New Echo devices and Zigbee (updated post)

Posted on
Sun Oct 04, 2020 5:11 pm
sarahcat offline
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New Echo devices and Zigbee (updated post)

The recently announced Amazon Echo 4th Gen (the sphere) and the new Amazon Echo Show 10 (the mushroom) both have integral Zigbee hubs in them. Zigbee always seemed like an outlier technology, with Z-wave being the increasingly popular player. I have mostly Insteon dual-band mesh since it's so bloody reliable and I use Z-wave for my door lock interface.

I originally thought that Zigbee used 802.11x WiFi transmission and IP, but I saw a post from Jay about seven months ago that it does not. I've seen a few posts about Zigbee and Indigo and I believe there may be an Indigo Plug-in. Does that Plug-in require a physical interface? To the best of my knowledge, Indigo supports only Z-Wave, Insteon, and legacy X10 protocols. From Jay's post, it appears that Zigbee does not use IP, so how does Indigo (even with the Zigbee Plug-in) physically interface Zigbee devices.

With Google and Amazon seeming to have some fascination for the Zigbee devices, I can only wonder why. :roll:

Posted on
Mon Oct 05, 2020 7:37 am
FlyingDiver offline
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Re: New Echo devices and Zigbee (updated post)

There is no direct support for Zigbee in Indigo. There are some implementation using Zigbee hubs connected via IP, such as using an rPi and MQTT.

joe (aka FlyingDiver)
my plugins: http://forums.indigodomo.com/viewforum.php?f=177

Posted on
Mon Oct 05, 2020 10:15 am
jay (support) offline
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Re: New Echo devices and Zigbee (updated post)

Zigbee doesn't use WiFi but rather uses IEEE 802.15.4 which is also a wireless protocol but is not compatible with WiFi. You do need some kind of interface hardware to talk to a Zigbee network. The GoControl HUSBZB-1 stick does both Z-Wave and Zigbee. Indigo only supports the Z-Wave part, but it would be possible to write a plugin which would control Zigbee devices using the Zigbee part (they present two different virtual comm ports). The demand for Zigbee has been significantly less than continued Z-Wave development so that's where our focus is and will continue to be. If Zigbee demand picks up we will revisit.

Jay (Indigo Support)
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Posted on
Mon Oct 05, 2020 12:11 pm
siclark offline
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Re: New Echo devices and Zigbee (updated post)

Hi Sarah

Whilst Indigo doesn’t natively support zigbee there are a few options. If it’s Just bulbs you want you can get a Hue hub and use the excellent Hue plugin.
If you want to use sensors, and maybe use a bulb zigbee mesh to use with sensors, or just avoid the cost of the Hue hub you can set this up relatively easily with a $10 zigbee USB, a free program that can run on a pi or on your Mac and the MQTT plugin.
This lets you pull in value from sensors or switches as well as control lights and sockets etc

This relies on the 3rd party software to control the zigbee controller and convert those commands to/from MQTT that indigo can support via the plugin.

Happy to point you to the posts if you are interested in this.

Simon

Posted on
Mon Oct 05, 2020 12:16 pm
sarahcat offline
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Re: New Echo devices and Zigbee (updated post)

Jay,

All that makes sense, so I wonder why Google and Amazon seem to be putting their emphasis on Zigbee. I had originally thought that Zigbee used IP, but clearly that's not the case. My Trane thermostat uses some version of Z-wave and although my Kwikset door locks use Z-Wave, I believe they also have a Zigbee option. I thought that Zigbee was all but a legacy protocol, but with these new Amazon Echo spheres, it seems to be embraced. I'm staying with the Amazon-Hue Bridge for integration with Indigo until you guys have native integration in Indigo.

Posted on
Mon Oct 05, 2020 2:25 pm
jay (support) offline
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Re: New Echo devices and Zigbee (updated post)

Zigbee is an open spec/protocol, controlled by open standards organizations. Z-Wave is proprietary - and while Silicon Labs has opened it up somewhat since acquiring Sigma, it is fundamentally still the sole arbiter of the protocol.

At least, that's what I'm guessing is the primary motivation. Note that Google's Thread technology was a separate protocol (though over the same physical layer) from Zigbee. In 2019, everyone signed on to the Connected Home over IP project, which I think most people expect will be some evolution of the Zigbee APIs on top of IP.

But who knows...

Jay (Indigo Support)
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