this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2024
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Home Automation

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Discussion about general home automation ideas and projects, home automation protocols like Z-wave, Zigbee, Matter, etc, and home automation software and hubs like HomeSeer, Home Assistant, OpenHAB, Homey.

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wifi vs zigbee (lemmy.ml)
submitted 8 months ago by GravitySpoiled@lemmy.ml to c/homeautomation@lemmy.world
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What's the advantage of the zigbees? I can get both bulbs, wifi and zigbee for ~5 bucks.

I tried reading a lot of articles/ posts. This is all confusing. Some write zigbee is better with battery because wifi lamps need to stay connected with wifi. But the zigbee lamps need to stay connected with zigbee (however they communicate. must be waves as well) as well, does it consume less power? What's the range of these hubs? Wifi is available everywhere. Do I need multiple hubs?

I want to connect them to home assistant, so arguments like zigbee can be better automated should fall short as well, right? I already have one wifi lamp which is automated enough for my taste. What shall I more automate than turn off at x and turn on at y.

And I haven't even read properly into zwave or matter.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

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[–] tyler@programming.dev 8 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Zigbee is a low power mesh protocol, unlike WiFi which is a constant connection central hub protocol. Zigbee will use less power because the devices only wake up to send a message then go back into low power mode. They also have more “resiliency” because it a node goes down it is likely that the other devices will still be able to communicate to HA through a different route.

[–] GravitySpoiled@lemmy.ml 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Thanks!

I read about the network as well. Is that a relevant argument? It's not like a router wasn't reliable.

[–] tyler@programming.dev 2 points 8 months ago

Not sure what you mean.