic driver code while soliciting feedback from the developer community in his approach and any interest from other parties. Given the exploring home automation market and Z-Wave often powering the consumer hardware, it's likely only a matter of time before there is more kernel work in this area.