Which communication technology to chose?

Hardware
1

Hello,

I’m in the process of designing the electrical network for the living part of my home. We had to completely rebuild this part, so I’m starting from scratch. I’d like to automate as much as I could with Home Assistant, but I’m stuck at which communication technology to chose.

I’d like it to be open standard, energy efficient, secure, and of course compatible with free software.

Wireless seems the easiest, for example with zigbee, but it’s inherently less secure, less stable, and I guess that it continuously must use some idle power (maybe it’s negligible ?).

As I have to put new cables anyway, I can can go wired. KNX seems to be the open standard, but it’s designed for distributed «intelligence», and most of all the devices need an expansive and proprietary software to be configured.

Did I miss something ? Any advice ?

Thanks,

Rémi

2

I am struggling with the same question. (Wifi (Tasmota) / Z-Wave / Zigbee / ikea trådfri / KNX ??). I am currently using Wifi / Tasmota and Z-wave for more than 3 years. Both work well. What I don’t like about Wifi is the usage of a existing infrastructure which is also used for many other data traffic. Z-wave seems most secure, most reliable however relative expensive. This article might help: https://thesmartcave.com/z-wave-vs-zigbee-home-automation/

3

Hi, thanks for your answer.

Wifi is also a lot more energy hungry than both zwave and zigbee. It’s largely overkill, not designed for iot.

Regarding the comparison between zwave and zigbee, technically they seem very much alike. Probably zwave has a longer range since it uses lower frequencies, but it’s also a proprietary technology, completely under the control of a single player. That rules it out for me, so if wireless it will be zigbee.

Now I don’t know much about wired alternatives, so I hope I’ll get other answers :slight_smile:

Thanks,
Rémi

4

here is another comparison of zwave vs zigbee:

5

Actually after the CHIPS announcement, Silicon Labs announced they were open sourcing Z-Wave and we’ll soon have more chip manufacturers.

6

With wifi you run into network security issues and management.

Zigbee and zwave I like

Zwave has many well built devices. I forget it is open sourcing so that could lead to good things

7

Have you settled on something? I’m doing a major remodel and am at the point of installing about 50 light switches. I’m running Cat5e from each switch to a structured wiring panel and will use relays to control mains power to each light as a fail-safe backup since each light will have ZigBee or DMX control for intensity/color. My main concern is that with so many switches latency through HA will be a big risk, so rather than have each switch (a SPDT center off - so about 100 all together) and each relay directly controlled by HA, I’m considering creating a KNX hub just for the lighting real-time control and then connecting that to HA for the fancier stuff.

I’m still researching the best low-latency/overhead way to KNX to HA.

8

Hello, no I have not found anything that is both wired and open, and I don’t want to rely exclusively on wireless for such critical long-term components. I’m not completely decided yet, but I’ll probably just abandon the automation part.

Thanks

9

I’ve stuck with the Cat5e hard wiring and relays. I considering using RDM/DMX to communicate between the relay panel (enhanced with a microcontroller) and an Artnet/DMX bridge (itself controlled by HA). In many ways that’s exactly what DMX/RDM were designed for. RDM is polled, not interrupt driven, so I while I may use a DMX/RDM protocol to talk to the relay panel/switch concentrator I’ll probably use something like MQTT to signal HA when a switch is used. Handling of double/multiple switch taps (which will generate HA events) or continuous presses for dimming (which is latency sensitive) is TBD.