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0 pointshorsawlarway3y ago0 comments

Personally - I got kinda the other feel. Seems like Z-Wave is slowly dying in favor of zigbee devices.

I can't really even find z-wave bulbs right now. And basically any device I might want (curtains, alarms, sensors, lights, motors, thermostats, etc) comes in a zigbee form.

I agree that Z-Wave did the better standards enforcement, but Zigbee went with the age old route to success: manage to be cheaper.

Throw in that the two most common automation situations tend to be either:

1. Upstream cloud service

2. Local management engine (ex: HomeAssistant, OpenHab, etc)

And it just doesn't really matter all that much how compatible devices are in terms of point to point control. I can just route the message through HA and take the action I want - mixing and matching as needed.

Plus - Alexa pro ships a directly integrated zigbee hub now, which got a lot of devices moving that direction, and Ikea makes some great super cheap zigbee devices.

Bluetooth and Wifi devices are the worst of both worlds, in my opinion. Wifi usually needs integration with an upstream service which is a non-starter for me, and bluetooth is just really limited on total device count. Both also eat through a lot of power compared to z-wave/zigbee.

It's pretty cool that several recent zigbee switches are completely battery/wire free. They literally use the energy you expend to push to the button to send the signal.

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oceanplexian3y ago

> I can't really even find z-wave bulbs right now. And

Even though you can find a Z-Wave bulb, it defeats the purpose of Z-Wave. Z-Wave isn't for consumables like bulbs, it works best for hard-wiring electrical devices into your home that will be permanently installed in a professional installation. I wouldn't feel comfortable putting a Zigbee switch in the wall since it's likely to become obsolete, whereas I'd be confident Z-Wave will still be around and supported in 10 or 15 years.

bioemerl3y ago

In my experience both are dying in favor of iot/wifi stuff.

Zwave is still strong in the commercial space

ZigBee is strong in the consumer space, especially light bulbs that commercial systems do not want to use.

I'm thinking it'll be longer before zwave dies for real vs zigbee, but it will only live on the back of the big slow commercial entities that back it.

horsawlarwayOP3y ago

I don't really see Zigbee dying right now. Hell - I used it before home automation was really a thing back in college almost 15 years ago now, and it's going strong today.

Hue has always been all-in on Zigbee. (incl the new 3.0 standard - https://developers.meethue.com/zigbee-3-0-support-in-hue-eco...)

Ikea has gone basically all-in on Zigbee (https://www.wired.co.uk/article/ikea-smart-home-kit-reviewed...)

Amazon is embedding it their devices (At least 4 different models include a zigbee hub: https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/docs/alexa/smarthome/zigb...)

Wifi is basically a non-starter for any real automation since it takes a boat load of power, and requires a non-local server (at least without some serious work on your part). It's a great intro spot for consumers who want to try a color changing bulb they can control with their phone, since the initial buy in cost is lower with no hub - but it's not really the same.

For z-wave on the other hand... I literally cannot find a place to buy a-19 standard socket bulbs that support it right now. Lots of "controller kits" but no bulbs.

Same for thermostats - there's like 3 z-wave thermostats on amazon right now. There are dozens of zigbee models.

Honestly - on Amazon at least, a lot of searches for "z-wave [device]" end up returning mostly zigbee results.

Ex: Go search Amazon for "Z-wave plug": Row 3 starts to return zigbee devices.

Go search again for "Zigbee plug": It's zigbee devices all the way down the page (one early result does both zigbee and z-wave, but otherwise you have scroll waaay down to see any overlap)

Basically - Having both Ikea and Amazon go in on Zigbee has radically shifted the market from where it was 3 years ago (when I would have probably agreed that z-wave was the better pick).

bioemerl3y ago

It's a very different experience if you go to Walmart and try to find smart devices.

ZigBee devices are still available, but companies I've seen that used to have them almost exclusively swapped to WiFi over time.

Hue is still ZigBee for example, but the old generic bulbs at home Depot? Gone. Liquidated. Nobody understands smart hubs. Everyone understands their app.

Bulbs, plugs, sockets, even thermostats. What do you think is the ratio of nest thermostats vs zigbee?

Big business buys thermostats from big retailers who sell in batches of hundreds. My dad's home, built a year or two ago, is wired up with zwave.

You don't see bulbs because the companies who set up zwave almost exclusively stick the switches in the wall and leave the lights dumb. Built to work for decades without configuration sort of thing.

My thinking is that the wifi stuff is going to eat ZigBees lunch, although your point about battery life is a very good one.

Zwave, in the space it's in, seems more durable to me. One day lights will go out and replaced with wifi bulbs that everyone can use, but the companies using zwave are way more picky and will not want to go wifi.

bombcar3y ago

The Hue bulbs are now primarily advertised as Bluetooth but apparently still have Zigbee to talk to hubs.

I've found that the color changing is cute for awhile and then I revert to "on/off" (and have actually decommissioned some of my Hues)

synergy203y ago

that's new to me, did not track this field for a few years. zigbee protocol was too complex in the past for me on resource restricted devices, while zwave is so much light-weight, then that's just the technical side. maybe that's why z-wave now opens up, it's forced to do so or it dies.

Semaphor3y ago

Zigbee was bigger in Europe, Z-Wave in the US. Or at least that was what I always read ;)

Philips Hue was always the big "Zigbee? Never heard of that" Zigbee producer, nowadays, there are also good and cost-effective things from Sonoff and Aqara, and cheap but hit-or-miss devices by tuya (heavily white labeled)

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oceanplexian3y ago

> I can't really even find z-wave bulbs right now. And

bioemerl3y ago

In my experience both are dying in favor of iot/wifi stuff.

Zwave is still strong in the commercial space

ZigBee is strong in the consumer space, especially light bulbs that commercial systems do not want to use.

I'm thinking it'll be longer before zwave dies for real vs zigbee, but it will only live on the back of the big slow commercial entities that back it.

horsawlarwayOP3y ago

I don't really see Zigbee dying right now. Hell - I used it before home automation was really a thing back in college almost 15 years ago now, and it's going strong today.

Hue has always been all-in on Zigbee. (incl the new 3.0 standard - https://developers.meethue.com/zigbee-3-0-support-in-hue-eco...)

Ikea has gone basically all-in on Zigbee (https://www.wired.co.uk/article/ikea-smart-home-kit-reviewed...)

Amazon is embedding it their devices (At least 4 different models include a zigbee hub: https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/docs/alexa/smarthome/zigb...)

For z-wave on the other hand... I literally cannot find a place to buy a-19 standard socket bulbs that support it right now. Lots of "controller kits" but no bulbs.

Same for thermostats - there's like 3 z-wave thermostats on amazon right now. There are dozens of zigbee models.

Honestly - on Amazon at least, a lot of searches for "z-wave [device]" end up returning mostly zigbee results.

Ex: Go search Amazon for "Z-wave plug": Row 3 starts to return zigbee devices.

Go search again for "Zigbee plug": It's zigbee devices all the way down the page (one early result does both zigbee and z-wave, but otherwise you have scroll waaay down to see any overlap)

Basically - Having both Ikea and Amazon go in on Zigbee has radically shifted the market from where it was 3 years ago (when I would have probably agreed that z-wave was the better pick).

bioemerl3y ago

It's a very different experience if you go to Walmart and try to find smart devices.

ZigBee devices are still available, but companies I've seen that used to have them almost exclusively swapped to WiFi over time.

Hue is still ZigBee for example, but the old generic bulbs at home Depot? Gone. Liquidated. Nobody understands smart hubs. Everyone understands their app.

Bulbs, plugs, sockets, even thermostats. What do you think is the ratio of nest thermostats vs zigbee?

Big business buys thermostats from big retailers who sell in batches of hundreds. My dad's home, built a year or two ago, is wired up with zwave.

You don't see bulbs because the companies who set up zwave almost exclusively stick the switches in the wall and leave the lights dumb. Built to work for decades without configuration sort of thing.

My thinking is that the wifi stuff is going to eat ZigBees lunch, although your point about battery life is a very good one.

bombcar3y ago

The Hue bulbs are now primarily advertised as Bluetooth but apparently still have Zigbee to talk to hubs.

I've found that the color changing is cute for awhile and then I revert to "on/off" (and have actually decommissioned some of my Hues)

synergy203y ago

Semaphor3y ago

Zigbee was bigger in Europe, Z-Wave in the US. Or at least that was what I always read ;)

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse