Every night when I tell Siri to turn off all the lights, there's usually at least one random bulb that doesn't respond (all my bulbs are from Philips with a Hue Bridge). All bulbs respond during the day, but at night something is different. I'm guessing EM interference. Changing the zigbee channel does change the number of bulbs that fail each day, but no channel works 100% of the time. On some channels 50% of the bulbs don't reply in the evening. Basically, I'm fed up. It sounds like this new protocol may solve my problems.
However when it works, such as mornings and afternoons, it's wonderful. As I walk around my house, motion sensors turn the lights on (and off). I haven't touched a light switch in years in my house (except in the evening when the signals sometimes fail.) And since I generally live and work on a "night shift," that means I do in fact need lights in my home when I'm at home.
For those people who actually enjoy pressing buttons all day long to turn their lights on and off, good for you.
I’ve had zero problems with ZWave Plus, but this is one data point. I have around 40 nodes.
For the Phillips issue please consider buying a Zigbee outlet which can act as a repeater repeater. Should be relatively cheap fix. I have Wifi, Zigbee and Zwave devices. That said, I prefer ZWave as well. Not very interested in Thead because its IP based. I prefer something that can't "call home" and create a backdoor into my LAN from the outside.
There is something to be said about having different protocols and physical layers to separate different areas of concern. It buys you at least an obfuscation layer if not a true air gap, unless you have no gateways to bridge protocols and connectivity. One of the classic disadvantages of homogeneity is common mode failure modes and ripple failures. This is one of the reasons I like having different service providers and forced heterogeneity for things like home security, data backup, and financial management (and genetics too!).
While Thread doesn't specifically require a border router(BR), you can be certain that almost all systems will have one. -Thread devices do maintain their own IPv6 IP, and can communicate using it directly to the internet. However, due to the small packet size and the overhead from 802.15.4 and 6LoWPAN, the UDP packet size becomes tiny anytime a short address isn't used. 802.15.4 provides a 80-90 byte packet. Using full IPv6/UDP headers then uses 48 Bytes. Also, remember that Thread/6LoWPAN/802.15.4 provides only 250kbps of total throughput, so losing over half the potential datagram to addressing can quickly be a problem. Short addresses to known neighbors (via the BR) cut that IPv6 overhead from 40 bytes down to 2 bytes. -Further, the BR also functions as the Leader, and will manage which devices function as REEDs or Routers. -BR's will normally function as the network and join server. These roles are especially important for device provisioning. -As for partitioning, and auto-healing, it relies on multiple border routers and a mesh topology. With a single BR, Thread defines a star toplogy, and those benefits are lost. If anyone is interested in learning more about Thread from a professional level, check out the Certified Wireless IoT Connectivity Professional training. Lots of great information there about 802.15.4, 6LoWPAN, and Thread.
I'm honestly surprised it's taken so long to gain traction.
I'm not, as this is the very first I've heard of it, unless it was mentioned at the HPmini's event and I missed it. Not being deeply involved in Home automation (limited to light use of Siri, Alexa, and Philips) may be why Thread is news to me.
Home automation should be much more straightforward than it has been and Thread will be a major part of making it so.
I really hope so. My X-10 system was very straight forward to understand, integrate, and operate. It was also very limited, and had some flaws. But it was better than nothing and arguably helped pave the way for current products.
Still unconvinced there is any value whatsoever in home automation.
And it many never any value whatsoever, to you. Your takeaway should be that you are not that important beyond being the center of your own world and what you value and opine is almost universally of no concern to anyone outside your world. It's not up to me or anyone else to convince you of HA's value.
But I will offer that as a result of a military injury reducing some mobility and making the active portion of my day much, much shorter than I'd like, HA has been a near Godsend for me. Prior to my injuries, I would have been very interested in HA purely for the convenience and cool factor, as seen in the old Sci-Fi B movies and later.
Now convenience is something of a necessity and has made my life far easier, has taken the day-to-day from questionably tolerable to actually enjoyable, and has extended the active portion of my day after PT. I'm ambulatory and do not require a wheelchair, though there were times it seemed I would. I'm very lucky but HA has been a big part of that.
There are a lot of people derive far more benefit than I from the "convenience" of HA You obviously take for granted something as simple as flipping a switch to turn off a light bulb, or getting up in the dark to switch on a light. Do you remember the times when turning the TV on or off or changing the channel meant getting up and walking over to it to turn a knob? Did you not ever use a remote? That's HA even if you don't know it, on small scale. Modern TVs practically can't function without one, but that's not the same thing. If you have no use for HA, fine, it's not for you. Spare us your arrogance and lack of imagination.
Comments
-Thread devices do maintain their own IPv6 IP, and can communicate using it directly to the internet. However, due to the small packet size and the overhead from 802.15.4 and 6LoWPAN, the UDP packet size becomes tiny anytime a short address isn't used. 802.15.4 provides a 80-90 byte packet. Using full IPv6/UDP headers then uses 48 Bytes. Also, remember that Thread/6LoWPAN/802.15.4 provides only 250kbps of total throughput, so losing over half the potential datagram to addressing can quickly be a problem. Short addresses to known neighbors (via the BR) cut that IPv6 overhead from 40 bytes down to 2 bytes.
-Further, the BR also functions as the Leader, and will manage which devices function as REEDs or Routers.
-BR's will normally function as the network and join server. These roles are especially important for device provisioning.
-As for partitioning, and auto-healing, it relies on multiple border routers and a mesh topology. With a single BR, Thread defines a star toplogy, and those benefits are lost.
If anyone is interested in learning more about Thread from a professional level, check out the Certified Wireless IoT Connectivity Professional training. Lots of great information there about 802.15.4, 6LoWPAN, and Thread.
I really hope so. My X-10 system was very straight forward to understand, integrate, and operate. It was also very limited, and had some flaws. But it was better than nothing and arguably helped pave the way for current products.
And it many never any value whatsoever, to you. Your takeaway should be that you are not that important beyond being the center of your own world and what you value and opine is almost universally of no concern to anyone outside your world. It's not up to me or anyone else to convince you of HA's value.
But I will offer that as a result of a military injury reducing some mobility and making the active portion of my day much, much shorter than I'd like, HA has been a near Godsend for me. Prior to my injuries, I would have been very interested in HA purely for the convenience and cool factor, as seen in the old Sci-Fi B movies and later.
Now convenience is something of a necessity and has made my life far easier, has taken the day-to-day from questionably tolerable to actually enjoyable, and has extended the active portion of my day after PT. I'm ambulatory and do not require a wheelchair, though there were times it seemed I would. I'm very lucky but HA has been a big part of that.
There are a lot of people derive far more benefit than I from the "convenience" of HA You obviously take for granted something as simple as flipping a switch to turn off a light bulb, or getting up in the dark to switch on a light. Do you remember the times when turning the TV on or off or changing the channel meant getting up and walking over to it to turn a knob? Did you not ever use a remote? That's HA even if you don't know it, on small scale. Modern TVs practically can't function without one, but that's not the same thing. If you have no use for HA, fine, it's not for you. Spare us your arrogance and lack of imagination.