Huge old house: Z-Wave or Zigbee?

Since you are renting out the building as separate apartments, you need to be certain that residents of one apartment won't be able to tamper with lighting, etc. in neighboring apartments. Privacy issue might also be a concern if there are motion sensors in each apartment and you can monitor who is home and who is not.

Just a couple of more things to consider as you are designing the system.

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The more you think about it...the more it seems daunting to make this anything more than a "common areas control & monitoring" project, ie. hallways, entrances, etc.

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These are zigbee zll 1.2 and are known to be bad repeaters/messengers.

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You're going to have to manage complexity and multiple users. Couple things I would do to manage those:

  1. Decide on zigbee or z-wave; don't use both. I'd suggest zigbee, as it can aggregate messages and has higher data rates.
  2. Don't use smart bulbs. People are used to switches doing things; not bulbs having minds of their own.
  3. Develop a good mesh by having lots of line-powered devices. I'd suggest, if you can afford it, to have at least one zigbee switch or outlet in each room. That should guarantee a mesh.
  4. Decide on one brand/type switch and one brand/type outlet to use throughout. You're going to have a giant headache if you have to juggle multiple brands and their idiosyncrasies.
  5. Switches can act as ok occupancy sensors--assuming people turn off the lights when they leave. Real occupancy sensors are tricky: if you use the typical infrared sensor, someone sitting at a desk quietly may not be seen after a while. And radar sensors are coming into use but not real common for habitat yet, so there's a lot of uncertainty there as to how to do radar best. On the other hand, infrared sensors should be good for hallways and other places where people pass through, rather than stay, as those sensors are good are seeing changes.
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Very true. I have a separate hub just to run my Zigbee lights on their own mesh.

Or run both. :wink: My lights change color temp throughout the day. I wouldn’t be able to do that with a switch. I also have smart switches throughout so the automations can accept manual input. It is twice as expensive so it must be good. Right‽ :yum:

Lots of great feedback here, so will not repeat what others have said already, but will add couple of points from my own experiences.

  1. Zigbee is great but requires great (and more than a few) repeaters. It took me awhile to finally stabilize my zigbee mesh of 52 devices, which mostly consist of water sensors and smart lights (plug-ins, not bulbs) and outlets acting as repeaters. As some one has already mentioned those Osram bulbs are not good repeaters. I also use Osram, but they're all either plug-in RGBW strips, or outlets. I tried using some Osram bulbs in the past and got rid of them all, for the reasons aleady mentioned here.
    Keep in mind, my house is about 9k sf, over 3 floors, which is tiny compared to yours and it took 16 zigbee repeaters to finally get my zigbee mesh to a solid, reliable state.
  2. My zwave mesh is smaller, with 39 devices, but because it mostly consists of light switches, which are all acting as repeaters (18 of them) my mesh is pretty solid, the rest are mostly security sensors.
  3. Just for the house of my size and the amount of devices i have, i use 3 hubs in the HE mesh.
  4. Majority of my switches and switch remotes are Lutron, that connecting via Lutron integration and i will say, hands down Lutron ClearConnect protocol is the best, more reliable and have the greatest range. But Lutron Caseta devices are also the costliest, so keep that in mind.
  5. I also have some Philips Hue lighting connected via Hue integration, but honestly i think its overpriced and not that good.
    Good luck with your build out, will be following along for sure!