Z-wave vs wifi connectivity
Z-wave/zigbee were superior in the past but I feel like this has changed. What is better at this point? Any advantages of one over the other?
Posted Nov 7, 2019, 4:43 AM UTC
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Z-wave/zigbee were superior in the past but I feel like this has changed. What is better at this point? Any advantages of one over the other?
Posted Nov 7, 2019, 4:43 AM UTC
Z-Wave and Zigbee are still significantly better. Both Z-Wave and Zigbee have the ability to create their own mesh network between devices. This makes it incredibly easy to expand the size of your network because the farthest away devices will just have their signals repeated back to the hub through devices that are closer.
Another advantage is power consumption. You don't see many (if any) battery powered Wifi devices because it uses so much power. Z-Wave and Zigbee are both low-power consumption and are great for wireless/battery powered devices.
I feel like Z-wave is slightly better since it doesn't interfere with the 2.4 spectrum. Also, WiFi devices are the ones people talk about getting hacked.
The WiFi ones stop working when the manufacturer stops supporting it. ZWave and Zigbee, you can get a local hub that runs everything locally so you don’t have to worry about it not working because the device didn’t make enough money.
That is not 100% exact. I myself experimented with a sonoff pow that is a WiFi device but I simply flashed a software called tasmota on it and used it with a local MQTT broker and it's REST API. WiFi itself doesn't mean it has to be cloud based but most WiFi components are. If you look around you can find a lot of devices that aren't.
This was my general understanding, just wondered since there are so many more wifi devices now than before. Thought maybe something had changed
Wifi is just easier to sell. People have an aversion to hubs and are happier buying something that just works. Zigbee and Z-Wave cater more to the hobbyists.