I thought about a sub-network, but rejected the idea because I want to use openhab to control two of my network devices. Perhaps this can be bridged, but I haven’t looked into it yet. Although my router has the option of guest WLAN, this is of course separate from the actual WLAN, so I don’t know how this could be implemented.
After weathering the first storm with ZWave (I had some lessons to learn) luckily everything is running well so I don’t want to replace a working system with another working system just because.
Btw ZWave devices have to be certified and the certification seems to cost a lot of money, that’s why they are more expensive.
I’m trying to be open-minded. I have three protocols in the house already and here are my thoughts: To use ZigBee I need to buy a ZigBee stick and at least two repeaters (even if I buy outlets, I can’t use them there). Is it worth the extra expense to not use WIFI devices? At the moment it looks like I would only use three devices with ZigBee because I will buy more devices with ZWave if possible. What benefit do I get from the extra cost? I share your concerns about Chinese products spying on people, but if I was suspicious of every device made in China, I wouldn’t be able to type this.
You’re right but with Tuya this would not be the case, right?
Apart from getting the key, but that’s not so important to me
I am very happy with ZWave, but I am sometimes annoyed by the smaller number of devices. And I firmly believe that I would have been very happy with ZigBee too, so perhaps I’m reacting this way because I want to convince myself that I’ve made the right choice.
I hope that makes sense to you.
I have several different blinds.
If the limited variety offered by IKEA is not an issue, I’d go with those, they are zigbee and each blind comes with a repeater.
If you need more customized blinds you can get custom color and sizing roller zigbee blinds from several vendors in aliexpress, I have a couple from SmartMatters and they work well, most of the time, every once in a while one of them fails to open or close but not very often.
I use everything through zigbee2mqtt with the sonoff dongle. I have only had one device lose the connection and have to be re-paired, so for me it has worked well
I am running something very similar to what you are using.
I recommend zigbee2mqtt. It has the support and a nice web interface.
Wifi is OK but you cannot really have battery endpoints because of the wifi power consumption.
Also zigbee is meshed.
I would only buy a tuya device if it has zigbee on the packet as I don’t want to rely on the tuya mqtt server to control my devices. All my control is local only and if I am away I use a VPN to access the openhab system.
I have five windows where I use those
but at this 3 windows there is no current so I have to use something with battery or solar panel (like the devices I posted)
There’s one exception to this that I know of: the Tuya-based water-leak detector. I got one before I started using Zigbee (it was a cheap experiment).
It connects to WiFi once a day to report its status, and otherwise remains offline until you press the wake button or there’s a leak to report. I’ve had it in place since April and I think the battery is still around 80%.
So basically, it only works well due to the device reporting so infrequently and not needing to maintain WiFi to receive commands.
The SmarthomeJ Tuya binding works very well. It has to connect to Tuya’s servers to generate channels, but after that you can deny the Tuya device Internet access. I’m using it with the water leak detector, a ceiling lamp, outlets, and an air purifier.
As far as I can tell, the only channels on my devices that don’t work locally are the energy consumption stats on my outlets. I suspect this might be different from device to device, since sellers can customize a fair amount when they order Tuya devices to be manufactured.
I added the air purifier last week and had it connected to openHAB in a few minutes. One of the features (ambient lighting) wasn’t showing up as a channel, but I was able to modify its instruction set in the Tuya website and get it to show up.
To be clear, your Zigbee repeaters/outlets wouldn’t need to be next to your windows. They’d just need to be somewhere within the range (about 10m). So you might only need one, but it’s hard to say until you set it up and start testing. Range depends a lot on the makeup of your home.
I used to think this, but as you noted, there just aren’t a lot of Z-Wave devices. There are many more Zigbee devices that tend to cost less. So once you have both systems (as I do now), you have more choice available to you.
The big thing for me? Contact sensors. I have them on all of my windows with motorized blinds. If the windows are open, openHAB won’t close the blinds completely. Zigbee contact sensors are more widely available and much cheaper than Z-Wave equivalents.
I tend to agree with you. The reality is that the Chinese government does not care about the PM2.5 air quality being reported by my air purifier. We need to be specific and measured in our concerns, rather than relying on broad stereotypes.
I wanted to order the wifi version and ordered zigbee version instead so now I’m a zigbee user by accident.
I also ordered the suggested CC2652RB from slae.sh but I have no clue what to do next. Do I have to use zigbee2mqtt?
The zigbee-binding does not support the 2652-chipset from TI but zigbee2mqtt does. So you need zigbee2mqtt for this coordinator. It can be installed via openhabian if available.
Thank you very much, that helped!
I was able to control the blinds with zigbee2mqtt. Now I’m no sure how to integrate into openhab correctly. Do I have to setup every thing and every channel manually?
