I was wrong to ignore Zigbee and Z-Wave. They're the best part of my smart home

Re:I was wrong to ignore Zigbee and Z-Wave. They're the best... by alwa on Monday February 12, 2024 @03:52PM (#39350334)

I’m a latecomer to the home automation game, so I’m speaking from theory more than experience. In the environments where I’m thinking about building out, the WiFi is… you know, fine, but it’s not a rock solid corporate campus pushing reliable signal to every crevice of every garage and outbuilding where I might be interested in adding sensors. Power, though, is plentiful, and Zigbee’s auto-meshing capabilities are therefore attractive to me.

I also have an impression that Zigbee et al are more friendly to extremely low-power, battery-operated sensors participating in the network in situations where a WiFi radio might drain down quickly.

You do mention occupancy sensors, though—if you have experience with battery-powered models that work reliably on WiFi, I’d be open to changing my mind.

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Re:I was wrong to ignore Zigbee and Z-Wave. They're the best... by bhaney on Monday February 12, 2024 @04:17PM (#39350636)

> I also have an impression that Zigbee et al are more friendly to extremely low-power, battery-operated sensors

That makes sense. All of my "smart" devices are wired to power because I don't want to maintain batteries, and "power is plentiful" as you said. But I can see why WiFi would be a detriment for battery-powered devices, and why some devices would be annoying to hard wire to power (door/window sensors come to mind).

> if you have experience with battery-powered models that work reliably on WiFi

I don't. Most of my sensor devices are just generic sensor components wired into a ESP8266 breakout board, plugged into power. Not much that's ready off-the-shelf.

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