Neo coolcam is what I bought too, thanks to them the price is somehow lower but … its all in the 20-30 range, while Xiaomi and other chinese Zigbee is in the 10-15 range.
That’s the half!!! It’s a huge difference.
I am sure Zwave alliance lost Philips, Ikea, Xiaomi, Amazon for the fees … with a better strategy they would have chosen Zwave and not Zigbee
I recently build a new house and we settled for primarily z wave. I live in Europe and it wasn’t really possible for me to find any way to use Zigbee with the switches available - therefore we have Aeotech Nano dimmers and Nano switches behind most switches - to us it was important that we did have a coherent design (not having 10 different switch designs) and also that the house could be used by both app/HA and by just clicking on the switch.
I also have Hue and Trådfri some places which is controlled by Conbee and earlier Hue bridge. In our case having relatively new versions of Z wave products it has been rock stable, which I cannot say about our Zigbee network, eventhough it is also pretty good.
One thing many people get caught up about is locks. Sure, there are big brand smart locks out there, but they cost a fortune. I used to install security systems and access control and we always used electronic door strikes. Those can still be purchased cheaply and you can wire them up to something such as a NodeMCU for wireless control (albeit once you run power to the location, but then you never have to worry about batteries). They also allow you to use the standard door lock so you still have key access if all else fails. This is the route I’ll be taking in my new house
I think the biggest hurdle is not the fees but different frequencies required per country etc
Zwave, has 3 different frequencies I believe and the cost to get certified per country would be high, whereas ZigBee uses an already open frequency and is globally consistent at 2.4Ghz
Sure that doesn’t help, but each region have huge population, hence huge markets: EU 500 million plus, USA 300 million plus, China 1,3 billion etc …
There are at least 13 different regions with different frequencies, not 3.
Yes I saw, but 4 have like 4 billion potential consumers a scale sufficient for any manufacturer