Technology or protocol used in the smart wireless device
Home automation defines automatic and electronic control of household features, activities, and appliances. It means you can easily control your home device via the internet to make life more convenient and secure. For home automation, we use different kinds of smart devices. But most of the time we don’t care that our device follows which technology or protocol. ‘‘We should care about technology or protocols of the smart home device. Before this, you have to know the difference between different protocols. Let’s discuss the major wireless technologies used by smart home devices. Such as Zigbee, Z-wave, Thread, and WiFi. We won’t discuss Bluetooth or RF because these have specific use cases and are not applicable to most smart home devices.
Zigbee
This is an open-source short-range wireless technology that operates between 10m-20m distance indoors. Zigbee devices can connect with one another during a mesh network. This way, one device can help transfer data to other devices in the network allowing wireless data transmission in larger spaces.
The advantage of the Zigbee product is lightweight and consumes less power. While, if you are using a permanent source of power, then this isn’t a significant advantage. If you would like to regulate/control your Zigbee device from anywhere in the world, it’ll need to connect with the internet via a hub. This means you have to purchase an extra piece of hardware along with your devices.
Z-Wave
This is just like Zigbee, except it’s a proprietary technology owned by Sigma Designs and now controlled by the Z-Wave Alliance. It operates on a 0.9 GHz band which means it doesn’t interfere with other frequencies. This lower frequency allows an extended range of signals at a rather reduced bandwidth. This also implements a mesh network almost like Zigbee, but the only thing to remember is it allows a maximum of 4 hops before it has to achieve its destination.
A couple of disadvantages are that these devices usually cost more and implementation of this technology requires a separate hub to connect to the internet.
Thread
Thread is an evolution of Zigbee and appears like this may soon be the technology replacing Zigbee. A Thread network will contain multiple nodes which will communicate with one another creating a mesh network. These nodes can either be routers or endpoints depending on whether they have a permanent source of power supply or not.
WiFi
This is a universal technology utilized by most devices reception. Home Wi-Fi operates at two major frequencies, that’s the 2.4 GHz range and the 5 GHz range. The 2.4Ghz allows extended coverage (up to 100 meters) with good bandwidth. The 5 GHz range allows higher bandwidth but reduces the signal coverage significantly. This is the range at which all the wireless routers work there’s no need for a separate hub.
‘‘From EBELONG we recommend you purchase smart home products that use Wi-Fi technology’’. For long-distance and implement a good wireless mesh network with seamless connection Wi-Fi technology is better than comparing with others’’.