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Google is doing this so they can give you another reason to buy Nest -- it now acts as a bridge! Yale is doing this because they have locks that already have Z

by bravo22 12y ago

Google is doing this so they can give you another reason to buy Nest -- it now acts as a bridge! Yale is doing this because they have locks that already have Zigbee. ARM is doing this to sell chips. They have their fingers in a million different protocols. I don't blame them. Funny enough, there are very few things in home automation that actually need battery. Everything from light switches to light bulbs to smoke alarms and security systems are wired. The better way would be to use BLE which has the same benefits of 802.15.4 stack. BLE 4.1 allows you to do mesh routing, like Zigbee. The biggest boon is that you can talk to the nodes directly with your phone.

wlesieutre 12y ago
Light switches don't need to be wired either, we've just been doing them that way because it's the obvious thing when you're just turning a 120v circuit on and off. When your lightbulbs become smart devices, they no longer want to be on an on/off circuit. In fact, it doesn't even matter if a group of them is on the same circuit or not. You just need a switch to talk to them wirelessly over Thread, ZigBee, Enocean, or similar. At that point, you don't have to run the circuits to your light switches either. Enocean's switches are all powered by kinetic energy, but if you don't mind replacing all of your batteries every few years, that can work too.
- ddeck 12y ago
  >Light switches don't need to be wired either Indeed, and sometimes can't be. There are a couple of locations in my home where there's insufficient depth to mount a wired switch and I instead have MK astral (z-wave) low-profile battery powered switches.
- alexchamberlain 12y ago
  From a safety perspective, it's probably better that they are wired, though I'd prefer them to be wired to Ethernet and powered by PoE, rather than with 120/240V.
  - atwebb 12y ago
    What am I missing that it is safer to be wired? There's no guarantee that the bulbs going to be good when you hit the switch so I'd guess the battery concern would be the same. Unless you mean for hacking/tech security in which case I can see the difference.
    - alexchamberlain 12y ago
      I simply meant safer in the same way that wired smoke alarms are safer: you can't forget to change the battery because you don't use it very often. Think of a cupboard's light switch, for example.
  - a-priori 12y ago
    Why? If you're going to be doing any work on the electrical, you should be shutting off the entire circuit at the breaker, regardless of whether the bulb is controlled by a switch or some fancy home automation system, just in case you or someone else in the house or an automated system absentmindedly turns on the bulb. From a safety perspective, how the bulb is controlled is irrelevant.
- bravo22 12y ago
  You are right they don't need to be, but from a building code perspective you can't bury the controller behind a wall. You have to make them accessible behind some kind of a wall plate so for aesthetics reasons people will likely end up putting switches there anyways. I think the better option is, as you said, have all switches be wireless, and somewhere like a basement and have a bunch of 'controllers' to tell it to switch on or off.
  - wlesieutre 12y ago
    That's true if your switches are talking to a 20A relay and flipping the circuit on and off. If all you have is a switch sending a radio signal to a lightbulb, then you no longer have a controller that needs to be accessible. Just the switches and various "internet of things" devices that are always plugged into always-on line power. That's what Thread is for. The one thing I wonder about is replacing lightbulbs when they fail. It's a good safety practice to kill the circuit when you're doing it, and without a hardwired switch you'll have to do that at the breaker now. On the other hand, if you're buying fancy wireless LED bulbs, they'd damn well better last longer than an incandescent A19.
    - bravo22 12y ago
      Thread would actually be overkill for that application. Too much crap on the stack. Just use BLE for your switch to talk to your bulb. Done. BLE and 802.15.4 have near identical modulation, and BLE has very low overhead compared to Zigbee.
      - wlesieutre 12y ago
        I mention Zigbee there because it's what Philips' hue lights use. Maybe it's overkill, but it seems to work pretty well for them.

by bravo22 12y ago

wlesieutre 12y ago

Light switches don't need to be wired either, we've just been doing them that way because it's the obvious thing when you're just turning a 120v circuit on and off. When your lightbulbs become smart devices, they no longer want to be on an on/off circuit. In fact, it doesn't even matter if a group of them is on the same circuit or not. You just need a switch to talk to them wirelessly over Thread, ZigBee, Enocean, or similar. At that point, you don't have to run the circuits to your light switches either. Enocean's switches are all powered by kinetic energy, but if you don't mind replacing all of your batteries every few years, that can work too.

ddeck 12y ago
>Light switches don't need to be wired either Indeed, and sometimes can't be. There are a couple of locations in my home where there's insufficient depth to mount a wired switch and I instead have MK astral (z-wave) low-profile battery powered switches.
alexchamberlain 12y ago
From a safety perspective, it's probably better that they are wired, though I'd prefer them to be wired to Ethernet and powered by PoE, rather than with 120/240V.
- atwebb 12y ago
  What am I missing that it is safer to be wired? There's no guarantee that the bulbs going to be good when you hit the switch so I'd guess the battery concern would be the same. Unless you mean for hacking/tech security in which case I can see the difference.
  - alexchamberlain 12y ago
    I simply meant safer in the same way that wired smoke alarms are safer: you can't forget to change the battery because you don't use it very often. Think of a cupboard's light switch, for example.
- a-priori 12y ago
  Why? If you're going to be doing any work on the electrical, you should be shutting off the entire circuit at the breaker, regardless of whether the bulb is controlled by a switch or some fancy home automation system, just in case you or someone else in the house or an automated system absentmindedly turns on the bulb. From a safety perspective, how the bulb is controlled is irrelevant.
bravo22 12y ago
You are right they don't need to be, but from a building code perspective you can't bury the controller behind a wall. You have to make them accessible behind some kind of a wall plate so for aesthetics reasons people will likely end up putting switches there anyways. I think the better option is, as you said, have all switches be wireless, and somewhere like a basement and have a bunch of 'controllers' to tell it to switch on or off.
- wlesieutre 12y ago
  That's true if your switches are talking to a 20A relay and flipping the circuit on and off. If all you have is a switch sending a radio signal to a lightbulb, then you no longer have a controller that needs to be accessible. Just the switches and various "internet of things" devices that are always plugged into always-on line power. That's what Thread is for. The one thing I wonder about is replacing lightbulbs when they fail. It's a good safety practice to kill the circuit when you're doing it, and without a hardwired switch you'll have to do that at the breaker now. On the other hand, if you're buying fancy wireless LED bulbs, they'd damn well better last longer than an incandescent A19.
  - bravo22 12y ago
    Thread would actually be overkill for that application. Too much crap on the stack. Just use BLE for your switch to talk to your bulb. Done. BLE and 802.15.4 have near identical modulation, and BLE has very low overhead compared to Zigbee.
    - wlesieutre 12y ago
      I mention Zigbee there because it's what Philips' hue lights use. Maybe it's overkill, but it seems to work pretty well for them.