Besides reliability, Zigbee will sort of mesh. Some manufacturers will stick to whatever devices they found in range and will not re-mesh with anything else. If you have only AC powered devices and good WiFi infrastructure (multiple well spread out APs) then I would go with WiFi.
@@HomeIsWhereTheSmartIsnope, it’s because zigbee is not strict with compatibility making it a massive pita if you happen to try to use devices from more than one manufacturer. Zigbee is garbage Zwave is miles better, but stupid expensive
@@repatch43 some manufacturers aren’t strict with their compatibility, Aqara comes to mind. Which is why I’ve tried a bunch and recommend based on my experience. And with IKEA, Sonoff, Thirdreality my Zigbee network is great 👍
For anything battery powered, wifi definitely is a poor choice. However, i have a few wifi controlled lights and switches and they seem responsive enough since they dont run off battery power. They also use the 2.4 GHz band, which I personally dont use for my other devices and I have pretty good wifi coverage. Certainly better than my current zigbee network.
what if I want to wire my light switches with those smart control boxes? lets say 10-15 wifi based control boxes... would this be an issue? would my home wifi get slower or jammed?
@@walterrldias it really depends on how good your WiFi network is. If you’re just using the router your ISP supplied you might start to notice the connection degrading if you added that many devices to it. At which point you can either spend a lot of effort and money upgrading it (which might be worthwhile for you anyway for other reasons). Or you can just get some form of Zigbee hub and buy Zigbee versions instead.
@@HomeIsWhereTheSmartIs bs, Wifi nowadays consists from several radio frequencies - 2.4 Khz, 5 Khz, 6 Khz. Each pair of them uses different antennas and transceivers on a router side. Smart devices could use only 2.4Khz wave only, as they come on one chip with BLE connectivity. Thus, if you main wifi devices consumes, Wifi 5, 6 & 7 (and supports frequency aggregation)- you would never notice anything - even if the home would have a lot of 2.4 smart home things, they are independent. As sum up, video apply to any WiFi 4 only or lower network, while on WiFi 5+ it wouldn't be notable and Wifi 7 were build for a lot of connections and data transfer channels separation to avoid data transmission congestion.
@@s.i.m.c.asome of the cheaper routers that ISPs supply can struggle as you load up the network with devices. If you swap all your lights and switches to WiFi smart devices the number can add up quickly. I use unifi equipment myself with about 150 WiFi devices online across 3 APs, my WiFi devices are rock solid. I do still get the odd issue with ZigBee though.
@@s.i.m.c.a I think what you’re saying lines up absolutely with what I’m saying. “It Depends”. What you’re saying is that if you have a very well configured WiFi network with reasonably up to date infrastructure then you’ll be fine, and you will… But most people don’t have that.
While I don't necessarily disagree with the points you are making I don't agree with them either. Sure, if you're gonna build a proper advanced smart home, don't build it off of Wi-Fi. But for someone who's not necessarily technical and is just looking for a way to control a couple of lamps from outside their home Wi-Fi is perfect. It's cheap and easy to implement because pretty much everyone has a Wi-Fi router. Now you make an awesome point about Thread, but currently it's a crapshoot! I hope that it improves greatly in the future because if it does it's going to be revolutionary but as of now Wi-Fi reigns supreme for building small smart homes as a non-technical individual.
@@Techlifeandmore yeah I actually largely agree with what you’ve said. WiFi is great for dipping your toes into smart home stuff, but as soon as you realise you’re down the rabbit hole switching to other technologies is definitely the way to go. And I really wish Thread was better too, I went all in on it with Nanoleaf bulbs etc and eventually gave up and ended up with much cheaper IKEA bulbs and couldn’t be happier.
@ with your ISP provided router, yeah. If you have a high quality Wi-Fi router like an Asus mesh Wi-Fi system or other high-quality consumer grade gear then you can have like 40 to 50 devices without issues. But at that point if you’re just buying a new network to use smart home devices just use a separate protocol.
@ yeah indeed. I spent a REALLY long time trying to get my WiFi network nailed down so that my smart home would be stable. I have tried Ubiquiti, Aruba, Eero even, and finally settled on some from FS, separate 2.4Ghz SSID for the smart tech on 20Mhz only and the final thing which really helped was getting all my cameras off the WiFi to PoE ones 👌
Do a video on non-wifi addressable LED strips. Extra points if you can do some napkin math for the bandwidth needed to do 60fps effects purely over the air (say, for 10x 5M strips throughout the home) WLED (which I recognize behind you) is almost entirely wifi + has effects built in, but for the future it's going to unlock a lot of wonder to operate pixels in an orchastrated manner over a non-congested mesh
@@JB-fh1bb I wouldn’t have thought it’d be a crazy amount of data, still should be a lot less than even a single camera constantly streaming. Are you saying you’d actually want such a thing, or it’d just be difficult to do without using WiFi? I do actually want some sort of Zigbee variant of a WLED controller, but concede it’s a huge challenge to do without a web UI even unfortunately.
@ open in what way? And without WiFi how would you interface with it to tell it what to display? Something hyper simple like a button to cycle through effects?
@HomeIsWhereTheSmartIs this is spitballing a wishlist, but: Open means a controller with open source firmware (3rd party or otherwise) and a protocol that's unencumbered by license and patent constraints For interface: a standard protocol. I'd love to see matter here as in the controller can advertise itself as a string of addressable LEDs so any other UI can do brightness, colour. Then extend the protocol to take in a stream of pixel data. Maybe something like starting with the frame rate, bit depth, and colour sequence (GBR, RGB, RGBWW, others maybe even including UV, orange, etc) then accepting the binary stream. The sender would be able to send the pixel data directly to the controller which sends it to the strip
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Besides reliability, Zigbee will sort of mesh. Some manufacturers will stick to whatever devices they found in range and will not re-mesh with anything else.
If you have only AC powered devices and good WiFi infrastructure (multiple well spread out APs) then I would go with WiFi.
Zigbee reliable hahahahaha. Right-o
@@ArtherFocksake if it’s not reliable it’s probably because something, somewhere is not setup right 😉
@@HomeIsWhereTheSmartIsnope, it’s because zigbee is not strict with compatibility making it a massive pita if you happen to try to use devices from more than one manufacturer. Zigbee is garbage
Zwave is miles better, but stupid expensive
@@HomeIsWhereTheSmartIs isn't that always the answer? Sometimes it works and other-times it does not.
@@repatch43 some manufacturers aren’t strict with their compatibility, Aqara comes to mind. Which is why I’ve tried a bunch and recommend based on my experience. And with IKEA, Sonoff, Thirdreality my Zigbee network is great 👍
I was surprised you didn't mention Z-wave
@@Cyberguy42 yeah I’ve not actually tried it myself so not as familiar with it. But it’s definitely another good option 👍
For anything battery powered, wifi definitely is a poor choice. However, i have a few wifi controlled lights and switches and they seem responsive enough since they dont run off battery power. They also use the 2.4 GHz band, which I personally dont use for my other devices and I have pretty good wifi coverage. Certainly better than my current zigbee network.
what if I want to wire my light switches with those smart control boxes? lets say 10-15 wifi based control boxes... would this be an issue? would my home wifi get slower or jammed?
@@walterrldias it really depends on how good your WiFi network is. If you’re just using the router your ISP supplied you might start to notice the connection degrading if you added that many devices to it. At which point you can either spend a lot of effort and money upgrading it (which might be worthwhile for you anyway for other reasons). Or you can just get some form of Zigbee hub and buy Zigbee versions instead.
@@HomeIsWhereTheSmartIs bs, Wifi nowadays consists from several radio frequencies - 2.4 Khz, 5 Khz, 6 Khz. Each pair of them uses different antennas and transceivers on a router side. Smart devices could use only 2.4Khz wave only, as they come on one chip with BLE connectivity. Thus, if you main wifi devices consumes, Wifi 5, 6 & 7 (and supports frequency aggregation)- you would never notice anything - even if the home would have a lot of 2.4 smart home things, they are independent.
As sum up, video apply to any WiFi 4 only or lower network, while on WiFi 5+ it wouldn't be notable and Wifi 7 were build for a lot of connections and data transfer channels separation to avoid data transmission congestion.
@@s.i.m.c.asome of the cheaper routers that ISPs supply can struggle as you load up the network with devices. If you swap all your lights and switches to WiFi smart devices the number can add up quickly.
I use unifi equipment myself with about 150 WiFi devices online across 3 APs, my WiFi devices are rock solid. I do still get the odd issue with ZigBee though.
@@s.i.m.c.a I think what you’re saying lines up absolutely with what I’m saying. “It Depends”. What you’re saying is that if you have a very well configured WiFi network with reasonably up to date infrastructure then you’ll be fine, and you will…
But most people don’t have that.
While I don't necessarily disagree with the points you are making I don't agree with them either. Sure, if you're gonna build a proper advanced smart home, don't build it off of Wi-Fi. But for someone who's not necessarily technical and is just looking for a way to control a couple of lamps from outside their home Wi-Fi is perfect. It's cheap and easy to implement because pretty much everyone has a Wi-Fi router. Now you make an awesome point about Thread, but currently it's a crapshoot! I hope that it improves greatly in the future because if it does it's going to be revolutionary but as of now Wi-Fi reigns supreme for building small smart homes as a non-technical individual.
@@Techlifeandmore yeah I actually largely agree with what you’ve said. WiFi is great for dipping your toes into smart home stuff, but as soon as you realise you’re down the rabbit hole switching to other technologies is definitely the way to go.
And I really wish Thread was better too, I went all in on it with Nanoleaf bulbs etc and eventually gave up and ended up with much cheaper IKEA bulbs and couldn’t be happier.
what about up to 10-15 lamps and or devices? still good enough for wi-fi?
@ with your ISP provided router, yeah. If you have a high quality Wi-Fi router like an Asus mesh Wi-Fi system or other high-quality consumer grade gear then you can have like 40 to 50 devices without issues. But at that point if you’re just buying a new network to use smart home devices just use a separate protocol.
@ yeah indeed. I spent a REALLY long time trying to get my WiFi network nailed down so that my smart home would be stable. I have tried Ubiquiti, Aruba, Eero even, and finally settled on some from FS, separate 2.4Ghz SSID for the smart tech on 20Mhz only and the final thing which really helped was getting all my cameras off the WiFi to PoE ones 👌
Do a video on non-wifi addressable LED strips. Extra points if you can do some napkin math for the bandwidth needed to do 60fps effects purely over the air (say, for 10x 5M strips throughout the home)
WLED (which I recognize behind you) is almost entirely wifi + has effects built in, but for the future it's going to unlock a lot of wonder to operate pixels in an orchastrated manner over a non-congested mesh
@@JB-fh1bb I wouldn’t have thought it’d be a crazy amount of data, still should be a lot less than even a single camera constantly streaming.
Are you saying you’d actually want such a thing, or it’d just be difficult to do without using WiFi?
I do actually want some sort of Zigbee variant of a WLED controller, but concede it’s a huge challenge to do without a web UI even unfortunately.
@HomeIsWhereTheSmartIs personally I'm hungry for an addressable strip controller that's open and not wifi
@ open in what way?
And without WiFi how would you interface with it to tell it what to display? Something hyper simple like a button to cycle through effects?
@HomeIsWhereTheSmartIs this is spitballing a wishlist, but:
Open means a controller with open source firmware (3rd party or otherwise) and a protocol that's unencumbered by license and patent constraints
For interface: a standard protocol. I'd love to see matter here as in the controller can advertise itself as a string of addressable LEDs so any other UI can do brightness, colour. Then extend the protocol to take in a stream of pixel data. Maybe something like starting with the frame rate, bit depth, and colour sequence (GBR, RGB, RGBWW, others maybe even including UV, orange, etc) then accepting the binary stream. The sender would be able to send the pixel data directly to the controller which sends it to the strip