homeassistant

12869 readers

15 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

GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk

greatalbatross@lemmy.world

ZigBee and Zwave? (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 weeks ago by gedaliyah@lemmy.world to c/homeassistant@lemmy.world

41 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I see a lot of posts about people who like their Zigbee and Z-Wave products. As I'm setting up the hardware in my home, I'm using Wi-Fi products because I already have Wi-Fi. I don't see much difference in price. What is the actual benefit of setting up a separate network for home devices? Is there a reason that I should consider setting up one of these networks?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] tburkhol@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I have 8 Z-wave devices now, including a couple "long range" devices. With the first couple, I would sometimes have trouble with the farthest, battery-powered device dropping out of the network occasionally, but that hasn't happened as I've added more devices. I fought with pairing the initial devices - clicking the right series of buttons at the same time as telling HA to look for devices to join - but all the recent devices have just has a QR code - scan it into HA, and the device just shows up when I turn it on. I don't know how much of this difference between new and old is my learning curve vs better product support, but I am really happy with my Z-waves now.

Z-wave rather than wifi so I know they aren't phoning home.

[–] Bakkoda@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 week ago

My first couple of battery operated zwave devices were hard fails. Instantly offline and rarely came back. That was years ago now. I've got temp/humidity sensors and water/leak detectors going for a year now at 95% battery still. The new 800 series Zooz devices pretty much guarantee you won't have range issues. I've never looked back after choosing zwave.

My network is more than capable of supporting Wi-Fi devices but i simply choose not to. It's an attack vector i didn't need and overkill for most devices.