Is there consensus on Zigbee vs. LightwaveRF vs Zwave for lighting ??

[pc__hs]

Hi,

Is there consensus on the below?

Can someone explain the pros and cons of these technologies for lighting / sensor purposes?

I should add insteon, I suppose.

As these things build mesh networks, it would make sense to choose one and go with that for the long haul. Is that true? And, if so, which?

How does LightwaveRF work with HS3? I presume with the RFXCOM plugin...

Any thoughts, comments, recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

PS: for the European / UK market, in case of known limitations.

Thanks a lot.

Pete

[Lyngtoft]

My 2 cents at least. I belive Zigbee is the best option right now.
You have access to Philips Hue for some pretty great lights as well as cheaper Ikea lights. Together with cheap cheap Aqara devices from China Zigbee gives you many options.

I'm using it with a Conbee/Deconz setup so I don't have the brand specific bridges.

I also have quite a few Zwave devices, both dimmers and others devices. For instance in my entry hall I have 26 GU10 bulbs in the ceiling and that's much cheaper/easier to controll with 1 Zwave dimmer device rather than 26 individual bulbs. I also use Zwave for Pool pump equipment, timers, heating..

Never really heard about LightwaveRF though.

[Rupp]

I just tried Zigbee with a Conbee and while it does work ok there are a ton of moving parts that all need to be integrated together to be usable by mainstream users. Z-Wave is much more plug n play and the devices are more readily available. The beauty is you can use all the protocols together with HS3 so pick and choose what devices you need and go in that direction.

[w.vuyk]

Rupp,

Sorry, you just lost me in being vague?

Which "moving parts" do you see? What needs to be "integrated"? Please define what you miss or see? I think the plugin just integrates fine as you can control any thermostat with a temperature device of this plugin? or, even control a Zigbee thermostat perfectly with a Zwave temperature device? Or control a Zwave light with a Zigbee motion sensor. So you can just pick any device (JowiHue or not) to do actions. What is your point here?

So please clarify instead of using vague statements?

Wim

[Rupp]

Rupp,

Sorry, you just lost me in being vague?

Which "moving parts" do you see? What needs to be "integrated"? Please define what you miss or see? I think the plugin just integrates fine as you can control any thermostat with a temperature device of this plugin? or, even control a Zigbee thermostat perfectly with a Zwave temperature device? Or control a Zwave light with a Zigbee motion sensor. So you can just pick any device (JowiHue or not) to do actions. What is your point here?

So please clarify instead of using vague statements?

Wim

Sorry,
It's the 3rd party software that has to be running. If it were just plugging in the USB stick and loading a plugin that would be the norm but having to figure out which version of the software to load and then auto starting the software is another issue. These are the steps that I had to accomplish to get Zigbee up and running and it's working but this is a lot of "stuff" to do to get a device added. Add to the fact that I had to purchase a bulb to act as a router was another sort of pain as I was just wanting to run some door and window sensors. Again, this is working and is great but for me it's a ton easier to wire a Z-Wave switch and scan it or plugin in a Z-Wave plugin and scan it.

1. Plug in conbee to a usb port, 2.0 or 3.0; let it do it's thing. Drivers are built in.
2. Download Jowihue plugin from “Lighting and Primary Technology”.
3. Download the latest level of deconz from here: https://www.dresden-elektronik.de/deconz/win/
4. Open deconz and go to the upper right corner and select “Phoscon App”.
5. The User if asked is delight and the PW is delight. You can change it later.
6. Select the back arrow and select the conbee again.
7. X out the Group window. Select the 3 horizontal bars at the top left.
8. Select “Gateway” and “Advanced”.
9. Select “Authenticate App”.
10. Go to the Jowihue plugin (you have 60 sec) and click on “scan for bridge”.
11. The conbee should show there along with it's IP address. You only have to do this once unless you remove it for some reason.
12. OK, now you can go back to the “Phoscon App” and select which kind of device you want.
13. For Deconz to work you must always have a “Router” device connected to the conbee at all times. This can be a bulb, plug, etc. Not a battery device.
14. So select “Lights” and reset the bulb as before and turn it off. Select “Add New Light”, then turn it on.
15. The bulb will show up in the Deconz page (where the conbee is) pretty much right away. It should have a yellow stripe on the left side of the device. If it shows grey it is not a router. It will also create a green line between it and the conbee, that is good.
16. Go to the Jowihue plugin and select “Scan for Devices”.
17. In about 40 sec. It will show up in the UI. If it doesn't go to 'Plug-Ins', 'Manage' and disable then enable the Jowihue plugin. Also you might have to select 'Show All' because it will come in as a Jowihue device.

[logman]

Sorry,
It's the 3rd party software that has to be running. If it were just plugging in the USB stick and loading a plugin that would be the norm but having to figure out which version of the software to load and then auto starting the software is another issue. These are the steps that I had to accomplish to get Zigbee up and running and it's working but this is a lot of "stuff" to do to get a device added. Add to the fact that I had to purchase a bulb to act as a router was another sort of pain as I was just wanting to run some door and window sensors. Again, this is working and is great but for me it's a ton easier to wire a Z-Wave switch and scan it or plugin in a Z-Wave plugin and scan it.

1. Plug in conbee to a usb port, 2.0 or 3.0; let it do it's thing. Drivers are built in.
2. Download Jowihue plugin from “Lighting and Primary Technology”.
3. Download the latest level of deconz from here: https://www.dresden-elektronik.de/deconz/win/
4. Open deconz and go to the upper right corner and select “Phoscon App”.
5. The User if asked is delight and the PW is delight. You can change it later.
6. Select the back arrow and select the conbee again.
7. X out the Group window. Select the 3 horizontal bars at the top left.
8. Select “Gateway” and “Advanced”.
9. Select “Authenticate App”.
10. Go to the Jowihue plugin (you have 60 sec) and click on “scan for bridge”.
11. The conbee should show there along with it's IP address. You only have to do this once unless you remove it for some reason.
12. OK, now you can go back to the “Phoscon App” and select which kind of device you want.
13. For Deconz to work you must always have a “Router” device connected to the conbee at all times. This can be a bulb, plug, etc. Not a battery device.
14. So select “Lights” and reset the bulb as before and turn it off. Select “Add New Light”, then turn it on.
15. The bulb will show up in the Deconz page (where the conbee is) pretty much right away. It should have a yellow stripe on the left side of the device. If it shows grey it is not a router. It will also create a green line between it and the conbee, that is good.
16. Go to the Jowihue plugin and select “Scan for Devices”.
17. In about 40 sec. It will show up in the UI. If it doesn't go to 'Plug-Ins', 'Manage' and disable then enable the Jowihue plugin. Also you might have to select 'Show All' because it will come in as a Jowihue device.

For this you can thank your employer for not including a $5 Zigbee radio chip with their equipment, like SmartThings and Hubitat does. So this is what happens when you try to overcome the limitations of the platform. Adding Zigbee after the fact is like adding a ZEE. Anyone who has ever tried doing that knows it's a clunky process as well. As for needing to add a router, that is something that needs to be done with Z-Wave as well. No battery device from either technology supports routing.

If we are simply talking easy plug and play for lighting and sensors, then the honest answer is buy a Hubitat Elevation (best) or a SmartThings hub (also very good). Both have on-board Z-Wave and Zigbee radios, are super easy to set up, and integrate with most readily available devices and technology.

This kind person was asking about which technology works best for lighting. For that the clear choice is ZigBee and Philips Hue. JowiHue will then perfectly integrate the Hue hub with Homeseer. It's an easy 2 step process and can be set up in a couple of minutes. You don't need the Conbee/deCONZ set up to control Hue lighting.

Z-Wave bulbs are not controllable by groups. Group control is part of the Zigbee protocol, which allows perfect fade on/off syncing. Once lights are assigned to a group, each light knows who the other group members are which ensures commands are sent to all bulbs at once and they act in unison.

Using a Philips Hue Entertainment group of up to 10 bulbs, you can send up to 25 commands per second to the hub, including color changes for individual bulbs, dim levels, etc. Try that with a Z-Wave network and see what happens. What can you do with the ability to send that many commands per second? Well it looks pretty cool when synced to music or to a movie that you are watching. You can also use it as a Holiday scene so that your lights appear to be motion lights.

--Barry

[Furious]

Ok, my opinion:
1. Cost - Zwave is just way more expensive. 2-3x more expensive than zigbee.
I bought 3 aqara door/window sensors for the price of one aeotec

2. Power consumption - again, zwave devices use up way more power.
Aeotec sensors = 6-9 months using cr123 batteries. Aqara sensors - 15+ months using 1(!) cr2032

3. Size - the batteries and chipset to drive zwave just means that they are normally way bigger

4. Reliability - roughly the same.
Zwave is supposed to have re-transmit built in, is a mesh network, and has good range. However, the protocol is "polite", and so one device misbehaving can cause a network to slow to a crawl if a device is spamming the network. HS's implementation does seem to get blocked by a device not responding, and the re-transmit can fail very occasionally.
Big problem here is the stupidity of different regions having different frequencies. I'd love to have cheap devices like the US, no chance in the UK.

Zigbee is a mesh network and also has good range. The command transmit rate is way higher, but the flip side is that you do get the odd skipped command. Key part here is that I've never seen the network slowdown or delay like zwave. Also, I don't worry about a device being a specific frequency....

5. Devices
This is a preference more than anything - zwave tends to have devices that work with your lighting and are hidden (switch/dimmer modules, etc), whereas zigbee is cheap enough and small enough to go into the light device itself.
Additionally, zwave tends to be very vendor specific with the implementation, and so you're reliant on HS to code around quirks of devices. I have 2 door sensors from 5 years ago that never worked properly as they were not mainstream enough - how you can have a device that only exists to send open or close not being supported is beyond me.

5 years ago it was zwave all the way for me. I've now started to move away from it due to cost, device availability, and the quirks like different frequencies or vendor implementation.

[pc__hs]

Wow, thank you everyone for the responses. This is great!

I think there is clear inclination toward zigbee, it looks like.

I now have lightify bulbs (zigbee) that are controlled by a z-wave scene controller. There is lag. How to solve? Maybe a zigbee controller? Are they faster? Are there zigbee controllers that can handle say 8 scenes? Or more? Can you recommend any?

Thanks again for all the comments.

[Furious]

I'd go with conbee if you already have homeseer. It can go up to 200 devices, and I've never seen lag on the 30+ devices.

[pc__hs]

I do have a conbee with Jowihue. I think the lag in switching lights on/off comes from the zwave scene controller.

Any recommendations for zigbee scene controllers / wall switches?

[Furious]

It's all down to looks and preference really. I've no experience with the powered switches as in the UK we have weird wiring so can't use them. Looking at importing the aqara double switch in the near future though.

The battery switches are all good though - I've a tradfri switch that controls a blind, some philips which do lighting, etc, and a dimmer from ikea too. If it's a zigbee switch, conbee will work with it, and you can link it to whatever directly. Oh, and an aqara small push button switch that is tiny and is the doorbell for the house