Getting started with HA Hardware

Hardware
24

Jesus, people calm down please.

Wifi is one viable solution among others. But - as LAN - it is targeting high speed communications, which is not required for IoT.

The biggest drawback for me is the lack of a standard to address devices capabilities via Wifi, sometimes it‘s REST, sometimes it requires a dedicated integration and sometimes they only work by a cloud service. Flushing custom firmware may help to address this.

Whereas dedicated network stacks and protocols like Z-Wave, Zigbee, DECT or BidCoS/Homematic (quite popular in Germany) provide a unique, appropriate way to communicate with every device supporting the standard.

See, I have 50 wireless devices in my home and need to use 3 integrations for them:

  • Homematic for about 40 Homematic devices
  • MQTT with Zigbee2MQTT for the 8 Zigbee devices
  • and TP-Link for the two bastard TP Link HS110 sockets that fail on me every night.
1 Like
25

Zigbee is a debatable inclusion in that list. There are a number of standards in use that do not interoperate. Latest case in point.

Wifi is only the physical and network layer. It is backed by rock solid standards. Buy any wifi device and it will connect to any wifi AP. The fact that it supports so many different protocols is a plus rather than a con in my opinion.

26

This thread derailed quickly. :laughing:

Perhaps a split? One with wifi security and one about getting started with HA hardware.
I know… Who could guess that was the topic of this thread.

27

@tom_l Maybe time to clean this thread up. The op wasn’t interested in this nonsense

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28

When I started with home assistant

  • zwave uses unusual frequencies in NZ and devices are expensive
  • zigbee wasn’t on my horizon (despite my first automation devices being Hue bulb starter pack)
  • wifi - well I had an AP and wif bulbs were cheaper ($20NZ) than hue ($80NZ).

Well I got ubiquiti wifi and a zigbee2mqtt router since then as …

Bur wifi still has the longest reach, and there are devices that just are wifi - like the pool sensors I am looking at. (Atlas Scientific).

Like @tom_l I am semi rural, not much competiton on the wifi front. I now have a mixture of zigbee and wifi, and particularly like esphome (wifi).

The beauty of HA is that I can choose a device for the task I want it to perform, not for the method it uses to connect to my “hub”.

3 Likes
29

For the op.
Almost anything connected to the home assistant system can be exposed to and controlled by Google home.
Obviously you can also control them using the home assistant app, which does away with the need for seperate apps for each brand of devices.

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30

The patch is WPA3 which required hardware upgrades called WiFi 6. It’s not a software upgrade. There’s no fixing your wifi network. You’re going to need to upgrade all components and there are no WiFi 6/WPA3 bulbs currently that I know of.

Which access point do you have that handles 50 wifi devices? I can’t find any that say more than 50 is acceptable.

31

Zigbee IS the more open between the common Zigbee/Zwave home automation protocols, but you’re right. They were sloppy with implementation. Additionally, you can’t tell by looking at the logo which ones are secure or not, like Zwave/ZWave+. Zigbee is a 2nd rate home automation protocol.