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!
My reason for preferring Zigbee over wifi was pretty simple: I don’t trust IoT manufacturers, so I want as few smart home devices connected to the Internet as possible. With Zigbee not providing Internet connectivity, that’s one less thing for me to worry about.
Additionally, lots of Zigbee devices act as repeaters, so it’s unlikely you’d need multiple Zigbee hubs. My only Zigbee hub is in the basement, and I can control my Hue lights in the attic no problem, thanks to the devices in-between rebroadcasting and commands they see.
The end of easily flashable Tuya devices was what prompted me to migrate to Zigbee too. The few devices that require cloud connection are blacklisted from any other network access.
But it is also a benefit that Zigbee can operate independently from the controller. If HA goes down for whatever reason and automation with it, at least light switches and whatnot are still working as usual.
Just take into consideration that battery powered zigbee devices most likely won’t act as repeater/router, for that you may need a wall plugged device.
And yes, the few non-tasmota flashed wifi devices I have ping home a lot
You’ve already been swayed, but keeping these devices off the Internet was my main reasoning too. Sometimes WiFi is your only option, of course, but when the choice is there I go Zigbee every time. Other factors to consider include:
- Zigbee was designed specifically for IoT stuff. WiFi was not.
- lower power consumption
- self healing mesh
- much easier/cheaper to extend the range by strategically placing bulbs or smart sockets compared to extending WiFi range
- avoids clogging up WiFi bandwidth with IoT noise
- there’s a limit to the number of devices most WiFi routers can handle
I assume Z-wave is similar but Zigbee devices are much easier to find, at least in the UK, and - someone correct me if I’m wrong - but I believe Thread is essentially Zigbee 2.0.
