Just sharing my ongoing journey with Zigbee.
I recently moved from Canada to the Philippines. It makes you aware how much internet user content is dominated by U.S./western perspective.
As I learned about HA , the common wisdom is that Zigbee is great and solves issues from wifi-crowding (maxing out your router or a channel). Makes sense… but it makes the most sense for people who live in stick-framed architecture (where walls — especially interior — are hollow-framed).
Concrete architecture is much more common in the tropics, even interior walls. Typical battery Zigbee devices’ tx signal is maybe 8-10dB, even lower for some cheap Tuya stuff. Wifi devices are typically 15-20dB (and remember, dB is exponential, not linear, so wifi is often a ~10x stronger signal.
There is a kind of false economy of buying a battery-powered zigbee window door sensor for ~$5 when you also need to buy a $10 smart plug as a mains router/repeater to boost the signal enough to get it to the next room. I also now have my server (thankfully a quiet, headless mini-desktop) in my living room instead of the basement utility room (where it belongs) because I’m not ready to buy a more expensive poe coordinator after having bought a sonoff USB coordinator.
Moral of the story: if you live in a residence with heavy/concrete interior walls, make sure that wifi crowding is enough of a problem that you don’t switch to Zigbee for the wrong reasons.
I’ve mostly solved my interior zigbee issues through lots of repeaters and time-consuming placement experiments. But I’ve now added my first Matter-over-Wifi switch for an exterior switch because of its position outside the building envelop. It was a couple of $ more expensive than the cheapest Tuya Zigbee switch, but less than buying the cheapest Tuya Zigbee switch PLUS a router/repeater.
Yes. Wifi will not also work reliably in house made out of reinforcement concrete especially combined with iron rails. You will also need wifi mesh system to boost signal around. So cheaper is to buy zigbee device that acts as repeater then to buy a router used to boost wifi signal.
Just to state the obvious, Zigbee uses the same spectrum as WiFi, so for a comparably-powered device, penetration should be about the same.
I don’t recall any blanket statements implying all homes use western-style designs or materials. Some may have posted their own experiences, which of course depend on what their own homes are made of, but that’s a far different thing from suggesting that everyone lives in the same type of home.
“Zigbee uses the same spectrum as WiFi, so for a comparably-powered device, penetration should be about the same”
Actually, this is exactly the thinking I’m challenging.
What many don’t realize is that many non-router zigbee devices — although they use the same frequency band — broadcast at about 10-20% the transmission power of a typical wifi device. I have an older Deco wifi mesh and it tends to get through 2-3 barriers (walls/floors) adequately. But a zigbee router on one side of a wall and a PIR or window sensor on the other… the LQI is typically 0-35 at best.
Yes, but (in stick framed/hollow wall architecture) we’re usually talking one mains-powered router per floor or one router per 5-10 devices. In a concrete house, it’s almost a one-to-one ratio, certainly one router per room or hallway, and still any device without clear line of site will have sub-40 LQI.
This is how Zigbee is supposed to work - if the signal were not weak you couldn’t have small, batery-powered end devices.
No experience of concrete houses, I’m afraid. I live in a small, 19th century house with thick brick walls. I have three or four mains Zigbee devices in every room - seven in one room. Routers outnumber end devices, but they are mostly devices I would have anyway, like lights. I have one or two “repeaters” (that is, devices that are routers and nothing else) in every room.
As I say, this is how Zigbee is supposed to work, by flooding the area with signals.
This has not been my experience. Running 2 separate zigbee networks (ZHA & Z2M) in a house with 20cm thick limestone solid bricks & concrete hollow blocks. Floors are solid poured concrete.
Both coordinators are in a closed room on their own with no line of sight to any router. My mesh stretches over 2 floors with only a handful of routers & my lowest LQI is 69 for a single device which is sitting on a steel countertop, effectively blocking most signals. All other end devices are happily above 80 LQI, even the farthest one on my main door.
Like @ddaniel said, it’s the steel reinforcement inside concrete which blocks the signal, not the concrete itself. Essentially it’s a faraday cage, and the tiny antenna on a battery device is gonna struggle a bit to get through compared to the much larger antenna on a mains powered wifi repeater.