[HN Gopher] Z-Wave Alliance Announces Z-Wave Source Code Project...
___________________________________________________________________
Z-Wave Alliance Announces Z-Wave Source Code Project Now Open and
Available
Author : JeanSebTr
Score : 120 points
Date : 2022-12-15 14:30 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (z-wavealliance.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (z-wavealliance.org)
| nicolaslem wrote:
| With all tech giants putting their weight behind a competing
| (open) standard, z-wave is probably feeling the pressure to adapt
| or become irrelevant.
| VLM wrote:
| Firmware for Matter is going to be enormous, zwave is a lot
| simpler. Lots of pessimism in the market about the
| interoperability of Matter. No mfgr is going to be motivated to
| encourage their customers to interoperate with a competitors
| gadget. My prediction is everything will ship with a "matter"
| icon on it, but support will only be vertical silo, maybe even
| worse than things are now.
|
| Thread is basically a full wifi-ish TCP/IPv6 stack, so, again,
| pretty huge compared to a tiny little zwave firmware.
|
| Interesting angle to think about: Is the middle or end of a
| chip shortage the worst possible time to ship a HUGE new
| standard, or is it the best possible time because there's no
| stockpile of smaller memory smaller CPU legacy
| microcontrollers?
| daenney wrote:
| > My prediction is everything will ship with a "matter" icon
| on it, but support will only be vertical silo, maybe even
| worse than things are now.
|
| There's already available evidence that contradicts that
| prediction. Eve[1] is rolling out a firmware update for
| Matter support that makes their devices usable across all
| Matter supported platforms. There are some features that
| aren't yet available at the Matter level so those will remain
| in their own app for now. Despite being iOS-only previously
| with Matter support they're now also reaching Android devices
| and are working on an Android app for it too to cover the
| missing features in Matter.
|
| [1]: https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/12/23505097/matter-eve-
| firm...
| Dayshine wrote:
| Why wouldn't there be a race to the bottom as soon as some
| company finds a way to stamp out cheap white label
| components?
| manv1 wrote:
| Yeah,it's going to be tough. However, the one good thing about
| Z-Wave (even relative to zigbee) is interoperability - devices
| pretty much work for the most part, even with generic drivers.
|
| At some point there'll be a matter/thread bridge to z-wave.
|
| The big question about matter/thread devices is cost.
|
| The second is going to be security. If they're IPv6 then
| they're globally addressable, which is bad bad bad. How is that
| going to be mitigated? Is the hub going to be the router for
| those devices and block all incoming connections?
|
| I'm sure this is all in the docs somewhere.
| daenney wrote:
| > If they're IPv6 then they're globally addressable, which is
| bad bad bad. How is that going to be mitigated?
|
| I think you need to read up on IPv6 a bit. There are whole
| IPv6 ranges set aside that are not globally routable / part
| of the global unicast range[1].
|
| Thread has link-local and mesh-local addresses. The global is
| only gained through SLAAC/DHCP or manual configuration by an
| administrator so by default no, your devices aren't
| accessible to the outside world. And if you do have routable
| IPv6 in your network, you should already have a firewall on
| your network edge for this because all your existing devices
| would already be exposed. The addressing primer[2] for Thread
| also applies to Matter for further details.
|
| [1]: https://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv6-address-
| space/ipv6-add...
|
| [2]: https://openthread.io/guides/thread-
| primer/ipv6-addressing
| dmm wrote:
| > If they're IPv6 then they're globally addressable
|
| All ipv6 addresses are routeable but that doesn't mean
| reachable. Link local and Unique local addresses are examples
| of non-global ipv6 addresses.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unique_local_address
| ksec wrote:
| What is Z-Wave. Are there any competing IEEE 802 standards?
| netr0ute wrote:
| Z-wave uses lower frequencies compared to something like Matter
| so it you can use a lower power or get more range. One
| competing 802 standard is 802.11ah, or WiFi HaLoW which barely
| exists right now but should be the best thing available.
| philsnow wrote:
| Using lower frequencies also means you're not stepping on the
| 2.4GHz band, so you won't have interference from wifi or
| microwaves or whatever else.
| darkhelmet wrote:
| First, there was X10. There was appetite for something better.
| There were several candidate replacements, including:
|
| * UPB - Universal Powerline Bus (powerline)
|
| * Insteon (powerline + wireless)
|
| * Z-Wave (wireless)
|
| * Zigbee (wireless)
|
| Of these, Zigbee seems to be in the best position these days.
|
| Z-Wave is/was a closed system - you had to get compatibility
| testing/certification in order to sell products using the tech.
| It's fairly lightweight, reliable, and well respected by users.
| pzo wrote:
| The title is confusing and sounds like just PR. I thought they
| mean "Z-Wave project is Open Source now" but looks like source
| code is still in private github repository and you need to be a
| "member" to get access.
|
| What "Source Code Project" supposed to even mean? Any source code
| is part of some project(s).
| hedora wrote:
| The article links to this:
|
| > _The goal of the source code project is to provide a rich
| development environment containing relevant source code and
| sample applications under BSD 3 License. The Z-Wave source code
| project will enable members to contribute code to the project
| under the supervision of the new OS Work Group (OSWG)._
|
| Which doesn't clarify at all. Is OS "open source" or "operating
| system", or something?
|
| Is the relevant source code also BSD licensed? What does it
| include?
|
| My guess is that this is a teaser article for an event that
| happened last month, and the repo is open now (or they forgot
| to open it).
|
| Anyway, I came here to figure out what Z-Wave is, and why it is
| better than other smart home networks. Any ideas?
| synergy20 wrote:
| z-wave is kind of competing with zigbee for low power mid-
| range wireless standard for smart home or smart building
| since like 20 years ago? then we have low power bluetooth and
| low-power wifi joined the party.
|
| z-wave was proprietary which did not help its deployments,
| but still I recall it was the most deployed low power
| wireless devices for IoT. I worked on zigbee and never liked
| it. I wish z-wave was more open back in time.
|
| Did not track what's going on these days for low power mid-
| range wireless, general feeling is that zigbee did not take
| off, zwave is used as before(you license it and put it to
| your sensors), and more and more are using low-power wifi and
| even bluetooth instead.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| Personally - I got kinda the other feel. Seems like Z-Wave
| is slowly dying in favor of zigbee devices.
|
| I can't really even find z-wave bulbs right now. And
| basically any device I might want (curtains, alarms,
| sensors, lights, motors, thermostats, etc) comes in a
| zigbee form.
|
| I agree that Z-Wave did the better standards enforcement,
| but Zigbee went with the age old route to success: manage
| to be cheaper.
|
| Throw in that the two most common automation situations
| tend to be either:
|
| 1. Upstream cloud service
|
| 2. Local management engine (ex: HomeAssistant, OpenHab,
| etc)
|
| And it just doesn't really matter all that much how
| compatible devices are in terms of point to point control.
| I can just route the message through HA and take the action
| I want - mixing and matching as needed.
|
| Plus - Alexa pro ships a directly integrated zigbee hub
| now, which got a lot of devices moving that direction, and
| Ikea makes some great super cheap zigbee devices.
|
| Bluetooth and Wifi devices are the worst of both worlds, in
| my opinion. Wifi usually needs integration with an upstream
| service which is a non-starter for me, and bluetooth is
| just really limited on total device count. Both also eat
| through a lot of power compared to z-wave/zigbee.
|
| It's pretty cool that several recent zigbee switches are
| completely battery/wire free. They literally use the energy
| you expend to push to the button to send the signal.
| bioemerl wrote:
| In my experience both are dying in favor of iot/wifi
| stuff.
|
| Zwave is still strong in the commercial space
|
| ZigBee is strong in the consumer space, especially light
| bulbs that commercial systems do not want to use.
|
| I'm thinking it'll be longer before zwave dies for real
| vs zigbee, but it will only live on the back of the big
| slow commercial entities that back it.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| I don't really see Zigbee dying right now. Hell - I used
| it before home automation was really a thing back in
| college almost 15 years ago now, and it's going strong
| today.
|
| Hue has always been all-in on Zigbee. (incl the new 3.0
| standard -
| https://developers.meethue.com/zigbee-3-0-support-in-hue-
| eco...)
|
| Ikea has gone basically all-in on Zigbee
| (https://www.wired.co.uk/article/ikea-smart-home-kit-
| reviewed...)
|
| Amazon is embedding it their devices (At least 4
| different models include a zigbee hub:
| https://developer.amazon.com/en-
| US/docs/alexa/smarthome/zigb...)
|
| Wifi is basically a non-starter for any real automation
| since it takes a boat load of power, and requires a non-
| local server (at least without some serious work on your
| part). It's a great intro spot for consumers who want to
| try a color changing bulb they can control with their
| phone, since the initial buy in cost is lower with no hub
| - but it's not really the same.
|
| For z-wave on the other hand... I literally cannot find a
| place to buy a-19 standard socket bulbs that support it
| right now. Lots of "controller kits" but no bulbs.
|
| Same for thermostats - there's like 3 z-wave thermostats
| on amazon right now. There are _dozens_ of zigbee models.
|
| Honestly - on Amazon at least, a lot of searches for
| "z-wave [device]" end up returning mostly zigbee results.
|
| Ex: Go search Amazon for "Z-wave plug": Row 3 starts to
| return zigbee devices.
|
| Go search again for "Zigbee plug": It's zigbee devices
| all the way down the page (one early result does both
| zigbee and z-wave, but otherwise you have scroll waaay
| down to see any overlap)
|
| Basically - Having both Ikea and Amazon go in on Zigbee
| has radically shifted the market from where it was 3
| years ago (when I would have probably agreed that z-wave
| was the better pick).
| bioemerl wrote:
| It's a very different experience if you go to Walmart and
| try to find smart devices.
|
| ZigBee devices are still available, but companies I've
| seen that used to have them almost exclusively swapped to
| WiFi over time.
|
| Hue is still ZigBee for example, but the old generic
| bulbs at home Depot? Gone. Liquidated. Nobody understands
| smart hubs. Everyone understands their app.
|
| Bulbs, plugs, sockets, even thermostats. What do you
| think is the ratio of nest thermostats vs zigbee?
|
| Big business buys thermostats from big retailers who sell
| in batches of hundreds. My dad's home, built a year or
| two ago, is wired up with zwave.
|
| You don't see bulbs because the companies who set up
| zwave almost exclusively stick the switches in the wall
| and leave the lights dumb. Built to work for decades
| without configuration sort of thing.
|
| My thinking is that the wifi stuff is going to eat
| ZigBees lunch, although your point about battery life is
| a very good one.
|
| Zwave, in the space it's in, seems more durable to me.
| One day lights will go out and replaced with wifi bulbs
| that everyone can use, but the companies using zwave are
| way more picky and will not want to go wifi.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| > I can't really even find z-wave bulbs right now. And
|
| Even though you can find a Z-Wave bulb, it defeats the
| purpose of Z-Wave. Z-Wave isn't for consumables like
| bulbs, it works best for hard-wiring electrical devices
| into your home that will be permanently installed in a
| professional installation. I wouldn't feel comfortable
| putting a Zigbee switch in the wall since it's likely to
| become obsolete, whereas I'd be confident Z-Wave will
| still be around and supported in 10 or 15 years.
| synergy20 wrote:
| that's new to me, did not track this field for a few
| years. zigbee protocol was too complex in the past for me
| on resource restricted devices, while zwave is so much
| light-weight, then that's just the technical side. maybe
| that's why z-wave now opens up, it's forced to do so or
| it dies.
| Semaphor wrote:
| Zigbee was bigger in Europe, Z-Wave in the US. Or at
| least that was what I always read ;)
|
| Philips Hue was always the big "Zigbee? Never heard of
| that" Zigbee producer, nowadays, there are also good and
| cost-effective things from Sonoff and Aqara, and cheap
| but hit-or-miss devices by tuya (heavily white labeled)
| zamalek wrote:
| > general feeling is that zigbee did not take off
|
| Z-Wave's primary advantage is, ironically, the openness of
| the ecosystem. Due to the lack of a stringent certification
| process Zigbee vendors can (and routinely do) lock devices
| to their proprietary hub. I'm guessing that is one main
| motivator for its failure. Though, keep in mind that Hue
| (one of the most successful IoT vendors) is all open
| Zigbee.
|
| Zigbee's main advantage is that it's cheap.
|
| Thread (the new standard to fix the old standards) is
| apparently just "Zigbee, the good parts". We will see if
| vendors drive it into uselessness like before.
| synergy20 wrote:
| thread is zigbee but more IPv6 friendly, they both run at
| 2.4Ghz like wifi and bluetooth do, which could be crowded
| and in short distance.
|
| zwave by default is at 900Mhz so it goes much further
| than 2.4Ghz and it even has a long-range version(for a
| few km), that's another advantage of zwave.
|
| all of them are low-power, all of them need a gateway or
| hub to talk to wifi and the internet, other than zwave is
| strictly co-operatable, zwave is also *much much*
| simpler, if zwave truly opens up, it could take over the
| competitors IMO.
| mckeed wrote:
| Yep, Z-Wave's advantage is that they enforce the
| standards. They require that an end device from one
| manufacturer can work with any other manufacturer's
| controller.
|
| That was a bigger deal when controllers were stand-alone
| electronics products, though. Being in the cloud, a
| controller like SmartThings can add one-off support for
| non-standard end devices at any time, so there's less
| need for everything to be on one standard.
| [deleted]
| Lendal wrote:
| My house is standardized on Z-wave because I can afford a
| bit extra $ for each device in exchange for reliability. I
| can also add Zigbee if I need to, since my hub can do both.
| I just haven't needed to yet. Everything is available in
| both Zigbee and Z-wave versions, so I choose to pay the
| extra for added reliability.
|
| I haven't had much luck with Bluetooth and Wifi IoT
| devices. They tend to last a couple of years and then die.
| They also are more hassle to set up, and use more power. I
| don't need more hassle in my life. Z-wave and Zigbee are
| both more reliable, with Z-wave taking the slight edge over
| Zigbee.
|
| What's happening now is Thread (Matter) is coming. Thread
| is basically Zigbee Mark II. Thread is on par with Z-wave,
| but it supposed will retain its edge in cost benefit. I may
| start buying Thread stuff as it becomes available, but the
| problem is my mesh is solidly Z-wave. It doesn't seem
| worthwhile to start replacing stuff that works perfectly
| fine.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| Z-Wave also supports device associations which Zigbee
| doesn't. You can permanently associate devices together
| (i.e. switches) to create a virtual 3-way switch that
| will work even if the "smart home hub" is down. Which,
| from a reliability perspective is a much better design if
| you're installing something commercially.
| cptskippy wrote:
| Z-Wave differentiates itself from other IoT networks in that
| it's a closed proprietary network that you access by
| purchasing their proprietary hardware. This offers network
| stability and complete interoperability between devices
| because it's all controlled by a single vendor. Z-Wave device
| manufacturers interface with the proprietary hardware to
| provide state and receive command.
|
| Many vendors make USB dongles with Z-Wave Controller
| interfaces hanging off of them that you can interface using a
| terminal. These dongles allow anyone to make their own
| Gateway for controlling other Z-Wave devices.
|
| Because the interface is completely controlled and locked
| down, it means vendors can't embrace/extend Z-Wave or lock
| their devices down to their own proprietary controller.
|
| There are some downsides to this setup, like distributing
| updated firmware for devices is challenging. No one wants to
| hand their blobs over to opensource projects to allow them to
| push updates.
| bluSCALE4 wrote:
| Z-Wave stands out because many of this devices can act as
| repeaters and extend your range. They also offer security
| which others do not. They also work really well but can get
| really expensive.
|
| You're looking at 2-5x the cost of a Zigbee device. Zigbee is
| not without it's problems but I've been able to solve mine
| with $14 repeaters while my Z-Wave problems have complicated
| solutions and still might be solvable.
| gorbachev wrote:
| The title is truncated. The full title is:
|
| "Z-Wave Alliance Announces Z-Wave Source Code Project is
| Complete, Now Open and Widely Available to Members"
|
| The three last words are the key.
|
| I was getting excited as well, but looks like Z-Wave is still
| going to a closed group thing.
| petre wrote:
| At least it's under a BSD 3-clause license.
|
| "The goal of the source code project is to provide a rich
| development environment containing relevant source code and
| sample applications under BSD 3 License."
|
| https://z-wavealliance.org/z-wave-alliance-completes-z-
| wave-...
| infogulch wrote:
| "Z-Wave Alliance: Source Code Now Open and Widely Available
| to Members"
| coreyp_1 wrote:
| Everybody here keeps talking about how reliable Z-Wave is, and I
| absolutely HATE mine, and was telling someone last week that I
| would never recommend them to anyone. Have I just had a bad
| experience? I have 3 Z-wave switches, and once a month at least
| one of them needs to be reset. They just stop responding until
| the air gap switch is pulled. I hate them and I can't rely on
| them at all.
|
| Conversely, I have 30+ Zigbee switches, and they are quite
| reliable.
|
| The only reason that I have the 3 Z-wave switches is that I
| needed paddle switch fan controllers with an almond color, and I
| could only find them in Z-wave by Enbrighten. (Side note: why are
| almost ALL the smart switches only available in white?)
|
| Of course, as I type this, my RPi with HomeAssistant got bricked
| with the latest update, so now my SmartHouse is not merely dumb,
| it's stubborn!
| ugh123 wrote:
| I had a regular resetting problem with a switch once. Bugged me
| for months. Turned out the button switch would occasionally get
| stuck in the pressed position and cause the reset. Bad design,
| but wasn't the protocol/firmware's fault.
| solarkraft wrote:
| Sounds like a last resort for popularity. The market for IoT RF
| standards is consolidating and Z-Wave doesn't seem to be among
| the winners.
| bluSCALE4 wrote:
| The problem with Z-Wave is the price and consistency. I bought
| an extender so it worked in the garage but it never worked.
| I've spent hours/days trying to get them to work by closely
| following instructions and buying dongles to better manage
| nodes. Still, I never got my lock and switch to work. I'll
| likely just end up replacing them with wifi devices at a
| fraction of the cost.
| Izkata wrote:
| Some years ago when I was getting into this it looked to me
| like Z-Wave was winning. Did something happen?
| ars wrote:
| Z-Wave is definitely the better protocol (vs Zigbee), but
| Matter is partially based on Zigbee so everyone expects
| Z-Wave to lose.
|
| I don't agree, I think Z-wave will work with Matter using
| bridging.
| [deleted]
| vardump wrote:
| Any reasoning why? My home automation is 95%+ Zigbee, and I
| don't see any issues. Mesh networking works very nicely,
| reaching far corners of the house.
| Jochim wrote:
| AFAIK the majority of Zigbee products only act as end
| device nodes and don't act as routers. So they won't
| actually be doing anything to extend the mesh.
|
| The main benefits of ZWave over Zigbee is superior
| penetration, improved interoperability, and reduced
| interference with WiFi devices.
|
| One of the biggest issues with Zigbee is vendors selling
| devices that only work with their gateway. As a consumer
| it sucks because it's rare for a single vendor to excel
| or even offer devices in every product category.
| vardump wrote:
| Majority (80%+) of my Zigbee devices act as routers,
| light bulbs, sockets, switches, etc. Only sensors and
| controllers are end device nodes.
|
| > One of the biggest issues with Zigbee is vendors
| selling devices that only work with their gateway.
|
| Sold as such, but work as generic devices just fine, no
| issues. You just need a Zigbee dongle and ZHA,
| Zigbee2MQTT or deCONZ.
| X-Istence wrote:
| Z-Wave's mesh networking was a giant pain to get
| functioning correctly, and good luck if devices were
| multiple hops away... things would just randomly fall off
| the network.
|
| With Zigbee (IKEA TRADFRI and Philips Hue) I haven' had
| any of those issues, nor with any of my Thread devices.
| thewataccount wrote:
| I have nordic dev chips, esp8266's, esp32's, etc.
|
| I have some zigbee stuff with HA, and I have made some
| custom sensors with esphome. I'd like to try some thread
| stuff.
|
| How are you currently using thread/what are you using it
| with? Do you have any recommendations for how to get
| started with it now - I've been rather confused as it
| feels like its in limbo right now.
|
| How do you like it compared to zigbee and wifi?
| X-Istence wrote:
| My Thread devices are all HomeKit devices, and they work
| incredibly well. Once they are joined to the Thread
| network they show up as IPv6 devices in mDNS and just
| work.
|
| I have a ton of Thread enabled lightbulbs, smart outlets,
| and sensors on Thread, and I haven't had any issues.
|
| They seem to mesh really well, store and forward for
| devices that are sleepy just works, but sleepy devices
| waking up and sending traffic is almost instant.
|
| I do not own any devices that use WiFi, other than my
| Ecobee thermostat. So I can't compare against that. I
| would put the Thread devices up there alongside the
| Zigbee devices in terms of reliability, if not more
| resilient since I have multiple thread border router
| capable devices (multiple HomePod mini's and Apple TV's
| with Thread) so a device getting restarted (unlike a
| Zigbee hub like Hue/IKEA TRADFRI) won't affect the
| network/ability for the devices to trigger responses.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > Once they are joined to the Thread network they show up
| as IPv6 devices in mDNS and just work.
|
| I don't have any thread devices but I've been eyeing
| them.
|
| Do they show up _to your router /networking gear_ as IP6
| devices? I know that this is the underlying tech, and use
| mDNS, and thread routers are IP routers, but I always
| assumed they wouldn't integrate with existing IP home
| networks.
| Izkata wrote:
| > so everyone expects
|
| Hmm..
|
| > Matter started life in 2019 as Project CHIP (Connected
| Home over IP), a collaboration between some of the biggest
| players in tech; Apple, Google, Amazon, Samsung, the Zigbee
| Alliance, and various other tech brands, which aimed to
| create a unified smart home standard. [0]
|
| Ahh, that explains it. I bought most of my devices a few
| years before this existed, and having those companies
| involved pretty much guarantees people expecting this to
| succeed over anything else.
|
| Honestly though, Google and Amazon being involved make me
| less interested in it. It pretty much guarantees requiring
| a cloud connection.
|
| [0] https://www.the-ambient.com/guides/matter-smart-home-
| explain...
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > Honestly though, Google and Amazon being involved make
| me less interested in it. It pretty much guarantees
| requiring a cloud connection.
|
| 1. Except the spec says otherwise...
|
| Matter is basically a reworked Zigbee-over-IP with a
| special "we think you should use Thread" push. The spec
| (which is public), requires devices to work over LAN, but
| provides an escape for devices to have extra proprietary
| functionalities that aren't in spec. It doesn't require
| LAN-only, but it is "at least LAN".
|
| The spec is based off HomeKit's networking model (IP
| based + mDNS discovery) with a data model closer to
| Zigbee's (binary format, device node/trait/tree). Its
| design-by-committee so you have lots of features, some of
| which expect a cloud (ability for _devices_ to upload
| logs) and some which don 't (general device control).
| Almost none should require a specific cloud (eg. OTAs can
| come from any hub, signed by manufacturer, logs can be
| uploaded to any hub's cloud).
|
| You should be able to run any hub/voice-
| assistant/controller you want. Apple HomePods should
| allow most cloud-free control for a major company's
| product, while something like HomeAssistant will allow
| complete OS self-hosted control.
|
| 2. Google and Amazon obviously have cloud interfaces, but
| both also already allow LAN-control of smarthome devices
| already, and that will accelerate as they push into
| matter.
|
| This will help them lower cloud hosting costs themselves
| (which is a major expense, see Alexa layoffs). Amazon
| seems less committed to Matter, but Google was one of the
| major matter contributors (along with Apple), and
| "donated" a bunch of IP to get it working (eg thread).
| Most companies will probably push for LAN control due to
| latency/UX impacts, especially since the can still gather
| out-of-band performance metrics via hubs.
|
| Alexa and Google Assistant are starting to move to on-
| device NLU and processing, so cloud-phobia or aversion is
| likely not going to be a major problem in a few years.
| Lendal wrote:
| The new Thread protocol (part of Matter) is basically Zigbee
| on steroids which gets it up to parity with Z-wave. The
| reason to choose Z-wave over Thread is that Z-wave works now
| and has many devices available to buy, while Thread works in
| theory and the devices are very few in number. Thread devices
| are due out in force next year. So this actually is perfect
| timing for Z-wave to make this move now, right as the first
| wave of Thread devices are approaching.
| xattt wrote:
| There were a bunch of missed opportunities for Zigbee to
| become enshrined in the home.
|
| For example, the first and second-gen Nest thermostats had
| a Zigbee radio built-in. At acquisition by Google, Nest
| heavily leaned into the wifi/cloud side for control and the
| Zigbee radio was squandered, other than for some esoteric
| "Works with Nest" protocol that maybe 2 other third-party
| devices supported.
|
| Edit: I stand corrected by the comment below.
| oflannabhra wrote:
| That is an inaccurate history. Nest has always been IP-
| based and drove much of the initial Thread standard.
| Their radio was 802.15.4, but not Zigbee.
| ars wrote:
| The owner of Z-Wave is also a major contribute to Matter. I
| think they can work together.
|
| See: https://z-wavealliance.org/matter-1-0-is-here-and-z-wave-
| is-...
|
| Also: https://www.silabs.com/blog/bridging-non-matter-devices-
| to-a...
| culi wrote:
| as someone out of the loop on IoT standards in general, are
| there any central orgs pushing these standards? Are open
| standards winning at least?
| sigspec wrote:
| "Matter" has basically everyone:
|
| https://csa-iot.org/members/
| Jochim wrote:
| You've got to love a $7k/year fee for the privilege of
| paying $3k per product to say you support their standard.
| cherioo wrote:
| One thing i have read but not seen brought up here yet is that
| zwave has so far only have one hardware soc vendor (silicon
| labs). This would seem like how they have been able to enforce
| certification compliance. And it's probably leads to higher cost
| (hardware and software?) and thus lower adoption.
|
| This open source project reportedly will start allowing more chip
| vendor as well, so it will be interesting how that affects the
| ecosystem.
| slimginz wrote:
| Now that Matter and Thread are finally starting to roll out, is
| there really any good reason for new products to still use
| Z-Wave? Or am I just crazy to see this as Z-Wave trying to
| continue a format war (first started with Zigbee) that they're
| almost certainly going to lose?
| ars wrote:
| Z-Wave has a much better range, and uses a less congested radio
| band.
|
| Matter and Thread can work with Z-Wave devices with the help of
| a bridge, so it's not as bad as you might think.
|
| But yes, this is an attempt to compete with Zigbee.
| ihattendorf wrote:
| Z-Wave devices are almost universally better (longer battery
| life, longer range, more reliable, etc.) than Zigbee (I have
| both). Not sure if this is based on price (Z-Wave devices being
| more expensive), certification, different radio frequency, or
| something else.
|
| With the investment into Thread (still sharing frequency with
| 2.4 GHz WiFi) I could see this changing.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| I don't own ZWave devices, but comments here seem to question
| their superiority.
|
| The range and battery life is likely due to the lower-
| frequency it uses, which is less congested and longer range.
| Typically, this will translate to a lower power usage (better
| battery life).
| rlpb wrote:
| AIUI, Z-Wave means interoperability at device level, without
| even a controller or a compatibility shim, across a variety of
| manufacturers. Niche devices can exist because it's easy for a
| niche manufacturer to integrate. And if my Internet connection
| is down, or even the controller is down, the system still
| functions with graceful degradation only.
|
| With Zigbee, AIUI you get a mostly closed system locked in to
| whichever Zigbee vendor you chose. Interoperability only occurs
| at a higher level in a much more error-prone and lowest common
| denominator fashion.
| worldmerge wrote:
| Do Matter and Thread use wifi or are they a different radio
| freq?
| dwaite wrote:
| Thread is a mesh protocol on 6LoWPAN, which in turn is based
| on the same underlying 802.11.4 as Zigbee in the 2.4 Ghz
| spectrum.
|
| Its claims to fame is having reasonable response
| times/batteru life and being based on IPv6. Being based on IP
| allows devices to talk to one another, and for bridging those
| devices to the broader network and potentially to the
| internet with clear layer separation.
|
| Matter is a IP-based IoT discovery and use standard. Devices
| advertise Thread and/or Wifi support for wireless support. It
| also standardizes onboarding (I know BLE is an option there)
| and the underlying security, and mandates certain
| capabilities such as supporting multiple 'admin' software at
| once.
|
| Devices using other wireless tech can also theoretically work
| with Matter with a gateway that does protocol translation,
| supports device onboarding, and then exposes them onto the
| network.
| kps wrote:
| > _Devices using other wireless tech can also theoretically
| work with Matter with a gateway_
|
| Signify (nee Philips Lighting) has got Matter certification
| for their Hue hub.
| ihattendorf wrote:
| Thread is a mesh IPv6 based network that operates over the
| 2.4 GHz ISM band but is not WiFi. Matter is a communication
| protocol built on top of Thread, WiFi, and BLE (and
| potentially others in the future).
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > Matter is a communication protocol built on top of...
|
| Matter is a communication protocol built on top of IP, with
| a special blessing to Ethernet, Wifi, BLE, and Thread.
| petre wrote:
| Thread and ZigBee operate in the 2.4 Ghz and also 833/915 Mhz
| although in practice I've never seen any devices that
| explicitly claim to be using the sub Ghz bands. It's not
| WiFi, it's IEEE 802.15.4. Matter supports devices connected
| through WiFi, Thread and Ethernet with BT provisioning.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Z-Wave is a better technology. I want home automation hardware
| to be simple, reliable, and not Internet connected.
| vardump wrote:
| I'm using no cloud Zigbee home automation. Seems to be very
| reliable and has really great range thanks to the mesh
| networking. It's also really simple.
|
| Zigbee allows using multiple vendors with ease, not tied to
| just one manufacturer.
|
| Again, no internet connection required.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| I'm using Insteon personally, which is mesh networked but
| relatively similar to Z-Wave. (And it's entirely
| proprietary still.)
|
| It's not just about cloud connectivity though: I don't want
| my home automation hardware speaking IP or anything like
| it. Nor do I want them to need a complicated enough
| protocol to justify requirements like firmware updates. All
| of this introduces opportunities for security flaws and the
| ability to create botnets.
|
| Home automation hardware should be simple, take simple
| instructions over local communication bands, and then a
| single central controller should bring the greater
| intelligence and access.
|
| I think my Insteon thermostat is nearly the ideal smarthome
| product: It's a thermostat, and can work entirely
| standalone as just that. It cannot be updated or
| reprogrammed. But it will accept commands (no different
| than button presses on the front of it) over the RF
| protocol, and of course, send its sensor data and operating
| status.
|
| Things like incidents where Nests had software updates that
| let everyone freeze or whatever in the winter just... isn't
| really a concern with a good design like this.
| X-Istence wrote:
| I installed Z-Wave all over my house. Replaced all the switches,
| got the sensors, light bulbs where necessary, everything was
| Z-Wave... and it was a nightmare.
|
| I ended up selling the house with everything Z-Wave still in it,
| and the new owners were happy to have a "Smart Home" capable
| home, but I will never again touch Z-Wave.
|
| Once your Z-Wave network grows past a certain number of devices
| it becomes too chatty and devices will be unable to communicate
| data. That led to motion sensors being incredibly slow and or not
| triggering when needed. Light bulbs wouldn't change colors until
| seconds or sometimes minutes later when the network was freed up
| enough to send the commands.
|
| These days I have three systems: Zigbee (through Ikea TRADFRI and
| Philips Hue), Lutron (Caseta wireless), and Thread (through
| HomeKit).
|
| I have a bunch of sensors on both Zigbee and Thread and they fire
| in HomeKit and HomeKit takes actions to turn on/off lights as
| necessary.
|
| Lights turn on/off almost instantly, motion sensors just work
| (the Thread ones especially are incredibly fast), I've got
| temperature sensors/lightbulbs on Thread as well.
|
| I am looking forward to seeing what Matter/Thread bring next as
| that is definitely where I will be concentrating my purchases.
| Z-Wave had a chance, and unfortunately it did not seem
| architected/high bandwidth enough for the amount of devices I
| ended up having on my Z-Wave network (~200 devices)...
| specto wrote:
| Agreed! Messes with Wifi too.
| wesapien wrote:
| Did you consider separate VLANs for each type of Z-Wave
| hardware to reduce the broadcasts?
| dljsjr wrote:
| As the other commenter said it's not a LAN issue. Z-Wave is a
| mesh radio protocol totally independent of the LAN. There are
| in fact issues with older Z-Wave specs and versions bogging
| down due to congestion.
| resonanttoe wrote:
| Zwave talks on 800-900MhZ and doesn't share medium with
| ethernet frames, so there isn't a concept of VLANs. Each
| Device meshes with anything and everything in its immediate
| broadcast range to provide some elasticity to the network. I
| can imagine at some high point of devices that the medium
| could become saturated
| burnte wrote:
| The problem isn't the network, it's the number of devices.
| enobrev wrote:
| My (likely incorrect) assumption has been that my zwave
| stick is handling everything serially and falls behind when
| traffic spikes.
| X-Istence wrote:
| It's not that the Z-Wave stick falls behind, when a
| Z-Wave device is broadcasting everything else has to go
| quiet (nature of RF), but the transmission speed is just
| very low, so when chatty devices (think sensors that
| report multiple bits of information such as humidity,
| temperature, light level, UV level, and more) are sending
| data you can't also turn on a light.
|
| When you have a lot of those devices on the Z-Wave
| network (multiple motion sensors in a room to do more
| accurate presence detection and the like) those chatty
| devices slow down the network tremendously.
| StreamBright wrote:
| What was the problem you solved with Z-Wave?
| enobrev wrote:
| I have ~65 Z-Wave devices around my house, and I definitely
| notice lag from time to time. Recent versions of Z-Wave seem to
| be significantly faster and I've noticed it less.
|
| I can't say I _love_ dealing with Z-Wave. But I do like having
| a single protocol throughout my house. At the very least, any
| issues I have tend to be consistent. I'd say in this past
| 6-months, I've practically had zero problems. I blame that
| overall improvement on ZwaveJs, because some of these devices
| are at least 5 years old and they're just cranking away without
| issue right along side my more recent Zooz and Inovelli
| devices.
|
| That said, I've been strongly considering multiple Z-wave hubs,
| each running zwave2mqtt with a central mqtt server just to keep
| everything as fast as possible.
| X-Istence wrote:
| The single protocol throughout my house was my primary goal
| too, just to reduce complexity of having to deal with
| multiple hubs and integrations... but with my new house I did
| away with that.
|
| Lutron Caseta for physical in-wall switches, IKEA Tradfri for
| cheap motion sensors/lighs, Philips Hue for more expensive
| motion sensors/lights, and a whole slew of Thread enabled
| devices, all controlled from HomeKit.
|
| I don't really notice that its a bunch of different
| protocols/wireless standards underneath. I can control it
| from a single location which also makes it easier for
| guests/people visiting. Hand them an iPad with the Home app
| and they can control the house, or add them a Guest to my
| home on their own iOS devices.
|
| I do miss some of the more advanced Home Assistant stuff I
| was doing, but overall the experience has been much cleaner,
| and with almost 0 lag.
| montjoy wrote:
| Sounds like you had some non-zwave+ devices or you were using a
| lot of s0 encryption. Both are known to slow down the network.
| Like everything it's gotten better over time. The 700 series
| stuff is pretty quick.
| WXLCKNO wrote:
| Encryption was insanely slow when I first tried it on my
| Inovelli Red Series switches. Without encryption it was an
| instant (feeling) response time.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| I'm also running a Zwave network and it's highly responsive
| with around 50 devices. A friend of mine is running a few
| hundred devices and I haven't heard him complain much about
| it, all of his actions/triggers/etc seem to execute pretty
| much instantly. I'm going to guess that his network topology
| has a lot devices that are only accessible by repeaters, or
| aren't using Zwave+. Zwave is pretty much _the standard_ for
| large professional smart home installations and scales pretty
| well if implemented properly.
| X-Istence wrote:
| All the devices were Z-Wave+, it was the one thing I was
| buying for. Not all of them supported the new encryption
| standard which started rolling out after I deployed most of
| my switches.
|
| This was in a ~1400 sq ft house, with a little over 200
| devices (motion sensors/lights/switches/smart
| plugs/humidity sensors/weather sensors). The network had a
| few repeaters the longest hop was 2 hops from the
| controller to the end device.
| AdamJacobMuller wrote:
| > humidity sensors/weather sensors/motion sensors
|
| This was your problem. I've been using Z-Wave in my house
| since, I think, around 2010. I had major major issues
| with it at first exactly like what you describe. I
| "fixed" them by doing two things.
|
| A) Banished all battery powered devices from the network.
| Seriously. I have one in a hall closest I haven't gotten
| around to getting rid of, yet. The network seems fine-ish
| with only that sensor but large volumes of battery
| powered mostly asleep devices, it falls over.
|
| B) Abolished any notion of using my Z-Wave network for
| sensor reporting. No tracking humidity or weather or
| power with my Z-Wave network because, as you mention, the
| Z-Wave network completely falls over when you have
| volumes of sensor traffic on it.
|
| Want to have one humidity sensor which reports hourly?
| Sure that's fine.
|
| Want to have a humidity sensor in every room which
| reports every time there is a 1% change in humidity? lol
| no, your network will fall over.
|
| My Z-Wave networks are quite large at this point, 200-300
| devices, and consist of Jasco/GE switches, Jasco/GE fan
| controls, Jasco/GE smart outlets.
|
| Removing sensor traffic and battery powered devices from
| my Z-Wave network has made it extremely reliable for me.
| Unscientifically I would say 99% of Z-Wave control
| commands execute in <1s.
| jzawodn wrote:
| Yeah, I used virtually all Z-Wave switches and dimmers in
| our new house (and motion sensors, temp sensors, etc) and
| haven't had an issue. The one time things seemed a bit
| laggy I had to "optimize" the network, which I realized I
| had NEVER done until that point. All issues went away.
|
| We have well over 100 Z-Wave devices spread over 4000 sqft.
| X-Istence wrote:
| That's less devices over a larger area than I had.
|
| My house was 1200 sq ft, with a little over 200 devices.
| kansface wrote:
| What does optimize mean in this case?
| AdamJacobMuller wrote:
| The Z-Wave network, while being a mesh network, is not a
| dynamic mesh. Nodes follow a precomputed path from
| themselves to the controller (with backup paths -- it's
| based on a node having a predefined list of adjacencies).
| You need to regularly poll each node in the system and
| determine it's optimal path from controller->node and
| node->controller and redefine it's adjacency list.
|
| This process is entirely automated but does take some
| time. It's absolutely critical to do this when adding a
| new device (both for the new device, as well as the
| overall network) but I found that just doing it regularly
| works great. I have all my networks configured to do this
| at 4AM daily since the network is unusable for the few
| minutes it takes.
| X-Istence wrote:
| I was an early adopter for sure. This was back in 2016ish
| when I installed all of the devices. All of the devices were
| Z-Wave+ (specifically bought for that) but many of them did
| not support the newer encryption, and it ended up being a
| mixed network of devices for sure. Only the last few devices
| I bought supported the new encryption standard that was being
| rolled out at the time. I ended up getting a new Z-Wave hub
| that supported it to be able to securely enroll my new
| devices... but all it did was destabilize the network
| further.
|
| It just left a horrible taste in my mouth, and once bitten,
| twice shy is definitely the case here.
|
| The other thing that made things slow was sleepy devices that
| would wake up to report status. Things like motion sensors
| that also reported humidity, light levels, temperature and
| more (I do wish I could find a sensor like that for
| Zigbee/Thread... the multiple things in one was kinda nice).
| Every time they would wake up to report it would flood the
| network with traffic. And with each additional sensor I would
| have to tweak how often that would happen (and thus how
| accurate the data was over time) to reduce the amount of
| chatter on the network.
| willio58 wrote:
| What you described is exactly why I'm waiting to install more
| automation in my home. I think Matter + Homekit (assuming Apple
| continues to work on Homekit as it's still pretty clunky for me
| UX-wise) will eventually be the solution for me as I'm already
| so deep in that Apple ecosystem.
|
| If you've watched Linus Tech Tips videos recently, there's
| hours of content covering his Z-Wave woes. It's funny, his
| house is supposed to be automated but it ends up eating
| significantly more of his time in debugging than a manual house
| would.
| chime wrote:
| If you have good wifi, you don't need to wait. I have a two
| story house and the floor plan looks like a T-shape, so I
| basically have 6 different zones. I pulled Cat6 everywhere
| for decent AP coverage. Right now I have about 80 Meross
| light switches and dimmers, 6 wifi blinds, wifi garage
| openers, Ecobee thermostats, multiple Apple TVs, ton of
| personal devices - easily over 200 devices on the LAN, most
| of them connected to HomeAssistant. Instant status updates
| with no problems except for the occasional need to reboot a
| wall switch due to power issues. Meross has a tiny hidden
| button at the bottom of each switch that instantly reboots
| the switch.
|
| I bought Meross products off Amazon in bulk and absolutely
| love them. I have single pole switches, 3 way switches,
| single pole dimmers, 3 way dimmers, and a few smart plugs,
| power strips, and RGB bulbs.
|
| PS: I even have a few Z-Wave devices and bought Zooz Hub
| ZST10-700 to work with HomeAssistant. I use these to measure
| power consumption on a garage freezer and a space heater. As
| long as the Z-Wave devices are close to the hub, there's no
| issue. But oddly enough they sometimes send negative power
| usage data which HA complains about.
| tomkaos wrote:
| The funniest part is he have to use two smart thermostat in
| each room and he realize that one smart thermostat heat up
| the other one and fucked up the temperature reading.
| oflannabhra wrote:
| I see a lot of confusion in the thread regarding IoT, and to
| clear up some of that, IoT operates across multiple different
| layers of the OSI model: PHY, Network, Application. PHY is how
| data is modulated (think radios, etc), Network is how data is
| shared / routed (think WiFi), Application is the contents of the
| data across the network (ie, Light: Off)
|
| IEEE 802.15.4 - a PHY standard, equivalent to 802.11 standards
| that WiFi is built on top of.
|
| Z-Wave - a recently acquired technology that vertically slices
| the entire OSI model, defining PHY interaction, network
| communication, and application. SiLabs recently acquired it, but
| it has always only offered chips from a single company.
|
| Zigbee - multiple versions of several standards: the most popular
| used the 802.15.4 standard for the PHY, but used custom
| networking and custom application layers.
|
| Thread - a 6LoWPan mesh network protocol, built on top of
| 802.15.4. It provides the Networking layer, but does not define
| application layers. Allows for IPv6 traffic. It also defines some
| security and BLE interop. Lots of companies make Thread chips and
| offer their own Thread stacks
|
| Matter - an Application layer standard that defines the shape and
| behavior of messages sent across a variety of different
| networking technologies: Thread, WiFi, etc. Requires IPv6, and
| potentially border routers to translate the PHY differences.
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