this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2024
112 points (100.0% liked)

homeassistant

12247 readers
70 users here now

Home Assistant is open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first. Powered by a worldwide community of tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts. Perfect to run on a Raspberry Pi or a local server. Available for free at home-assistant.io

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Why do you feel ZigBee is a mess?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Lack of certification leading to non-standard implementations that don’t work well with other devices and instability, especially Aqara

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

No idea what you're talking about: https://software-dl.ti.com/simplelink/esd/simplelink_cc13x2_26x2_sdk/3.30.00.03/exports/docs/zigbee/html/zigbee/product_certification.html

https://zigbeealliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/07-4842-13-Zigbee-certification-policy.pdf

If you're complaining that the Zigbee standard is open and anyone can write their own implementation, you might be in the wrong place.

Don't buy non-certified Zigbee products. Simple as that.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

That's certainly fair. Some of the implementations are terrible, leading to the necessity of things like https://github.com/doctor64/tuyaZigbee

It's no wonder that ZigBee evolved into Matter

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Not the guy your asked, but I'd say everything proprietary is a mess, by definition.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

No it is not! It's a standard, but is by no means an "open" one. Use of it requires paying royalties to the Zigbee Alliance.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Is it? I thought that ZigBee was royalty free and Zwave was not (even because usually ZigBee products costs less than the Zwave ones); is it the other way around?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I believe that Z-wave is more open then Zigbee (although it didn't start out that way, and it's unclear to me whether it's completely so now or not).

Thread exists because it's meant to be the royalty-free replacement for both of them (and the first royalty-free standard since X10).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

I just had a look at some Z-Wave motion detection sensor and I soon remembered why I chose ZigBee some years ago: they're soooo expensive! ZigBee sensors costs half/a forth of the Z-Wave ones!
Why that? Maybe for the more expensive royalty? More expensive components?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

Disclaimer: I am wildly speculating as someone who has been been paying attention to smart home tech for a long time, but only minimally so because every time I checked it seemed too immature/janky/proprietary/etc. to bother dealing with. (It's only recently, with the advent of stuff like Home Assistant, ESPHome, Tasmota, and hopefully-imminent Matter and Thread, that I've started to dip my toes in.)

First of all, I feel like a decade ago Z-Wave used to be the cheaper option. Second, my impression is that Z-wave, as an older standard with questionable compliance/implementation accuracy across vendors, just didn't work quite as well as Zigbee, which I guess would make it less popular over time and therefore eventually more expensive due to fewer economies of scale.