Indigo Domotics

I've been wondering this ever since Silicon Labs (makers of Zigbee, competitor to Z-Wave) bought out Z-Wave for $240 million in December. I can't imagine the huge following of Z-Wave will be force migrated into the Zigbee network, too much adoption at this point. But to keep two separate systems might be unintuitive from a business perspective unless they are going to widen the gap between the two and differentiate between "enterprise" and "consumer" automation products.

Curious what others think.

Silicon Labs doesn't own Zigbee, it's merely a member (one of many) of the Zigbee Alliance. The Zigbee specification is generally controlled by the Zigbee Alliance, though the spec itself it an IEEE standard and so isn't really "owned" by anyone. I believe you have to do some certification stuff to use Zigbee marketing materials (much like what you had to do with Z-Wave and Sigma Designs).

Now, what SiLabs will do in terms of it's Zigbee Alliance affiliation (and any Zigbee related products it may have/sell) is unknown. Seems likely they will just continue to sell that stuff as well. None of it is particularly end-user facing.

My thoughts: I think open standards are almost always better for everyone. Sigma finally learned this and somewhat opened Z-Wave up though it still solely controlled the technology and who could build chipsets. Silicon Labs probably sees that proprietary nature as one that they can milk given the popularity of Z-Wave.

Unfortunately, progress on Zigbee has been glacial compared to everyone else, likely because of it's open nature. I still have hopes that it will eventually surpass other technologies, but that's still a very long way away probably.

Most likely both will exist and grow for the foreseeable future.

Zigbee is heavily adopted by many smartbulb/lighting solutions in lieu of (or in addition to) direct Wi-Fi interfaces. Zigbee is also used by Control4 in all their products but I seem to recall it may be a proprietary flavor.

Zigbee is also the primary RF chip used in most set top boxes (satellite and cable TV) for the rf version of remote controls, but again, I believe this is a proprietary or limited point-to-point implementation?

In the commercial world, the primary adopter of Z-Wave is the alarm and security industry. That has led to a lot of sensors (door / window / leak ) being widely available for Z-Wave.

I think smart locks are equally distributed between Zigbee and Z-Wave with a few bluetooth-only ones thrown in.


Nortek has a USB stick with both Z-Wave and Zigbee support. I believe this is the one supported by Indigo for Z-Wave?

Sure would be nice if eventually Indigo added Zigbee for this also.

In the consumer space, Amazon Echo Plus directly integrated a Zigbee controller (and bypassed Z-Wave). Nobody knows the full thinking, but controlling lightbulbs without needing another hub is certainly a nice entry-level consumer solution for basic home automation/controls.

Samsung SmartThings hub supports both Z-Wave and Zigbee; Vera supports both Z-Wave and Zigbee; Wink supports Z-Wave and Zigbee and also throws in Bluetooth LE and Lutron Clear connect. (I haven't used any of these).

So it certainly would appear from a market/consumer perspective that Z-Wave and Zigbee are here to stay for a while. I know I get a lot of pushback when I suggest indigo to some people who say they don't want to give up all their Zigbee stuff.

The Nortek combo USB stick (Zigbee and Z-Wave in a single device) is "HUSBZB-1 GOCONTROL QUICKSTICK COMBO"

Is this supported (for Z-Wave) by Indigo?

I don't know that anyone has tried it yet, although now that I say that I think maybe there is someone that has.

Regardless, there is a reasonable chance it will work – most Z-Wave controllers do out-of-the-box without any custom changes needed to Indigo.

Yes - Matt apparently forgot that I have one and I'm using it now on my development Mac. I also added it to the supported interfaces list a while back.

Awesome!

I was searching for "Nortek" so I didn't see it (might want to add that to the listing).