Hello, I’m going to build a smart home from scratch.
Homey Pro supports a couple of communication standards e.g
Wi-Fi
Bluetooth
Matter
Z-Wave
Zigbee
Thread
Some standards have some requirements e.g. Zigbee devices could act as routers and thus should be connected to power all the time. I don’t know the requirements for other communication standards and the consequences of picking one (I don’t know what I don’t know).
Are there any recommendations for which communication standard to pick in mid-2024 (
best now and most prosperous in the future)?
I will mostly use smart lights, smart switches, motion detectors, smart thermostats, air conditioning (sensibo)
As a rule of thumb in my opinion the mesh networks (Thread, Zigbee, Z-Wave) are the more reliable and responsive technology and the way to go. But ideally you choose one and try to stick with it so you can create as big of a mesh network as possible so if a device becomes unresponsive the network can heal itself.
Personally if I would start from scratch today I would probably try to use as many Thread (over Matter) devices as possible to have a reliable mesh and be safe for the future. But the downside is that they are currently fairly expensive and you don’t have the biggest selection.
So if not Thread (or for devices where there currently is no Thread alternative) I would go for Zigbee. My reason is mainly that many mayor brands like Ikea, Philips, Sonoff, etc use it and you can find a wide variety of prices and usecases.
Z-Wave I personally never used, but from what I have read there are some issues with Z-Wave + Homey, but I can’t really comment on that.
If it can’t be avoided a few Wifi devices are fine as long as they are locally controlled, but ideally they also use Matter. For some stuff you can’t avoid needing the cloud though.
Bluetooth I would personally never even think about using just because of the connection reliability and range.
Sort of the whole point of going with Homey at the centre of your system is that you don’t need to pick a technology. You can instead pick the best device for each use case and largely not have to worry about mixing technologies. Personally I use devices on every single one of these technologies for lots of different applications and they all work together just fine courtesy of Homey.
The only one thing to bear in mind would be if using more than a handful of z wave or Zigbee battery powered devices then you may want to add some mains powered devices to strengthen the mesh, and those need to be the same technology as the battery devices.
Also a point on WiFi - this is not synonymous with cloud. There are good WiFi devices that can be controlled entirely locally by Homey without any cloud involvement e.g. the Shelly range
The problem with mixing different standards is that range becomes much more of a problem, you need to think if you have network connectivity on different parts of your property or need to add some extenders. If you stick to the same mesh standard you get a much more stable and fault resistent network and most likely don’t need any extenders or only very few as every constantly powered device already acts as an extender.
Why I mostly avoid Wifi is power consumption and responsiveness. Many wifi bulbs try to conserve power by running the wifi in low power mode and only waking up every few seconds. And if they don’t you have often 2-3W more power usage then a Zigbee device.
I’m in similar situation, I hunt out my previous house in Z-Wave (starting circa 2015) and then had a transition to more Zigbee as it became more available. (Especially powered items).
But have just moved out and started thinking about what’s next.
Mine plan is to push thread as much as possible and I have started to trial and test hardware as it becomes available.
If your planning on starting to build my advice would be try for thread where you can, matter if you can’t. You will get better long term support with thread over other protocols.
For all intents and purposes- matter via thread is open / future proof Zigbee and non thread matter devices are largely just wifi which have interoperability / future supported.
So with that in mind if you can’t wait for thread devices to be released if your looking at a “big bang” investment all at once now today … I would personally go with Zigbee and matter today. Zigbee has a chance to be upgraded ota, cheaper, better support, more devices!
Z-Wave is dying, very few new devices released recently, and Bluetooth is pretty bad on homey and not supported well by devices. Stick to a mesh technology and Save your wifi for things which have to us it - tba, cameras, monitors, phones, laptops, smart speakers, music, etc. (non thread matter devices)
Try and stick to one mesh to start with building that out nice and stable before building your second / thirds your going to have a much better experience with 4 powered devices of the same type then one thread, one Zigbee, one Z-Wave and one Bluetooth.
Btw a good starting point is the homey buying guide Smart Home Best Buy Guides | Homey. They usually have at least on Matter device for each category if available, but you probably should also always do a bit of research for alternatives yourself as well.
