My goal is to replace my Insteon devices (outlets, dimmer switches, etc…) with technologies that are similar and at this point, both z-wave and zigbee seem to fit the bill. I’ve noticed that it seems a lot of people here have both z-wave and zigbee. I was wondering, for interoperability / scenes, do folks have any issues mixing and matching for purposes of ‘scenes’? Do folks have any tips / tricks for when it’s maybe not a good idea to mix zigbee and z-wave?
I’m just trying to get a lay of the land before I begin investing.
They work on entirely different frequencies and will not interfere with each other in any way. They’re totally independent and won’t even notice the respective others presence. There’s no problem operating both in a same home.
Both are mesh networks and both will benefit from powered nodes as repeaters to strengthen their networks. They obviously won’t repeat each others signals, so you will end up with two independent weaker meshes than if you went with a single standard and an overall stronger mesh. You also won’t be able to use direct association between devices of the respective other standard. While HA can bridge the gap, this will stop working if/when HA goes offline. If you are going for a resilient infrastructure that degrades gracefully on equipment failure, this is something to consider.
Personally I would go with a single technology and keep things clean and consistent (I used zwave). But I understand that some people will want to take advantage of devices from both worlds.
The joy of HA is that the underlying hardware you’re using doesn’t matter - as long as HA supports it you can mix and match to suit. One room can have a combination of Zigbee, Z-Wave, and WiFi lights and you can use them all together.
The only downside to using both is that you do need to ensure you build both meshes out sufficiently, which may mean that you end up buying extra devices just for that, rather than to serve any useful purpose.
I had originally planned on sticking with z-wave, but I noticed that there seems to be more of a supply shortage for z-wave stuff right now (for some reason) and also zigbee devices seem to be less expensive. Not really sure why that is.
After reading a thousand articles about the differences between zigbee and z-wave, that might be one of the most concise and real world summaries I’ve read.