Personally think zwave to be the most entrenched (commercial real estate relies heavily on zwave). The “cool” smart products typically exist as Wi-Fi, bluetooth, and zigbee devices (in that order). The requirements for those turn me off but I have been very successful with zwave. It powers everything from locks and lights to doors gates and my sprinkler system. HVAC is controlled by zwave and I even have a keychain scene controller that acts as a key fob to my house. When it comes close, it associates and that event can trigger a rule set.

I’m using openHAB instead of HA for the tinkerability, but the new versions are pretty power user friendly

Personally, I've found Zigbee devices to be much easier to find, much more reliable than Bluetooth, and the entire sector seems to be heading towards Matter, Thread, and Zigbee anyways.

My battery powered Zigbee devices last at least a year without needing a recharge/replacement, which was a huge selling point (door/vibration sensors, temperature, etc), although zwave is similar if I understand correctly. Most of mine are on year 3 now and probably need new batteries soon.

My order of preference would be Matter, Zigbee, Wifi, and Bluetooth being a last resort option. Z-wave isn't on the list only because I decided against getting a controller for it.

I love that we have options like this.

I got a Hubitat box that has both Zwave and Zigbee. I've only ever used Zwave devices and they all work very well but I guess I have the option of Zigbee if I need it. I've avoided anything Wifi or Bluetooth. I don't really know what "Matter" is but I had thought it was a Google thing, which I would certainly avoid at all costs. Maybe I misunderstood it though.

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Interesting, guess we'll see what comes from that. Thanks.

That’s the thing you need four different methods to access the protocols you describe. Of those protocols you listed, zwave operates at the lowest frequency giving you the best coverage. And has all the same benefits of zigbee (auto healing, mesh network). So yeah there are options but some of them just make no sense (as you pointed out)

I am completely unable to understand why any of these devices need any kind of wireless radio at all.

They're all plugged into wall power all the time, and powerline Ethernet works fine.

What am I missing?

You can look at several types in that list that don't have wall power easily or always available. Door and window sensors, which could be solved similar to older alarm systems, but have a significantly lower barrier to entry being wireless. There are convenience and accessibility benefits to allowing wireless battery-powered switches to control your devices. Wi-Fi can be an answer for a lot of these but there are battery life and coverage benefits to the mesh behavior of these networks without needing to spend a lot to expand your Wi-Fi coverage.

Why would I plug sensors, that sip power, into a power point?

When I have humidity/temperature, light, motion, etc in every single room how many freaking power points am I meant to have in my house, aha. Maybe American houses have walls absolutely studded with power points but most other places don't.

> They're all plugged into wall power all the time

Most of the remotes switches, sensors, and some others are all battery powered and last at least a year without needing to be changed.

In fact, they would be largely useless or cumbersome if they needed a wire.

I have lights in my home too. If I want to turn a light on or off, I get up, walk three steps, and turn the light switch on.

I could make all this computer controlled over a home server if I wanted to, but what's the point?

Convenience. Some people don't desire it, and that's fine.

My wife said the same thing as you at first, and originally had no desire for any of it.

Instead of buying dimmer switches to replace the on/off wall switches, I got dimmers that go in the gang box behind the existing switches. I did this for her, because she preferred a real switch and now we can on/off with a real switch or control brightness/on/off with voice, app, or zigbee remotes.

Since I did this on all our wall switches, my wife went from using the real switches 100% of the time to now around 0-5% of the time. When we're away from home she always makes a comment on how annoying it is to NOT have it.

Asking for a brightness change while watching a movie or cooking with dirty hands, automatically tuning the lights to something warmer at night and brighter during the day, forgot to turn something off and you're already in bed, automatically turn on the lights inside the front door when we open it with an arm full of stuff, having energy monitoring, virtual 3-way switches without any re-wiring, adding additional lights to switches that don't have real switches, controlling the TV without a remote, the list goes on.