My home is finally ready for some automation, and i’ve been snooping at some of the options and… boy are there a lot of options. Like, a LOT of options. I am however limited to what is easy to source in europe, as shipping something from the US is very brutal on the wallet.
First ill list some existing conditions that might affect the choice;
The building;
Very much downtown, a street corner plot with lots of neighbors with WiFi. Footprint is 50 x 30ft, with work floor and living floor. Base floor is a showroom with workshop and small office. Lots of possibly signal impeding metal on this floor, as it is a trophy shop. Second floor is living quarters with roof terrace. Walls are stone, the second floor is mostly wood.
Existing equipment;
In the main floor office (corner of plot) there is a server rack in which I intend to house the HA server. I have HA already running in a jail on my trueNAS server to dip my toes in, but ive just toyed with wifi stuff for now. Furthest point id need to connect to is about 60ft from this point, with a wall and floor in the way. There is a Ubiquiti WiFi AP on both floors, if that helps. WiFi plugs and WiFi LED controllers (mostly sonos, tuya, magichome) are already heavily being used. Im not opposed to replacing those, but id like to keep them if possible.
Expectations;
I would like to switch lights using switches I can put anywhere without extra wiring. Ive seen ones that dont even need a battery, but I dont think any of that type is Zigbee/Z-wave capable. Some rooms will need motion detection to operate the lights. Id like to be able to control my central heating radiators and air-conditioning as well, though that might complicate things? Then there’s extra amenities like window shutter control and possibly tying in my surveillance cameras as sensors, but that’s just extra gravy for now.
Sofar I’ve noticed its mainly a showdown between Zigbee and Z-wave with some third party bits and bops that claim to be compatible. But I can’t really make out which one is more steadily available on the european market. I did see you can get transceivers that will allow you to mix and match the both of them, but i’m not sure how desirable this really is.
Anyone care to share some starter advice to get me moving in the right direction?
If I’m not mistaken, ZigBee devices tend to be more readily available in European markets at a reasonable cost. The downside is that ZigBee runs in the same frequency band as WiFi (although there are some gaps between the actual frequencies used to mitigate interference). The upshot to Z-Wave is that it runs around 915 Mhz so no conflict with WiFi (most consumer RF devices) and you tend to get better obstacle penetration (walls). The problem here is that Z-Wave operates in different bands for different markets. A US device would not work (out of the box at least) with a European controller.
I run a mix of both networks and can’t say I have any real complaints. The key to either will be to make sure you have enough repeating devices (both protocols create a mesh and will use each other to get back to the controller). General rule of thumb is that any mains powered devices will act as repeaters. No matter what you land on for switches, I’d highly recommend they support “smart bulb” mode. These switches allow you to decouple the paddle/toggle from the actual power relay (meaning the paddle will no longer turn power on/off). This will save you plenty of headaches down the line if you switch to smart bulbs anywhere that are reliant on always having power.
One thing to keep in mind with WiFi devices is saturation of your WiFi RF. My approach is all IoT devices go onto the 2.4 Ghz band (most only support this anyhow) and any people devices (e.g. phones, laptops, etc) go onto the 5 Ghz band. Easiest way is to have separate SSIDs for each band versus trying to rely on band steering. I also have the IoT network set to its own VLAN.
Here’s a good primer to help with segmenting off the IoT devices:
Here’s a recent thread with some good tips to have in mind through your journey:
Why do you want to limit yourself to just one ? The beauty of Home Assistant is that you can integrate devices from different systems heterogenously. My HA uses 27 different integrations, including Z-Wave, X10, LGE, Enphase, Yolink, Kasa, JuiceNet, Litter Robot, etc.
The main reason to go with one system is if you want devices to work with each other without HA running. For example, X10 devices can work this way. So can Z-Wave devices (though I’m not using that feature). I do use this feature in X10, but not with Z-Wave. IMO, it is too limiting.
IMHO, this kind of post will yield many opinions. Many may be right … or wrong … or whatever. Good luck setting it up, sounds great. I would never offer an opinion as I don’t really know everything in your situation.