I am a noob to home automation but I have a few Kasa light switches that I like. The Kasa switches connect via wifi and Google is able to interact with them. I am also interested in some smartblinds (maybe Smartwings) and I notice they REQUIRE a hub. I understand they are Zigbee over wifi. Why do some devices require a hub and others don’t?
In addition to the other comments here, if you are planning on adding lots of smart devices to your home consider zigbee.
Wifi = great! But most cheap home routers start crapping out when lots of devices connect. Generally if you are going to use lots of wifi devices get a decent mesh wireless system like Unifi (**other good wifi mesh systems are on the market, this is just my experience) and you’ll be good. So Wifi ok to start out, but expect problems as you grow if you are using your ISP provided router.
Wifi also means the manufacturer of your device can get it to “phone home” which has various security and privacy implications.
Wifi also means you are typically dependant on someone elses cloud and as we have seen with Chamberlain MyQ, they can degrade your device to force you to subscribe to services. Manufacturers can also go out of business and again you are sort of screwed.
Because Zigbee (Matter, but I’d personally leave that one alone for a while), Z-Wave use a hub, even if the manufacturer goes out of business there are still methods to control these devices.
You have to be careful not to confuse Matter and Thread.
Matter is a protocol which works over multiple mediums including WiFi and Thread, but theoretically over any protocol (Matter over two cans and string is a possibility I guess 🤣).
Thread is meant to be the spiritual successor to Zigbee. Time will tell as to whether it comes good on its promise.
https://xkcd.com/927/
Just stay away from any “new shiny tech”, stick with the mature, old, boring stuff.
Actually Matter works really well. Specifically if you have a HomeKit-centric set up.
I’ve not had a chance to play with Thread yet.
I’m old school.
Keep your high-faluting-sparkly-new-age-hippy-protocols away from my old-school-cool smarthome. :-)
🤣🤣🤣
Completely understand. I’m the “I’m installing the beta update on day 1” then I will moan about how my system has been gimped.
In all honesty, though. The Matter stuff is working beautifully well with HomeKit. It’s opened up a universe of devices that needed a hack like HomeBridge before.
It’s an utter train wreck with Alexa though so have to use traditional skills with that.
I guess someone has to go get the experience so they can improve stuff before people like you start using it. 🤣🤣🤣🤣
I wouldn’t use a system built around someone elses idea of what I can and can’t do, not for Home Automation at least. For many, the amazon, google, apple ecosystems are perfectly fine and I certainly dabbled in them during my journey, but I soon outgrew their offerings and grew frustrated by not being able to do things.
I’ve been automating and adding telemetry to things in my house for over 12 years now, I’m upwards of 900+ entities in my home controlled by Home Assistant and I can’t imgaine having to manage all that through a dinky app, utterly dependant on clouds, the honourable intentions of shareholders, a following wind and working internet. (Chamberlain MyQ comes to mind for some of this, but companies have gone bust, withdrawn features and made them payable and worse.)
I use Home Assistant so I don’t have issues getting devices to talk to each other :-) The home assistant community are rapidly approaching full voice integration (Hot words, spacial microphone arrays etc.) and the range of supporting kit and services is dazzling.