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First thought being that the "Zigbee Alliance, an industry group that develops standards and certifies products to ensure multi-vendor interoperability" essenti

by jaclaz 7y ago

First thought being that the "Zigbee Alliance, an industry group that develops standards and certifies products to ensure multi-vendor interoperability" essentially certified something that after all does not allow "multi-vendor interoperability". I can well understand how each vendor would try to create its own "walled garden", but the whole idea of such "standard" (actually most of the time "pseudo-standard") associations should be exactly that of contrasting the single firm attempt to cut out the other vendors in the same area.

fest 7y ago
I think of it as WiFi Alliance. You would expect several WiFi devices connect to the same AP, but you probably wouldn't expect a random widget from company A to interoperate with random widget from company B.
maxerickson 7y ago
There's a lot of details to chase around though. Like were the actual devices in question labeled as certified, or was the Zigbee compliance just an implementation detail of the hardware they shipped. I don't think the Zigbee Alliance requires their members to only market compliant products as certified, so they could be marketing them to consumers as compliant and to companies like Charter as easy to integrate. A requirement that products carry a clear statement about relying on a service to function, and then some rules about how the end of life for such products and services should be sequenced would not be onerous and would make the situation much better for consumers (even the ones that didn't read the statement would get the minimum period of service specified in the EOL rules).
- jaclaz 7y ago
  Yep, though, if you go there (as a final user/customer, not as an expert in details): https://zigbeealliance.org/ https://zigbeealliance.org/ The message you get (or at least the one I get) is: > WHY Leading companies choose Zigbee > Interoperable > Our world-renowned certification program and our large focus on interoperability assure consumers and developers that devices will interoperate. I don't think that if I have something certified/stamped by them and it comes out that it won't interoperate with something else they also certified/stamped it is excessive to say that their assurance is m00t.
luma 7y ago
Zigbee interoperability isn't what you might think it is. Think of it like a layer 1-4 interop, while layer 7 (application layer) can, and in many cases is, up to the device vendor. That means Zigbee radios in your house can use each other for mesh networking, but may not actually be able to talk to each other in any meaningful way. ZLL and then ZHA are intended to address this, but aren't always widely adopted by device vendors for a bunch of reasons, one of which might be the "walled garden" you mention. Solutions like Z-Wave also have a tightly-defined application layer which allows nearly all devices to have some level of meaningful interaction with each other. For example, a Z-Wave motion sensor from Vendor A can turn on a Z-Wave light from Vendor B in response to motion. This was largely possible due to all Z-Wave radios being made by one organization. There are now promises of opening the stack a bit so partners can also develop radios, and it remains to be seen what impact this will have on the interoperability of Z-Wave devices in the future.
- bkor 7y ago
  If you like tinkering, look into Zigbee2mqtt (=software). It supports loads of Zigbee devices so you can mix various devices together. Everything you need to do is pretty well explained. IMO home automation is currently anything but smart. It's fun if you like to tinker with things. That'll allow you to get great results. It's still too cumbersome though for non technical family members. Everything needs to be made easier by several factors.
  - darkwater 7y ago
    Why? Did ever normal people install electric equipment (wires, fusibles, switches etc) in their homes? The biggest problem here is that most electricians are not keeping up with the tech and, as always, tech is atill young and moving too fast. But in most cases you shouldn't worry about zigbee, z-wave, mqtt etc, you should just tell the electrician what you want to achieve, the basic workflow and that's it. Then you could customize it if you are a bit skilled/interested, or call them again (paying a fee).
VLM 7y ago
I close analogy that more HN readers would understand from the linked article would be imagine a pile of tablets connected to a wifi network, and they want to video conference. Every tablet implements the wifi standards such that they connect quite successfully to the AP at great speeds and range. However, one mfgr, for the sake of argument, Apple, stuck a MAC address software firewall in their OS 'to ensure a consistent user experience' such that its tablets at the MAC address layer can only communicate with other Apple MAC addressed products. Older HN readers will recall a vast variety of floppy disk using 80s home computers such that a CP/M Z80 box, a IBM AT 80286, an apple II, a TRS-80 model 4, and a commodore 64, all technically use standards compliant 5 1/4 floppy disks such that any double sided double density disk will work in any drive of all those devices... I assure you the filesystem layer is utterly incompatible and at best you'll need very special utilities. Somewhat younger HN readers might recall "stupid flash drive tricks" under linux like formatting a USB attached flash drive as ext2 format simply to see if you can do it. And it does work, perfectly. And nothing other than a linux box could mount a ext2 formatted USB flash drive. Technically thats a standards compliant flash drive both at physical interface and firmware layer that will not work on a mac or windows box. There's essentially an implementation bug in the standards documents for zigbee such that the RF layer will interop but the application layer most certainly does not have to interop and often enough does not, whereas zwave does NOT have the standards document implementation bug and any rando zwave device will mostly pretty much work with any other rando zwave device. The only technology I'm aware of where 100% of devices will interop is SCADA current loops. Some techs come close like DMX or zwave which never seems to fail. Some semi silo'd tech like insteon is pretty interoperable. Some stuff like zigbee essentially doesn't work IRL unless the mfgr put effort into it, which some do... and some don't.

by jaclaz 7y ago

fest 7y ago

I think of it as WiFi Alliance. You would expect several WiFi devices connect to the same AP, but you probably wouldn't expect a random widget from company A to interoperate with random widget from company B.

maxerickson 7y ago

There's a lot of details to chase around though. Like were the actual devices in question labeled as certified, or was the Zigbee compliance just an implementation detail of the hardware they shipped. I don't think the Zigbee Alliance requires their members to only market compliant products as certified, so they could be marketing them to consumers as compliant and to companies like Charter as easy to integrate. A requirement that products carry a clear statement about relying on a service to function, and then some rules about how the end of life for such products and services should be sequenced would not be onerous and would make the situation much better for consumers (even the ones that didn't read the statement would get the minimum period of service specified in the EOL rules).

jaclaz 7y ago
Yep, though, if you go there (as a final user/customer, not as an expert in details): https://zigbeealliance.org/ https://zigbeealliance.org/ The message you get (or at least the one I get) is: > WHY Leading companies choose Zigbee > Interoperable > Our world-renowned certification program and our large focus on interoperability assure consumers and developers that devices will interoperate. I don't think that if I have something certified/stamped by them and it comes out that it won't interoperate with something else they also certified/stamped it is excessive to say that their assurance is m00t.

luma 7y ago

Zigbee interoperability isn't what you might think it is. Think of it like a layer 1-4 interop, while layer 7 (application layer) can, and in many cases is, up to the device vendor. That means Zigbee radios in your house can use each other for mesh networking, but may not actually be able to talk to each other in any meaningful way. ZLL and then ZHA are intended to address this, but aren't always widely adopted by device vendors for a bunch of reasons, one of which might be the "walled garden" you mention. Solutions like Z-Wave also have a tightly-defined application layer which allows nearly all devices to have some level of meaningful interaction with each other. For example, a Z-Wave motion sensor from Vendor A can turn on a Z-Wave light from Vendor B in response to motion. This was largely possible due to all Z-Wave radios being made by one organization. There are now promises of opening the stack a bit so partners can also develop radios, and it remains to be seen what impact this will have on the interoperability of Z-Wave devices in the future.

bkor 7y ago
If you like tinkering, look into Zigbee2mqtt (=software). It supports loads of Zigbee devices so you can mix various devices together. Everything you need to do is pretty well explained. IMO home automation is currently anything but smart. It's fun if you like to tinker with things. That'll allow you to get great results. It's still too cumbersome though for non technical family members. Everything needs to be made easier by several factors.
- darkwater 7y ago
  Why? Did ever normal people install electric equipment (wires, fusibles, switches etc) in their homes? The biggest problem here is that most electricians are not keeping up with the tech and, as always, tech is atill young and moving too fast. But in most cases you shouldn't worry about zigbee, z-wave, mqtt etc, you should just tell the electrician what you want to achieve, the basic workflow and that's it. Then you could customize it if you are a bit skilled/interested, or call them again (paying a fee).

VLM 7y ago

I close analogy that more HN readers would understand from the linked article would be imagine a pile of tablets connected to a wifi network, and they want to video conference. Every tablet implements the wifi standards such that they connect quite successfully to the AP at great speeds and range. However, one mfgr, for the sake of argument, Apple, stuck a MAC address software firewall in their OS 'to ensure a consistent user experience' such that its tablets at the MAC address layer can only communicate with other Apple MAC addressed products. Older HN readers will recall a vast variety of floppy disk using 80s home computers such that a CP/M Z80 box, a IBM AT 80286, an apple II, a TRS-80 model 4, and a commodore 64, all technically use standards compliant 5 1/4 floppy disks such that any double sided double density disk will work in any drive of all those devices... I assure you the filesystem layer is utterly incompatible and at best you'll need very special utilities. Somewhat younger HN readers might recall "stupid flash drive tricks" under linux like formatting a USB attached flash drive as ext2 format simply to see if you can do it. And it does work, perfectly. And nothing other than a linux box could mount a ext2 formatted USB flash drive. Technically thats a standards compliant flash drive both at physical interface and firmware layer that will not work on a mac or windows box. There's essentially an implementation bug in the standards documents for zigbee such that the RF layer will interop but the application layer most certainly does not have to interop and often enough does not, whereas zwave does NOT have the standards document implementation bug and any rando zwave device will mostly pretty much work with any other rando zwave device. The only technology I'm aware of where 100% of devices will interop is SCADA current loops. Some techs come close like DMX or zwave which never seems to fail. Some semi silo'd tech like insteon is pretty interoperable. Some stuff like zigbee essentially doesn't work IRL unless the mfgr put effort into it, which some do... and some don't.