To advertise your product as being Zigbee certified it is a requirement to have the battery last 2 years. Not all zigbee products are certified and some break the communication guidelines so you do need to be careful of which ones you buy.
I look at Zigbee vs zWave from the perspective of putting a new device in and running it. Admittedly all my Zigbee’s are v4 Philips Hue bulbs… But the process is
- Install bulb in socket
- Turn on
- Open iPhone app. Find new device (About 5 seconds).
- Configure
Done.
Compared with zWave
- Install new zWave device.
- Turn on
- Get USB stick. Hit ‘include’ button
- Wait… Get red flashes… swear. wait 30 seconds. reset device.
- goto 3
And if I’m lucky, then 30 minutes later it’s included. or maybe not. Maybe I come back tomorrow. Maybe it never includes
The config…
Zigbee == It’s a buib, here’s the config. here’s the serial. About 10 seconds
zWave == It might be something. I’ll let you know… 1 week later, it might be something. try later
You can see where I’m going here… zWave is a perpetual nightmare and has been for several years that I’ve been running it. And I don’t see it getting any better. Zigbee so far is not. Wifi is somewhere in between (LIFX seem OK. Ikea Tradifari are a bit of a nightmare, but that may just be the distance between the hub and the bulb)
For me it’s different:
- Power up the device next to the openhab machine
- Click “scan for z-wave” in gui
- Device appears in inbox
- Okay
While I acknowledge that with battery operated devices inclusion sometimes can be very flaky I’ve never had any issue whatsoever with mains powered devices.
With the DSK-QR Code inclusion should be even easier, unfortunately openhab doesn’t support this (yet?).
For me it’s more the opposite.
It really depends on the devices, and you won’t know which ones don’t include/work well until you’re hit. Noteworthy: all of these difficulties are essentially with battery powered devices.
Getting back on topic, with Wi-Fi you cannot even run on battery. And you have no protocol standard and no autodiscovery, resulting in an awkward work and potentially cost intensive selection process.
So it’s barely an alternative. And the linked article means to effectively go for a cloud hub which is completely against OH philosophy of local independent control.
Don’t waste too much time on discussing this, the OP seems to have lost interest already, too.
For zWave I find little difference between battery and mains powered. Some of my mains powered devices have been worse than the battery ones. At leats battery are more likely to be accessible. The mains powered ones tend to be in boxes somewhere which makes trying to get the close to any master device near impossible at times.
My most reliable has been the Secure dual channel boiler switch. The least, (Yes a battery device) a wall switch (Can’t remember the make and I’ve probably thrown it in a drawer somewhere in pure frustration) that would include (Gets an ID the controller knows there’s something there), but never ever completed discovery.
One of the most reliable (For inclusion) I had was also a battery device. A CO monitor (disk/puck shaped thing). Reliable yes for inclusion and availability. But it would run batteries down in an hour (Even sleeping) and constantly chips wanting a new battery (Several times a new branded battery would still chip wanting a new battery straight away).
It went in the bin…
Spirit zWave TRV’s are hit & miss… A PITA to include. Lose their config if they go flat for too long. Some discover straight away., Some don’t finish discovery after more than a month. But when they work they’re great because they’re always listening.
It’s that continual inclusion problems and staying on the net bit with zWave that kills it as being useful though.
Hey Martin,
I have a few sonoff zigbee devices that I am testing to see what the battery life is like. So far I have a couple of PIR sensor and a door contact that are running well and the battery life is great. I’ve been using them for a few months without any issues so will definitely recommend them. I’ve just purchased a couple of temperature sensors too.
They are very cheap and well worth the money
cheers
Matt
This is not the common experience. I wonder if there is something wrong with your controller or network. I’ve both Zwave and Zigbee devices. In both cases including a new device is exactly the same for mains powered devices. Put the binding into scan mode. Press the button. I don’t even need to move close to the device. I’ve been told for newer Zwave devices that is not necessary so long as the device itself is in range of the Zwave mesh (which is required to operate the device anyway), and I was told that years ago.
I don’t have battery powered devices of either type so can’t compare differences there.
I went insteon with hub for my most reliable setup, its been running for years, and its mesh approach works very well. (via OH3 it is also insanely fast compared to their crumby app)
In my second implementation at another location they wanted wifi devices, they do work but who knows if have microphones built in doing stuff (referering to amazon shipping echos with built in wifi sharing nonsense) Anyway there are TP Link KASA and Ecobee and they have failed and been glitchy every month or two.
Personally I don’t trust any of the wifi only solutions they are too configuration "fragile’ and you can be up the creek when the router wipes out your mac address/ip mappings or you router flops.