Hi,
Im new to the Smart Home idea. The reason I came here is because of our need to control the heating system in our appartment in a better / smarter way. We have a city provided heating system of which we have no control. No central Thermostat or the like.
Our building is completely made out of reinforced concrete. So wireless signals do have some issues. To have decent wifi coverage I had to use 2 AP’s in a small 70 m2 place. On top of that I do see some signales from neighbours poking through here in there. Because of this situation I think it would be best to go for z-wave which penetrates materials easier than zigbee. And it avoids the issue of possible wifi interfearance from the neighbours of which I can`t control the channel obviously. (From what I read Zigbee seems to have only 1 free channel (24) which could work without wifi crossover in case there is no wifi channel 11). Obviously if my reasoning in here is wrong. please point it out. Nothing has been bought yet so I could switch to Zigbee if it is the better option.
Next I’m most interested in using a dongle on one of my already 24 / 7 running devices instead of bying an extra device / hub to throw on the pile.
This is unfortunatly where the issue starts. I have found very little RTV`s which could operate without an extra hub. (z wave or zigbee).
- Fibaro (z-wave): This one I like the most since it has a turning knob instead of push buttons. The only issue here is that you need a fibaro hub to install firmware updates…
- Aeotec (z-wave): since it is the same company as the z-stick I guess this one would be easiest but I don`t like the look of it or the push buttons…
- Danfoss Link (z-wave): these are still available but they seem old. I have the impression that they switched to zigbee and are dropping he z-wave line
- Danfoss Alley (Zigbee): lower on my list because of the possible zigbee issues mentioned above?
- netatmo (Zigbee): Zigbee and not z wave plus a need for an extra hub
- Tuya (zigbee): Zigbee and not z wave plus a need for an extra hub
- others available in the EU mainland which I didn`t find yet???
I would appriciate some advice from more experianced users in this area. There aren’t that many reviews about this topic available and most info I could find on the net (including this forum) is from a few years back. So some i`m not sure if those are still relevant. And ofcourse, easy integration with Home Assistent would be a best since I have limited time.