3 ms·
In the past few months, after doing a ton of research I ended up going with Z-Wave for a new home build. Z-Wave isn't not going away anytime soon. Zigbee is a
by metadat 3y ago
In the past few months, after doing a ton of research I ended up going with Z-Wave for a new home build. Z-Wave isn't not going away anytime soon.
Zigbee is also pretty cool, between these and an odd Wi-Fi only device here and there, it seems more than adequate.
- colordrops 3y agoI came to the same conclusion and it has been fine.
- travem 3y agoI am using z-wave as well. It has been rock solid, and using the z-wave association capability I don’t even need the hub (using Hubitat) unless I want to do more complex automations. The only downside is the ecosystem has fewer options (but have been high quality IMO) and the cost is higher than the ubiquitous WiFi smart home devices that require their own apps and internet connection.
- acheron 3y agoYep I have Z-Wave stuff with a Hubitat box. Works pretty well. I do wish I could locate a Z-Wave water timer for sprinkler/irrigation.
- semi-extrinsic 3y agoFWIW, Gardena sells "dumb" irrigation valves that run on 24V. It's just a normally-closed solenoid valve IIUC, with proper fittings etc. Controlling these with a 24V power supply and a Z-wave relay should be easy?
- rlpb 3y agoI am also invested into Z-Wave with about 50 devices. It works well, doesn't require an Internet connection, degrades gracefully if the hub is unavailable (or indeed any RF) and Z-Wave JS UI is good enough for self-hosting and bridging to MQTT for full integration with anything else I want. The protocol is also excellent for battery powered devices in terms of super low power consumption: depending on the device's needs, the protocol allows for the device radio to be completely off for hours at a time. For example, I have a couple of key fob controllers that we use daily but we haven't replaced the batteries in them for years. My only fear is that "consumerist" IoT platforms that change every few years will usurp it and new Z-Wave devices will become unavailable.
- CoastalCoder 3y agoI did zwave lighting for my home office a few years ago. I hit a problem where it was really difficult to debug setup / configuration problems. I suspect this was due to zwave devices being as cheap as possible: my devices had just 1-2 buttons and 1-2 blinky lights for configuration. I would have gladly spent $30 more per device to get better device diagnostics.
- dns_snek 3y agoOut of curiosity, why did you decide to go with Z-Wave over Zigbee?
- deadmutex 3y agoNot OP, but I hear that Zigbee implementations vary by vendor, and are usually not compatible across vendors.
- Larrikin 3y agoI did the research about a year ago and this wasn't an issue that came up. It really just seems to come down to your local market. Zigbee seemed to have more compatible devices in the US vs zwave so I went with zigbee. I only have about fifteen devices, mixed between a few manufacturers, but it's been rock solid after I switched from my initial conbee to a sonoff dongle.
- metadat 3y agoZ-Wave devices are mostly certified to not interfere with each other, whereas Zigbee is a fingers crossed free for all. All wired Z-Wave devices also act as repeaters to extend the network, which is handy.
- vGPU 3y agoI have a few zooz Z-wave devices and a bunch of zigbee stuff. The Z-wave devices turned out to be significantly more unreliable surprisingly. The only z-wave device I still have running is my smart lock. Everything else has been replaced with zigbee.
- grvdrm 3y agoI’ve got Z-wave as well. Rock solid most of the time. Some WiFi too. Also important: not overdoing it. I don’t have tons of time to tinker with devices, HA, etc.