Smart Home Protocols: ZigBee Explained!

[@TheBurnsiela]

Another amazingly well articulated video. I really appreciate how you make difficult technical concepts understandable for less technical folks. Keep it up mate!

[@richardburguillos3118]

Nicely done. Learned something new. I knew about the hub but didn’t know about the routers that help extend coverage. That will solve some issues I’m having. Thanks!

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Thanks Richard, glad they are proving useful!

[@JacobDanielson]

Really appreciate this series! I know OF ZigBee/Z-Wave but haven't worked with them much. These are doing a great job of explaining the processes for choosing products for my smart home.

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Thanks, glad the videos so far are helping your choices!

[@RyanDuffy]

I’m loving this whole “back to basics” series

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Thanks Ryan, it's been fun so far!

[@stuartedwards8617]

Could you let us know whether you use Zigbee2MQTT or ZHA with HA? Which one you recommend and why? Cheers

[@rickatgoogle]

Another brilliant video - Again, thank you for taking the confusion out of a platform that can at times seem like a daunting task to understand

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Glad to help out! Cheers

[@BCKammen]

I like Zigbee more than Z-Wave, seems like everything I set up works better, and the cost as well has been better overall.

[@mitchese1]

Same from my side. As my zwave devices are dying or requiring resets I'm just replacing them with zigbee or wifi. No more zwave for me

[@EdwardFirmo]

Another nice thing with Zigbee is the possibility to bind devices so they can talk directly to each other.

[@AndriusLau]

That's true, I connected the Nous switcher with a Nous button directly. A hub was needed just for the initial setup.

[@boyesjeffrey]

Same with Z-Wave.

[@dretwav]

I recently installed a Conbee2 coordinator in my office which is in the front of my house. My garage is 50-75 feet behind the house and I was pleasantly surprised that I zigbee devices in the garage can connect. I do have an outdoor zigbee outlet on the garage to act as a router.

[@christian1603]

Thanks for this video ! I will start with Zigbee, so I wonder if I have to buy the ConBee II or the Sonoff Zigbee 3.0. Can you give me advice ?

[@WallyUK]

Great video, have always wondered about a single point of failure in larger applications. Thanks again!

[@taryckbensiali4166]

Thanks. Very clear in a short time. I was looking for such information as I've got ZigBee communications issues. I my (old) home with huge walls 52cm I've got Wifi communication issues/difficulties, I've undersand that same frequency are used by ZigBee so the same should apply. I've install component and Smart Home was able to see everything, but I move one consumption sensor to an other place and I've lost some devices. @Everythnig Smart Home : How do you build and visualize the ZigBee Mesh Netwrok you show at 4:39 ? Thanks in advance. And Thanks again for this video.

[@CrankyCoder]

Great video!! I literally just started messing with zigbee devices this past fall. I had used zwave in the past. Fully aware of that single point of failure at the coordinator (im working on that in my k8s cluster lol) but I absolutely love zigbee for all the pro's you mentioned. I passed this video along to some buddies of mine that haven't used zigbee because i think this is a very clean straight forward explanation. Great job!!

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Thanks, glad your enjoying the video!

[@lucasschut4174]

Really helpful and clear video. Thank you so much!

[@mortenmoulder]

3:37 correction: On low powered WiFi devices, such as the ESP8266 and ESP32, you can turn off the radio and make the device go into deep sleep, all while having an external interrupt wake it up. While I know how to make custom Zigbee devices, I use WiFi in my mailbox using an ESP8266 in deep sleep, and the power consumption is ridiculously low. Easily comparable to Zigbee (I know, because I tested the power draw very precisely).

[@algre977]

What kind of external interrupt are you referring to ?

[@mortenmoulder]

@@algre977 Wires shorted, button, anything really

[@1988m6kitefan]

This was a great video! I love this series. Please keep to great videos coming.

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Thanks,glad your enjoying it so far!

[@hybrispsycho1]

great video. im a massive fan of zigbee myself despite issues in the beginning with poorly designed devices that drained a 2032 cell battery in weeks then ceased to funtion completely. not great when you bought 9 lol. with the esception of those particular devices ive had very few issues with the sonoff range and i have the lidl zigbee bulbs both rgb and non rgb in almost every room in the house. my biggest issue with zigbee is it seems there is a lack of availibilty in the uk and i have to get most devices from china or end up paying double

[@tseawell90]

Nice video. Question: can routers increase the number of devices you can use?

[@hdisgreat]

Love this! I am looking for a smart home hub and app. Your video suggest Zigbee will do this. What app do you recommend?

[@NoahR1620]

thank you! you made ZigBee easier to understand than my university book did.

[@kenvinton3786]

Great overview of Zb. Appreciated.

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Thanks!

[@Herliboi1]

Very helpfull! Thanks!

[@jamesmoon5632]

Love your videos thanks

[@Charlietuna49]

Great video and much appreciated. When is the Sonoff Zigbee bridge used? Is it a router? Does it take the place of a coordinator? Thanks!

[@DanielSRosehill]

Thanks for the informative video!

[@hichamel926]

Great video. Thanks for sharing

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Thanks for watching!

[@l0gic23]

Forgot the link to the series playlist in the description... Thanks for the info

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Thanks!

[@RonLeedy]

Besides the funny way you pronounce router, I look forward to your videos. 😀. I already have researched a lot of this information but listening to someone else summarize it helps cement my opinions.

[@daleatkin8927]

One thing I’ve been trying to find a good answer to, is just how ‘smart’ is a zigbee router? Does it interpret packets before sending them on? Or does it just blindly direct them to the coordinator? I use a cc2230 stick for my coordinator, but I’d like some prettier looking routers in the network and debating buying some of the ikea smart plugs or similar, but can’t find a definitive answer if they will happily route packets from devices they don’t understand.

[@jeffer8762]

which zigbee hub is the best for home assistant

[@SBinVancouver]

Another downside of the low bandwidth in Zigbee is OTA ("over the air") firmware updates can take a very long time - 30 minutes+. Not a "show stopper", but it's a consideration.

[@Mr_ToR]

Could you please explain what is the difference of mesh WiFi than having multiple wired Access Points with the same security, modulation and SSID names? Also is it possible to do a mesh WiFi with Access Points from diffetent vendors? Is mesh WiFi using a single frequency throughout the whole wireless network?

[@brianevans4636]

Thank you for doing this series it great to have information to go back and reference. Do you mind sharing the name of the program you had on the video that showed different devices and their details. That looks very helpful for those of us who are using a “few” devices in our design. Thank you

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Thanks! It's from ZHA in Home Assistant

[@albertohorihuela]

Have you come across any dual Zigbee in-wall outlets?

[@rokheng]

Hi, is there anyway that I could turn off Ewelink app notifications automatically when I reached home and turn on again when I'm leaving home. It would be very helpful since I used the Sonoff motion sensors as part of my home security in conjunction with Google assistant and android phone. Thanks .

[@obensustam3574]

Great content

[@dvoz9023]

Can a Zigbee hub also understand my wifi doorbell? Currently when someone rings the bell my wifi light in the hallway goes automatically on for 2 minutes. But if I replace the light with a zigbee switch can the doorbell stil do this?

[@hugocious]

thanks

[@Eternal82]

Hi, are you using Philips hue bridge for your lights ? Or a do you use zigbee2mqtt/ZHA for that? I have so many hue lights that i need 2 hubs (philips hue), so I was thinking to build a need zigbee network using zigbee2mqtt. Or is it best to use hue bridge for the lights ?

[@EverythingSmartHome]

I don't really have any Philips hue devices - I use ZHA :)

[@pratahsinnetamby]

Many thanks for the great video. I started off with wifi as it seemed much cheaper to get started and Tuya was the platform of choice. I also found that WiFi was the most common protocol for makers particularly if one used the ESPnn range of microprocessors - it seems a lot easier to build firmware for. The challenge I hit was that by the time all the lights and some sensors were on there, I was rapidly approaching the 255 limit on IP addresses! It was then that I introduced a Zigbee network as well, particularly for the small sensors that were battery powered. I have a couple of questions (I should state that I 'm still an over enthusiastic HA novice!) 1. Can WiFi handle more than 255 devices (Using LocalTuya and OTA one tends to have to reserved IP addresses)? My reading suggests that is depends on your external IP address but it was all too confusing! 2. I have heard that there can be interference between Wifi and Zigbee due to common frequency band. Any thoughts on that? Once again, thanks for the great video/s.

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Thanks! You can indeed have more than 254 network devices by either using a larger subnet or by using VLANs - enterprise networks have many many many more network IPs than 254 for this reason

[@jz-xd1xu]

What kind of pc desk is that?

[@glengrayban3004]

Nice video, but I thought this would be a video about the protocol. Packets, headers, ack-nack, buffer windows, duplex , etc.

[@rcarioca]

my zigbee motion detectors with Tuya seem to have decent signal strength at 5 meters line of sight. But put a gypsum wall in between and the signal strength drops to bad. Manufacturer of zigbee gateway says 0 - 5 meters. This is ridiculous.

[@schoubrian]

I use wifi, zigbee, and z-wave, so a nice mix of it all, and of course all together with Home-assistant

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Nice one!

[@Gooloso98]

Since you use the main ones (apart from ble), would you just pick one , or you will always pick the same all over again?

[@applikai]

How does the devices respond quickly when they are in sleep mode?

[@danielducu]

Has oido de la frase: "Keep it simple" ?¿ Con proxmox u otras infrastructuras de virtualization haces todo lo contrario. Y aquí me refiero a Domotica y Home Assistant en particular. Si quieres evitar problemas, dedicar una maquina entera a tu sistema de Domotica es lo mejor. Para que añadir una capa sobre otra capa sobe otra capa¿?

[@Pabula]

I'm using zigbee, Aqara M2 to be exact, mostly because i really like Aqara devices, but their implementation is far from perfect, i really hope future standards are more rigid and don't allow manufacturers to temper with them, thus sustaining a more compatibility network for smart devices. One question that i do have is, you said zigbee works on 2.4ghz but its far from 2.4ghz wifi, my question goes into if 2.4ghz zigbee devices, routers create noise or affect the performance of the wireless network?

[@EverythingSmartHome]

I hope so too! I think there was a little misunderstanding, I was saying WiFi and ZigBee in general aren't the same, but they do use the same frequency - yes there can be interference from WiFi, make sure to have the set on a different channel as far away as you can from the channel that ZigBee is using. Hope that helps!

[@Trevor_Green]

Great presentation! I really liked the concept of the dual comms of the Insteon (powerline and wireless). Just too bad the company sucks so badly that it never did take hold.

[@Taklsdjw093]

Had a friend that used x10 for every thing back in day. I really wish there was a modern and open standard for home automation via power line.

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Thanks!!

[@MarvelousMixinMiguel]

I see so many different brands of zigbee Gateway / hub. Moes, Tuya, LoraTap etc... 1. It states it does wifi. Does this mean that it communicates to my wifi router and the hub/gateway not connected to ethernet correct? The zigbee hub/gateway does not communicate directly with wifi outlets? 2. Wireless or wire (ethernet) Benefits - I read one article that states if wired Zigbee could handle 300 zigbee devices vs 50-128 on wireless. 3. So many models are available for sale.... How do you tell which one is the latest model. I've read the spec on one site that states its the latest model but when I read the specs it has the same exact thing as the old model. 4. Stand alone? Is zigbee stand alone. Do I need the internet for this thing to work? So if i had a lan network no internet will I be able to see my devices and get updates. I use Home Assistant. NO one wants to live without internet but there has been time where internet is not available. It would be nice to know that I could get updates from my home assistant. Thank you reading my questions and posting the video.

[@asm_canucks]

i own 3 sonoff zigbee door sensors and they've mostly been a nightmare so far. the worst part is trying to reconnect with my smarthings hub when they get offline. That's not fun. But yeah, when they work, they work well..

[@EverythingSmartHome]

I'm really not a fan of those sensors from Sonoff, the Aqara ones destroy them IMO

[@asm_canucks]

@@EverythingSmartHome that's good to know! And they're not as expensive as I thought! Thanks

[@bennylloyd-willner9667]

Great info as always 👍. I am moving away from the Zigbee/Zwave thinking I originally had since I'll probably gonna setup a decent UniFi network both indoors and outside in the yard so full WiFi coverage shouldn't be a problem. Is BLE gonna be featured in this series as well? I'm thinking of using BLE temp and humidity sensors in the henhouse, bunny houses etc. It would be great (I think) to have small weatherproof "blobs" and a hub/controller (or what it's called in the BLE world) that connects to HA. Keep it up, I'm learning heaps👍

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Thanks! We will indeed be covering Bluetooth!

[@mortenmoulder]

I have a bunch of LYWSD03MMC temp/humidity sensors with BLE and a tiny display around the house. They have a custom firmware (flash-able via BLE on your phone via the browser) and talk directly to an ESP32, which runs ESPHome. Can recommend them a lot. I'd estimate 2-3 years of battery life, so that's quite good!

[@bennylloyd-willner9667]

@@mortenmoulder sounds great! I'll check them out, I do need outdoor versions, does the one you mention cope with -20°C? I've got some 8266-boards and will tinker a bit with them. I also want door checks on a lot of animal doors so my plan is to 3D-print some special lock bolts that detects when it's securely bolted, not just closed (as the too expensive magnetic ones do) I just started with my smart home, found a great channel, my first 3D printer is on its way - its a great life 😁

[@mortenmoulder]

@@bennylloyd-willner9667 Oh dang, idk about -20c or outdoor use, unfortunately :(

[@bennylloyd-willner9667]

@@mortenmoulder living in Sweden makes things trickier sometimes 😁

[@josephgeorge3204]

Do two nearby ZigBee coordinators cause interference in the network? I mean, if two different ZigBee coordinators are installed nearby but integrated into two different homeassistant servers, will their signals interfere with each other? I have noticed a weird behaviour once, hence asking

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Potentially they would cause interference if they are on the same channel, for best results keep them on seperate ZigBee channels

[@blcoccaro]

On HA, can we use zha and zigbee2mqtt with the same hardware? (at same time) Tks

[@groto27]

I have this same question as I can’t get the Aqara Cube zigbee2mqtt home assistant blueprint to work and wonder if I can pair only that to ZHA in the mean time.

[@EverythingSmartHome]

You cannot know, only one serial com can be open at one time

[@blcoccaro]

thanks for the answer

[@robert.wigley]

Surprised no one has commented this already... Ooooh the ZigBee! 😆

[@groto27]

I’m excited for the 56k modem explained video 😂😂

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Haha you might be waiting a while 👀😂

[@thatyoutubechannel5453]

@@EverythingSmartHome is that because the upload would be done on an old dial up modem?

[@74357175]

Interesting! But if a ZigBee radio is mostly off, how does a ZigBee switch respond so quickly to being remote toggled? Or do ZigBee switches not sleep like sensors do?

[@Gooloso98]

your network must have one co-ordinator and multiple routers, that devices are always on listening, thats why when a event happen on a sensor it just needs to send to the closest router. Not needing to be on all the time, the sensor wakes up , process the event if in case needs to notify something it just wakes up zigbee and emit, (maybe wait for a reply to know if ok) then back offline . That's why is so low on battery, since wifi must always reply to router that is up, if not it will disconnect, not only that but the whole wifi stack is huge and takes time. Hope it helps :)

[@74357175]

@@Gooloso98 right, but when a *switch* is being remotely toggled, it is receiving a message, not sending it. To receive a message, the radio must be on, and there is nothing to trigger it on the device. Unless there is a low power partial sleep of the radio, the switch radio must be on, surely?

[@zyghom]

@@Gooloso98 wifi stack huge - my ESP32 devices connect to wifi router in less than 0.3s - from deep sleep wake up to getting IP address - is that so long?

[@Gooloso98]

@@zyghom compare it to zigbee, is even less. wifi has a bunch of rules to follow etc

[@zyghom]

@@Gooloso98 that is ok, I am talking wifi as standard one. If you take i.e. ESPNow we are talking... 20ms

[@martinzust7296]

I really like that you explained at the beginning that ZigBee is almost synonimous with smart home, because I was most interested in most popular ZigBee use cases

[@prahadeesh_mk]

buddy you look like superman

[@RubenKelevra]

Not entirely correct on the network specifics of WiFi. Obviously it's allowed for WiFi devices to turn off their radio completely. The magic WiFi uses is called DTIM. You can usually set the interval of those messages in your advanced settings. In short it allows a device to notify the access point that it will sleep and wake only up at DTIM interval multiplied by the beacon interval. For example DTIM interval is 5 and beacon interval is 100ms would mean that the client would only wake up twice per second and can deep sleep its radio and won't miss any packages. The WiFi AP will buffer all communication in the meantime and set a bit for the WiFi device to notify it of communication for it so the client can ask for the buffered data and receive it. Main issue here in terms of power saving is usually broadcast messages or multicast while the AP doesn't support IGMP snooping. The latter means that multicast will be broadcast as well. This usually leads to several packages to be delivered to all wifi devices each second (mostly absolutely stupid stuff nobody cares about but Windows decides to send out anyway). So that's the real reason you have power consumption issues with WiFi.

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Of course you are correct - however this is about keeping it simple for the very beginner level for people to understand. But good explanation/further reading!

[@RubenKelevra]

@@EverythingSmartHome ah yeah. So you oversimplified 😅 Anyway if you want to boil it down you could say that each device has only the need to talk to the coordinator, not to any other device. Thats different to WiFi where the AP would let you take part in a larger network which communicates with each other. So it's 1:1 vs m:n. Additionally the specification is enormous, if you think of all the possible protocols which are supported on top of WiFi, while Zigbee is just a single simple protocol. So there's a lot more communication going on than just "turn this light bulb on" - "ok done". So a light bulb might have to wait and listen for several hundred milliseconds to find a nice empty spot in the air to send out its messages, while the TV is streaming some 4K Netflix show :)

[@Kal-el23]

Z wave please!

[@zyghom]

@3:40 why do you say wifi device cannot go to sleep? All my battery operated ESP32 devices sleep, wake up, measure, send, go to sleep.

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Different type of sleep :) in order for you to sleep your device, it will physically disconnect itself from the WiFi network and then have to reconnect which takes a bit of time in comparison

[@zyghom]

@@EverythingSmartHome not sure which sleep you are talking about but ESP has minimum 3 types of sleep - the deep one is with the current around 5-20uA depending on the chip used. Make it 10uA - it can sleep for maybe a year. But for sure, ESP cannot do much with 1.2V battery while zigbee modules probably can (but I am not sure)

[@rcarioca]

Tuya told me low power devices offline status are not updated real time by Tuya app. Yeah.. no kidding, it takes about 24 hours . Yeah that is really helpful..if you live in the future..

[@denisdb725]

Ik kocht een zigbee schakelaar enkelpolig waarbij geen neutrale draad nodig is. Het enige dat werkt is het manueel aan en uitzetten van het aangekoppelde lichtpunt. Via WIFI geen mogelijkheid tot contact maken. Het blijkt bagger te zijn vooral als men dan doodleuk zegt dat er nog een hub nodig is.

[@TheLomsor]

Sounds like a much worse system then EnOcean. I guess different up and downsides.

[@ilyavolodin7414]

Unlike your WiFi video, this one seems to be very incomplete, especially when it comes to cons of Zigbee. No mentioning that Zigbee will often conflict with your WiFi since they are both using the same frequency with very very limited number of available channels. That while Zigbee claims to provide mesh capabilities, it's not a true mesh, as the end device will always try to connect to coordinator, even if the signal is really poor, and will only connect to a single router if it can't directly reach coordinator. Nothing about lack of any type of self-healing or even forced healing of the network. And that depending on the configuration of your house, the more Zigbee devices you add to the network, the more saturated the spectrum becomes and the less reliable your network becomes.

[@EverythingSmartHome]

I agree with your first point (it's something I considered talking about but didn't since it's very situational dependant - me for example it's a total non issue as there aren't that many WiFi networks close by) but the rest I do not agree with

[@ilyavolodin7414]

@@EverythingSmartHome Sorry, don't want to sound like a jerk, but those are not my opinions, they are part of the Zigbee specs. Zigbee spec has no provision for network healing and rerouting. The only way you can fix broken Zigbee network is by powering off your coordinator for 20+ minutes and wait for each end device to go into panic mode and wipe out it's routing table. Then when you add back coordinator you have to pray that end devices will connect back to it without any way to affect the outcome. Zigbee devices will also rarely if ever change their own routing tables if they find stronger source nearby, they will just keep their old routing table. That's why ZHA (for example) provides a way to join a new device through a router and not coordinator. Zigbee protocol in general has no mechanism to affect routing tables on the end devices, unlike ZWave. In general, if your Zigbee network is working well - you are in luck, if it doesn't, there's nothing really you can do to fix it. In my house, Zigbee just doesn't work, and I spent weeks trying to fix it with absolutely nothing to show for it. I ended up throwing away all Zigbee devices and switching to something else.

[@Novation681]

Lack of self healing really suck. When a sensor lose connection (router gone for short while) it does not try to reconnect (my experience) by itself and you need to manually reconnect it....why is that so?

[@garyschultz253]

Are all Zigbee Devices Routers, or is it just Specific Devices ?

[@aliciawang-u2g]

Super great videos!! Finally figured out what is Zigbee...different smart home protocols confuse me a lot🥲