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Comment by hedora | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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).

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.

The Hue bulbs are now primarily advertised as Bluetooth but apparently still have Zigbee to talk to hubs.

I've found that the color changing is cute for awhile and then I revert to "on/off" (and have actually decommissioned some of my Hues)

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.

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)

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Is that not binding in Zigbee?

Home assistant docs because I can't find a better description: https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/zha/#binding-and-...

I wish Z-wave or something would support some form of physical connection instead of relying on wireless. I'd be perfectly happy running CAT-5 to every damn switch in the house if I could get reliability from it.

I've fallen back to physical switches that can be relay controlled.

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.

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.

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