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I've set up dozens of smart home gadgets in two houses and two apartments over the past five years. I have a list in my head of brands that I respect and that I will never buy from again. In my current home, standing in one spot has six different signals flying around and constant chatter between devices.
what can I say? I'm not good at certain types of preparation and creativity. The type that doesn't matter at all if the power goes out.
When I joined Ars in the summer of 2022, the next generation of smart home standards were on the horizon. Matter is an interoperable device setup and management system, and Thread is a wireless network that provides secure, widespread connectivity optimized for small batteries. Together, they provide a well-connected home that operates entirely within your home network and allows you to easily switch control ecosystems. Although we knew this technology wasn't coming soon, we thought it was a good time to start looking to the future, to discard old standards and integrate with new ones.
Rather, Matter and Thread are a mess. I am writing this letter to tell you that I was wrong, or at least ignorant, to ignore the good things that already exist: Zigbee and Z-Wave. I've spent time with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and various vulnerable combinations of the two. Zigbee and Z-Wave are useful for data-rich devices and those that can stay connected. Zigbee and Z-Wave have been around for a while, but at first glance they've always seemed fidgety, confusing, and vaguely European. But here in 2024, I'm now a fan of both. And I think they still have a place in our homes.
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The Hue light bulb trojaned me.I am grateful
Two brands, Philips Hue and Ikea, have done a smart job of incorporating Zigbee into their technology without making it a big deal. Hue light bulbs were the first step into home automation for me and many others. Back in 2018, I knew from my receipt that Hue bulbs worked on their own ad hoc network, but I didn't know exactly how. All I knew was that over time, he found Hue bulbs to be the most reliable devices no matter where he installed them.
If Huebridge had power and ethernet and the bulbs were located within close house distance of each other, they worked. It didn't lose signal in the middle of an update like the Nest camera I had above my former garage, which required a 6-foot ladder and multiple calls to support to reset. Like some Tuya devices I've gotten, I didn't have to register as his IoT developer in Canada to get local control (long story). I've never had a failure trying to turn on a Hue light bulb. Then I started wondering if it was the router's fault, the Amazon Web service outage, or just a dirty little antenna inside.
Admittedly, Hue's products aren't cheap. The Hue app occasionally sends me notifications about new features and holiday sales, but I could turn them off. There were no important notifications as nothing went wrong. I didn't know it at the time, but I always had the option to reset the valves and run straight Zigbee, even if I lost some of the niceties like phasing and multi-valve methods.
When I got the chance to review Homey Pro, I got to research and work more directly with Zigbee and its even more obscure (at least in the US) cousin Z-Wave. The Homey team sent me several devices to test the hub, including a motion sensor and a magnetic door or window sensor. I had been putting off setting it up a bit because I was feeling vaguely stressed out about everything I'd read about hubs, routing, and “self-healing” networks.
