Low power had been has been the backbone of the Zigbee and Z-Wave protocol. Wifi is great for starting out or a handful of devices. But anyone who has grown beyond that will always ditch WiFi and start down a mesh network path. For several reasons, mostly because of the cloud, the fact you ultimately become an IP network manager, and if you want a battery operated device, forgetaboutit!
Bluetooth was supposed to unseat Z-wave and Zigbee and hasn't come close. So I read articles like this and wonder. But what if it really came into production? What are the implications?
It is an amazing accomplishment but I don't know what it solves other than battery life (and your going to have to check your rice before you eat). It is WiFi and WiFi is only a communications protocol and nothing to do with control. It is still using crowded spectrum. It will be interesting to follow though.
I wouldn't put my automation on wifi for that reason alone. Most my z-wave and zigbee devices have no needed for direct internet access and no reason to be chattering on my 802.11 "wifi" network.
Cool advancement none the less, and Joe consumer will eat it up. Then complain about slow/spotty internet access.
I was really hoping that Bluetooth mesh would become a viable addition to ZigBee and Zwave. There is still the crowded spectrum issue, but BT brings some interesting technology like beacons.
I believe spectrum refers to the radio frequency used by those two different protocols. As @JasonJoel said, both zigbee and WiFi use the same part of the radio spectrum, 2.4 GHz.
Edit: so WiFi device interference with zigbee devices could be at the radio level, but only other WiFi devices could also potentially be interfered with at the IP network level. Personally I haven’t found WiFi to cause an issue with my zigbee mesh, and I live in a crowded apartment building, so every channel is pretty occupied...
I’m thinking not.. This would tie up the bandwidth available to you over wifi for the duration of the transmit at this low rate.. This is the exact reason why you try to avoid broadcast packets over wifi, because broadcast packets are at the lowest transmit rate..
It will take a lot of convincing for me to move devices over to wifi from the purpose built zigbee and zwave protocols..
That would work for most.. But I already have 5 access points in and outside of my home .. There just isn’t enough channels for me.. I have used each 2.4ghz non-overlapping channel almost twice (spaced apart obviously)..
Bluetooth is likely to eventually win and the one to watch. I never bet against technology, but it’s cheap, fast, familiar, secure, very low power, very inexpensive to manufacture now, and already has been made mesh capable. As they continue to develop it and the self healing capabilities eventually rival Zigbee, it will some day take over in all likelihood. I do hope they don’t forget about group messaging, because for lighting, that is a significant advantage that Zigbee has.
An early example of Bluetooth mesh networking on a massive consumer scale is the Xiaomi Mijia Multimode Gateway, soon to be joined by the Xiaomi Aqara M2 gateway. These are both Bluetooth mesh, Zigbee 3.0, IP via WiFi and HomeKit compatible gateways.
