I see a lot of posts about people who like their Zigbee and Z-Wave products. As I’m setting up the hardware in my home, I’m using Wi-Fi products because I already have Wi-Fi. I don’t see much difference in price. What is the actual benefit of setting up a separate network for home devices? Is there a reason that I should consider setting up one of these networks?

  • pageflight@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    12 hours ago

    I very briefly tried a couple zwave light bulbs with a USB zwave adapter for Home Assistant, but couldn’t get it reliable. I do like the mesh + low power idea though and played around with ZigBee dev boards previously.

    I have settled on mostly Tasmota firmware on ESP8266 based devices. Lots of switches (from the CloudFree shop among others), smart plugs, and other devices. I also like to assemble my own sensor/relay boards, which Tasmota is great for. I did have to set a fixed 2.4Ghz channel on one router, and later set “IoT mode” on my Unifi network, to avoid devices falling off the network. I also have flashed most of the devices, but am happy to do that (not so different from uploading an Arduino sketch once you’re used to it).