I see the question of wifi smart home devices often. This is a good piece on that topic.
Based on the number and types of 'gloss over' I'm going to assume the article has a target audience of not me. 
It's a geek website and there's no question as to my membership in that tower. However, there's so much more that an article like that could truly present. Yes, if you're deploying a few, WiFi is just fine, BUT Be Aware, it's Addicting - you're likely NOT to remain at a few, and thus there's a cost in rip-and-replace.
Entirely missed the Renter's viewpoint too. Plugin has to be a bigger draw for people that have moving hanging over their heads.
2 Likes
I think we have all had devices in our systems that just happened and not necessarily because they were part of our long term plan. One issue with some WiFi "specialty" devices is that they often are only controllable through an app and a cloud based service.
I rather agree with the entire first paragraph...
A lot of smarthome devices connect via Wi-Fi, which is fine if you only have a handful of them installed. However, if you plan on decking out every room in your home with smarthome gear, be wary of Wi-Fi.
I think a simple browse through this forum will find a couple dozen or more LAN (not exclusively wifi) projects such as: Homekit, Hubduino, Other Hub, TP-Link, Harmony, several Audio systems. There's even Lifx using UDP. And I'm ignoring all the cloud projects, and all of Hubitat's built-in (Lutron Chromecast, etc.)
I think WiFi (LAN) is a pretty solid third on the list of Hub protocols that usually just contain ZWave and Zigbee.
1 Like
