x5 for me too. My zigbee mesh is far stronger and faster with generally much bettery battery life. My Iris v2 motion sensors (and sylvania) are some of the rockstars of my setup. I did end up adding some xbees(search on this forum) which then let me actually see my zigbee network and what was going on. IF I could easily switch out my zwave for zigbee I would. But most dimmer switches are zwave and lots of other zwave devices. So for now I'll have both. I've been moving away from those dimmer switches and using the Lutron Caseta/RA2 stuff. I'd be VERY happy if I just ended up with Zigbee/Lutron and no zwave some day.
All that being said...that's for MY HOUSE. No idea why my zwave just sucks so bad. Others on here clearly have the exact opposite experiences. Zigbee doesn't work for them but zwave does. RF frequencies in a house with other electronics and construction is simply something you're going to have to find out in YOUR house.
Range differences in Z-wave and Zigbee are based more on environment and design limitations than frequency.
The frequency (in this case) has almost nothing to do with the range limitations of either protocol.
I could write a whole bunch of reasons why, but unless you really want to be bored, just trust me on this.
For me, I find that I like Zigbee battery devices more than Z-wave battery devices, and find that the Z-wave wired devices work just great for me, but I have models of both wired and battery in both protocols, and with considered mesh design (implementation really) they both work well.
I for one personally tested the range differences between the frequencies when I was searching for a contact sensor for my mailbox which is about 150ft away from my house and a neighbors house is partially blocking line of sight.
I already had both zigbee and zwave repeaters in a top socket and bottom socket of the furthest outlet towards the outside of my house.
The Zigbee contact sensor stop receiving communication about half the distance to the mailbox (about 25ft shorter than my wifi range).
I currently have a Aeotec Zwave contact sensor on the mailbox that has never missed communication once.
Just wanted to update. I'm very happy. It took me awhile to set up, because I'm picky. I have the lights coming on in a few steps before sunset, and they're tied together so one control changes them all. I have manual control of dim state from the button (double push cycles through a few preset dim levels).
But the notable part is that at least so far... knock on wood... everything works immediately, every time. I can't stress enough how much consistency means in this application. It's been just a few weeks but already I have a lot of confidence in this, maybe enough to expand to other devices and automations
I have ST now and I rarely have an outage of any kind. I may have some analogy creep up every 6 months or so. My concern is do I need local control of my devices and not relying on the cloud. Don't get me wrong I will still have plenty of devices using the cloud, but less the better IMHO.
Iâve been into home automation for a very long time. The ST hub was my least favorite system to use. I got fed up with slow and intermittent responses. I love the ST buttons and have them everywhere in my house. For $12.99 you canât go wrong, yesterday Alexa told me it was about time to order another one and ask if I wanted to order one (first time that ever happened).
Anyway, the buttons work much better and faster with HE than they ever did with ST. It was a button press that did nothing that caused me to finally give up on ST. Your ST outlet is a good repeater so I donât see why everything wouldnât work on HE. When I push one of the buttons with HE, something happens every time. That wasnât always the case in ST.
To repeat april.brandt , a strong ZigBee mesh will keep everything online and ready to function. If everything is in the same room, the 2.4 Wi-Fi could be impacting the ZigBee mesh.
Iâm not trying to bash ST specifically, but the cloud-based solution is not for me.
I agree less cloud the better or at least under your control. What if Samsung pulls a "Wink"? How can you be sure your services/functionality will be intact in 5 years? 10 years?
With HE I know my all stuff (switches/sensors/rules/pws etc) will continue to function for as long as the hardware (and backup hardware) lasts - Hubitat Inc not required.
I am a former ST owner from the kickstarter days through V2. I cant say I miss much maybe the (old) phone app was/is nicer to use but nowadays I'm more into automation than remote control though both remain options..
I JUST got my hubitat. I have been a lover of smartthings since before they were bought. I just recently (3 months?) Have been living with minute plus delays to occupancy. I finally got fed up and ordered V3 hub to see if that might cure me. I have a LOT of devices. 70+? I honestly have no idea how my family didn't complain (maybe they care less than I expected?). Anyway I promptly returned that hub when it wouldn't upgrade out of the box?!?!
I have had my hubitat for maybe 6 hours and I'm already in love. Ived got about 20 devices already ported. And 6 occupancy app instances. They are FAST!!!!
Welcome to the community, I think youâll be very happy with your HE experience vs. SmartThings. I certainly have been .
But I just wanted to caution you that migrating from one hub to another, if thatâs what youâre referring to, is not a simple feature to offer, and neither SmartThings nor Hubitat can currently do this.
Hubitat is way ahead in that you can create a backup of your hub, which is great. But it doesnât allow you to restore all your devices to a new hub. Thatâs apparently something theyâve been working on, but ST was also supposed to be working on that in 2015 when the v2 hub came out.
thanks @marktheknife! Yea, I'm not finding it all that hard to remove both zwave and zigbee devices from my smart things v2 hub, and then discover them quickly with hubitat. I do like that I can back up the configuration, even if it is just for this specific hub as well.
What I'm very happy with is things like being able to alert myself with doors left open for N minutes. Old Smart things used to have a decent IDE (groovy lang) and many possibilities, but with the latest app you lose your custom monitoring rule ability which was another straw on the camel's back. I am VERY happy right now.
I'm glad you love the ST Buttons, but I just couldn't make them work. I would set them up and they worked fine and before you know it they are not not working any more. Pull the battery and try again for a while. I should have my new hub on Friday and I am going to try the buttons again. I am going to install a zigbee repeater in every room, I have a few now but I think it would help. Maybe the buttons will work OK.
When I first tried them, I hated them. That was before I knew about the need for powered repeaters. I started using them with ST. They were offline more than they were online and they usually took more that one push to get anything to happen. After I got repeaters, they worked much better. There were still delays when ST was having cloud issues (usually only happened when you really needed to turn on a light). With HE and multiple ZigBee repeaters, they are very reliable, fast and always work on the first push. I like them because for $12.99, theyâre inexpensive temperature sensors and I can put them everywhere. I have them on each bedside table for working the bedroom lamps and for setting my âtake the dogs out in the middle of the night sceneâ. Thereâs one still in the plastic Amazon wrapping sitting on my desk right now. I plan to hide that one out of site and use it with the button controller app to arm/disarm HSM. The Repeater will make them better and the batteries will last a long time.
I just wanted to let you know, I have improved my zigbee mesh substantially and the Buttons have been rock solid ever since. Mesh strength is paramount in keeping device connectivity. I am just beginning to see that as I add more devices.
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