Wi-Fi is predominantly in the 5 GHz band except for very cheap equipment. In fact the 802.11ac standard was for 5 GHz only. The newer Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) standard does address both bands though.
I would disagree with that. At least in my house the majority of devices are 2.4GHz. Only the newer and more high end stuff supports 5GHz. Itās very likely that the printer that you buy today will not support 5GHz for instance. Basically embedded systems/IoT devices are a problem here. Most only support 2.4GHz 802.11b (newish stuff add support for n as well).
Plus since my house is of older design 5GHz isnāt really all that good because it has a lot more trouble penetrating the walls.
Ok, I only have 2.4 GHz on my older PC, so I still think this is the most common WiFi by far. I know the system Hilton are using operates on 2.4GHz and is working fine with their massive use of ZigBee.
Anyway, if youāre assuming that WiFi is not in 2.4 GHz, then the issue with ZigBee using this band is really much less of a problem.
In general, these ISM bands require that the system does not interfere with other others, and can accept interference with other users. This is the same constraint as the 900MHz bands where ZWave sits, and interference is also common on these bands. However, the exact interference will be down to local environments.
I think the bottom line from my perspective is that ZigBee is generally a much better system than ZWave. Both suffer issues that any wireless system has, but ZigBee has very good security where most ZWave devices have none. ZigBee has good error checking, ZWave is poor. ZigBee is considerably faster than ZWave. ZWave does have slightly better range due to using lower frequencies, and ZWave probably has more devices out there.
For most home users, pick one, or pick both - they should both work well for a home application.
2 Likes
I did not realize Zigbee is faster, In my case I may strugglle with Z-Waveās range but I am working on my network design. I suspect some powered Z-Wave Plus devices actually use lower power than permissible, probably to use cheaper radios.
I have experienced this in my own home, and had always wondered whether it was due to the specific devices I was using or the underlying zigbee/z-wave system. I have a number of Fibaro (z-wave) motion sensors and Xiaomi (zigbee) motion sensors. The Xiaomi ones are noticeably faster to respond.
ZWave uses a number of different data rates - 9k6, 40k and 100k from memory. The rate mostly depends on the age of the devices in the network as the rate will ultimately be governed by the slowest node in the link.
ZigBee uses 250kb/s in all cases.
1 Like
Interesting Thread so far. I have Zigbee and Z-Wave in my 4 story house and I struggle with those āsometimes it does not workā times.
I find my Z-Wave network less reliable, especially with the Aeotec Stick together with Openhab (before 2.4). Because my house does not have manual light switches in some rooms, it was a pain to re-pair all the sensors everytime something went wrongā¦ (and than I found out there is something like a soft-reset, duhā¦) There were times where for example all fibaro-motion sensors didnāt report motions anymore (but temperature etc).
In the meantime, after hours and hours of time spend with all that z-waving, understanding more of the protocol, having a zwave sniffer and talked to some technicians, I have decided to not invest more to Z-Wave but to move more to Zigbee. (I skipp the details here, not topic).
I started to build a Zigbee gateway with the ConBee Stick 2, which supports more devices than a philips hue and has a nice Monitoring when installed with a gui. But I donāt want a gui in my server-instances and think about moving to Zigbee2Mqtt too.
Can you guys give us the description to the most current but most stable solution to have ZigBee? I have 4 concret floors with the controller in the basementās corner, so mesh is necessary, and I want to use Zigbee, Hue, osram, Ikea and other vendors as I please. I donāt use a raspberry, so no shields, but USB Sticks are welcome.
For example,
- Chris mentioned Ember chipsets. Can somebody recommand a specific device that he enjoys? I personally donāt mind spending the extra buck to safe hours or maintenance.
- zigbee2mqtt is compatible with everything?
- are there devices that should be avoided or repeaters that are recommended or things like that?
Wellā¦ Or did I miss those answers in any other thread? 
@roli: Hope I am not highjacking your thread, I assume we are looking for the same solution
@Chris, what do you think of the USBZB-1 for Zigbee?
I read somewhere the manufacturer did not know what Zigbee version it supports 
Itās generally fine. The only real issue is it has an old(ish) firmware and there is no standard bootloader so it canāt be updated (as far as I know).
Iām not sure - I suspect the manufacturer does know. Itās running an older version of the Ember NCP code (around 5.4 or 5.6 if I remember correctly) so itās easily possible to work out what this means with respect to the ZigBee version. Current version is up to 6.6 I think, but even the version in the firmware is pretty good.
Most ZigBee changes do not require a change in the dongle - the dongle handles the network layers which do not change often. All (well, most) of the application layers are managed in the zigbee framework or the binding.
OK, Iāll keep that in mind.
I gather particular new device support requires zigbee binding changes, am I correct?
It depends. In general, no - if the binding already supports a similar device, then it should not require changing for a new device. If you want support for a completely new wizz-a-me-jig, then it may require some changes.
The ZigBee binding works quite differently to the ZWave binding in this respect - it is more dynamic and able to dynamically define channels without use of a database (these are features that weāre available in OH when I wrote the ZWave binding).
1 Like
@papaPhiL I donāt mid you hijacking this thread, because as you said we are looking for the same thing. Alsoā¦ I pretty much got all of the answers for now.
For the stick I personally ordered Bitron Video ZigBee USB stick that was on the support page of the zigbee binding and it was the cheapest that I could find (on amazon)ā¦ 25ā¬.
Will see how it works. I donāt have many zigbee devices around the house yet - 7 bulbs, 3 remotes, 1 repeater, but this will grow a bit after this update.
1 Like
Zigbee2mqtt actually only works with the cc2531 right now but the project is developing their own custom firmware that you have to flash onto it. As far as I know they are working on a version that will support Zigbee 3.0 and in future revisions other Dongles too. Itās experimental and wip right now:
Johannes
My understanding is that Hue Emulation is to make OH look like a Hue Hub so that stuff like Alexa and Homekit (prior to the addons that allow direct integration were created) can interact with OH. It has nothing to do with vendor lock in on Hueās part.
You bring this up a lot. But I think what you do not accept is that where you work is more of an exception rather than a rule. No everyone lives and works and is deploying Zigbee in a highly congested university environment. Iām about 50 yards from my nearest neighbor. The only 2.4 GHz interference I have is from my own devices (meaning basically none). But Iām also about 5 miles from the Air Force Academy and 433 MHz is completely unusable (for some reason) but it seems to be related to something they are doing there). So the recommendation to āonly use Zwaveā for me does nothing except cause me to spend more money than I need to.
And I have stayed at hotels with Zigbee stuff with a microwave in every room.
In short, every user needs to look at their own situation and make an appropriate decision. A blanket ādonāt use Zigbee, 2.4 GHz is crowdedā is not really useful advice. A better recommendation would be āuse a WiFi analyzer on your phone to see if 2.4 GHz is crowded for you before choosingā is a better recommendation. I suspect that for the vast majority of users, itās not and Zigbee will work just fine.
I would concur. Perhaps not in a controlled environment like a university, but for the average home user that has a much slower refresh rate than in commercial and industrial contexts, 2.4 will be as common if not more common than 5 GHz. And like Andrej mentioned, 2.4 GHz has a better range and penetration than 5 GHz and in a home context, range may be as if not more important than speed or number of devices that can simultaneously connect.
The standard TI stack supports ZigBee 3.0, but it will not be supported by TI in future, so it will receive no updates.
ZB3.0 is however quite complex for things like joining, so Iām not sure how that will work with mqtt as it requires keys to be sent to the dongle for each device (although some devices may still support the older HA1.2 codes).
Iāve just thought of another random question since we are on the topic of zigbeeā¦
Are there any easily programmable modules out there that could work as a generic I/O module (and work with the official zigbee binding)? Basically I want some digital inputs/outputsā¦ can be 3, 24, ā¦ whatever volts. I just want to connect a few custom buttons and maybe an LED or two.
I know there are modules but I am not sure the proper way of getting them to work with our binding. I do know your instance should not be added to our binding device database.
I donāt think heās asking about Xbee transceivers. I think heās asking about the Zigbee equivalent of something like https://www.fibaro.com/en/products/universal-binary-sensor/
1 Like
Iām not aware of anything like the Fibaro binary sensor - there are a lot of different development boards out there, but programming them up as āproperā ZigBee device is a much more difficult task. You could hack something together, but it wonāt work as a proper ZigBee device.
Hmmm - there is no such database.
1 Like
Sorry, lost track of the topic and was thinking of the Z-Uno for Z-Wave. 