Why is this posted to the android community and not the Home Assistant (or other home automation) community? Thread/Matter have nothing to do with Android or smartphones
Wifi congestion for one. The other issue is a lot of people don’t want these devices on the Internet. Don’t want them phoning home with your personal data. Don’t want them to stop working just because your ISP sucks. Z-wave, Zigbee, and Threads/Matter keeps it local, is faster, and is more reliable.
Zigbee mostly uses 2.4Ghz, so it’s not helping remove congestion from that band anyways but I guess the other protocols do. Can’t the devices phone home as soon as they’re connected to a hub that’s internet connected? Even if the hub has to cooperate with the device, they’re made by the same manufacturers so I wouldn’t trust tleither of them.
With wifi I can spin up a separate iot vlan that cannot access the internet. That vlan doesn’t require my ISP, it’s entirely local. I get to control exactly who connects and even who they connect with. I don’t see that same control with the alternatives.
I guess I do see an argument for very low power devices using a lower power protocol, but I guess I just don’t have any of those devices so it hasn’t been an issue for me. And like you said traffic congestion is a valid problem, I’ve just never experienced it.
Feels like I’ve been waiting forever for just a thread+matter light switch. It doesn’t even need to be a border router or anything, just something to upgrade to that doesn’t rely on wifi or the Internet to work.
After looking into z-wave and zigbee and having installed a lot of wifi devices, I also decided to wait for Matter. I’ve been pretty disappointed in the reviews I’ve seen, and the range of devices is really limited. I’m starting to wonder if I should just give up and go with Z-wave.
Just go with Zigbee and Zwave for now. Zigbee devices are dirt cheap and while there are plenty of compatibility issues, it mostly all works well. I’d recommend googling a product before you buy it to see if others have any issues with it and have discovered solutions.
Z-wave is more solid in my experience but comes with a greater product cost.
I guess I’m trying my best to future-proof when I start buying new devices. I have a ton of those Kasa smart switches, but they are wifi and require the Internet to be controlled via home automation.
It feels like we’re in a weird holding pattern waiting for this unifying standard that has been extremely slow to roll out.
Just like with PCs, there is always something better on the horizon so there’s no point in waiting forever. In 4 or 5 (or 10) years when/if this becomes more ubiquitous, a lot of these devices will be due for an upgrade or replacement anyway.
I have a few Zooz Z-wave wall switches that are feature rich and have given zero issues since day one. Zigbee is mostly Aqara and Ikea and the Ikea stuff has been pretty temperamental but works 99.9% of the time now that they’re all set up. I own a couple Kasa RGBW lightbulbs and they constantly drop off the network to the point that I can only use them with the traditional wall switch, so I definitely understand your pain here.
I think it highlights how much data these iot companies are attempting to collect, and is tied to their planned monetization. They don’t want to make Matter devices.
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