Is the Z-Wave protocol dying?
Posted: Saturday 07 September 2019 9:49
Hello everyone,,
Z-Wave is ridiculously complex to support, so it's not surprising that there aren't lots of libraries to do it. Unlike most professional systems, where there's some sort of 'gateway' box that the automation system talks to, which provides it a simplified means to safely access the underlying lighting system network (wired or wireless or whatever), ZenSys has never actually supported integration of Z-Wave. They've never created any such device.
In order to support Z-Wave you have to effectively become a node on the Z-Wave network (indirectly via something like a Z-Stick) and deal with all of the complexity of the entire Z-Wave system, which is considerable. More than considerable actually.mobdro lucky patcher kodi
That makes it a fairly epic undertaking, and the resulting code is usually inevitably sort of spaghetti-fied because of the fairly nasty realities of the underlying Z-Wave protocol, which has grown excrementally over the many years, so it tends to be very easily broken. That code probably isn't so bad if you are doing a device, e.g. a motion sensor or something. That only has to understand its own functionality. But an automation system has to understand a huge swath of functionality for all devices, and few automation systems handle all the possibilities because it's just too much. I'd guess no system handles them all.
Per one of the other comments, I don't see Z-Wave ever becoming a commercial protocol. It's not nearly robust enough. Zigbee owns that space completely pretty much, and outsells Z-Wave by a huge margin, just not in the home automation space so much.
I agree with others, Wifi is not the way to go. It's done all the time because it's just there. If someone wants to sell a widget, and the IoTs world is really all about selling individual things, not systems, then you have to use something that already exists in the home. The only given is Wifi, so they use that. But it's not what you want for large numbers of small (often untrustworthy) devices all over the home.
Ultimately something like Zigbee is the more appropriate solution. But, in order for that to happen, there has to be a market for Zigbee devices that are designed for general interoperability. But for a market to exist, the devices have to be there. So there's a big chicken an egg issue, made worse by the fact that most such devices would have to sell into the DIY market where people are notoriously price sensitive. They already buy the cheapest Z-Wave modules generally, so Zigbee becomes a hard sell.
And of course, if they sold them, how would you control them? Few automation systems support Zigbee HA directly. And they aren't going to do all that work to add support unless there are enough devices out there to justify it. So another chicken and egg issue. Zigbee is a more sanely defined standard than Z-Wave, but still a lot of work to support because again you have to effectively become a node on the Zigbee network and understand all its issues. And, unlike with Z-Wave, AFAIK there's no 'Z-Stick' for Zigbee, just naked radio boards that are intended to go into standalone devices, so the customer can't buy some pre-fab, nicely packaged widget for this purpose.
So, so far, folks selling Zigbee stuff are using it to sell systems and implementing it in a proprietary manner, like Hue or Control4. Selling a system gets them around the above issues. They don't have to depend on an existing automation system being in place that support Zigbee HA. They can just be a little world unto themselves.
Z-Wave is ridiculously complex to support, so it's not surprising that there aren't lots of libraries to do it. Unlike most professional systems, where there's some sort of 'gateway' box that the automation system talks to, which provides it a simplified means to safely access the underlying lighting system network (wired or wireless or whatever), ZenSys has never actually supported integration of Z-Wave. They've never created any such device.
In order to support Z-Wave you have to effectively become a node on the Z-Wave network (indirectly via something like a Z-Stick) and deal with all of the complexity of the entire Z-Wave system, which is considerable. More than considerable actually.mobdro lucky patcher kodi
That makes it a fairly epic undertaking, and the resulting code is usually inevitably sort of spaghetti-fied because of the fairly nasty realities of the underlying Z-Wave protocol, which has grown excrementally over the many years, so it tends to be very easily broken. That code probably isn't so bad if you are doing a device, e.g. a motion sensor or something. That only has to understand its own functionality. But an automation system has to understand a huge swath of functionality for all devices, and few automation systems handle all the possibilities because it's just too much. I'd guess no system handles them all.
Per one of the other comments, I don't see Z-Wave ever becoming a commercial protocol. It's not nearly robust enough. Zigbee owns that space completely pretty much, and outsells Z-Wave by a huge margin, just not in the home automation space so much.
I agree with others, Wifi is not the way to go. It's done all the time because it's just there. If someone wants to sell a widget, and the IoTs world is really all about selling individual things, not systems, then you have to use something that already exists in the home. The only given is Wifi, so they use that. But it's not what you want for large numbers of small (often untrustworthy) devices all over the home.
Ultimately something like Zigbee is the more appropriate solution. But, in order for that to happen, there has to be a market for Zigbee devices that are designed for general interoperability. But for a market to exist, the devices have to be there. So there's a big chicken an egg issue, made worse by the fact that most such devices would have to sell into the DIY market where people are notoriously price sensitive. They already buy the cheapest Z-Wave modules generally, so Zigbee becomes a hard sell.
And of course, if they sold them, how would you control them? Few automation systems support Zigbee HA directly. And they aren't going to do all that work to add support unless there are enough devices out there to justify it. So another chicken and egg issue. Zigbee is a more sanely defined standard than Z-Wave, but still a lot of work to support because again you have to effectively become a node on the Zigbee network and understand all its issues. And, unlike with Z-Wave, AFAIK there's no 'Z-Stick' for Zigbee, just naked radio boards that are intended to go into standalone devices, so the customer can't buy some pre-fab, nicely packaged widget for this purpose.
So, so far, folks selling Zigbee stuff are using it to sell systems and implementing it in a proprietary manner, like Hue or Control4. Selling a system gets them around the above issues. They don't have to depend on an existing automation system being in place that support Zigbee HA. They can just be a little world unto themselves.
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