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Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance to develop connectivity standard

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Re: Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance to develop connectivity standard

#31

Post by Semaphor »

blackearl wrote: post #10
basch wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering Apple, Amazon, and Google are already members of the Zigbee alliance, it makes you wonder why it had to be a new working group and not a new group within Zigbee. Its like saying Cowboys, 49ers, Patriots, and the NFL join together to create a new football league.

I'd assume the average person has no clue what Zigbee is. I know I'd never heard of it

From what I’ve read, Zigbee is for the rest of the world what Z-Wave is for the US, in terms of market share. Not sure how accurate that is, but from what I’ve seen, there are a lot more Zigbee devices here in Germany than Z-Wave, while most US sites talk about Z-Wave.

Re: Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance to develop connectivity standard

#32

Post by supergeek133 »

H1Supreme wrote: post #17

Why not openthread? It's already there, it's open source, and from my somewhat limited experience, works well.

Openthread uses the zigbee radio. Hence zigbee being involved.

On the surface this "appears" very similar.

EDIT: Yes I'm aware the software layer is different, I was inferring the radios are the same.

Re: Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance to develop connectivity standard

#33

Post by GhettoMaestro »

melq wrote: post #30
1over137 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consume IP addresses? There are a bazillion IP addresses. Or are you stuck on IPv4?

Even if you're on ipv4 and using the 192.168/16 network you've still got >65,000 addresses to work with.

And 10/8! And 172.16/12!!

Re: Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance to develop connectivity standard

#34

Post by GhettoMaestro »

orev wrote: post #24
1over137 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consume IP addresses? There are a bazillion IP addresses. Or are you stuck on IPv4?

Pretty much everyone (especially at home) is using only IPv4. IPv6 is always perpetually on the horizon. The better argument would have been that using a /23 or /22 subnet should probably be enough for most home automation setups.

5 years ago your comment was spot on. Now in the us it is common to see dual stack v4 v6 on residential and mobile connections.

Re: Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance to develop connectivity standard

#35

Post by slantyyz »

1over137 wrote: post #15
slantyyz wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been gradually retiring my wifi smart devices in favor of Z-wave because I find them far more reliable and much easier to maintain and manage. It's also a little annoying having a pile of wifi devices whose only purpose is to manage an on-off state consume IP addresses on my network.

Consume IP addresses? There are a bazillion IP addresses. Or are you stuck on IPv4?

I'm on IPV4. It's not about how many IP addresses I have available, it's that all those smart devices can pollute the list of devices connected my wifi network.

I like to know what's on my wifi network, and because my memory isn't what it's used to be, I find myself having to assign names to all the smart wifi devices in my Unifi controller.

Re: Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance to develop connectivity standard

#36

Post by jon-wood »

WanderPanda wrote: post #14

I am curious if they will include cameras (security / door), because the characteristics of the payload are quite orthogonal to the characteristics of the payload of other smart home devices.

There are two aspects to most security cameras. The one everyone thinks of is video streaming - there’s plenty of standards for that, most notably RTSP and recently WebRTC. That’s probably out of scope for smart home protocols.

Totally in scope is provisioning, configuration, and notification of things it can detect such as motion. I’d anticipate those being managed as part of this new protocol, with streaming simply being to provide an endpoint address and maybe an authentication token to connect.

Re: Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance to develop connectivity standard

#37

Post by GhettoMaestro »

josteink wrote: post #19
gtirloni wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the keyword is "over IP". My understanding is that Zigbee works at the lower layers.

> My understanding is that Zigbee works at the lower layers. Zigbee is not IP. It's a completely different network, which is why many Zigbee based solutions often require a hub/gateway (which speaks both IP and Zigbee) to enable control via smart-phone apps or stuff like that. To be honest, I'm pretty happy about that. The less my smart-devices has to do with my local wifi/LAN, the happier I am. Not really sure I lik…

I’ll probably end up firewalling off a zone just for this type of traffic in the future.

Re: Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance to develop connectivity standard

#38

Post by oflannabhra »

Per the official homepage:

> The goal of the first specification release will be Wi-Fi, up to and including 802.11ax (aka Wi-Fi 6), that is 802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax; Thread over 802.15.4-2006 at 2.4 GHz; and IP implementations for Bluetooth Low Energy, versions 4.1, 4.2, and 5.0 for the network and physical wireless protocols.

> The Project intends to leverage development work and protocols from existing systems such as: Amazon’s Alexa Smart Home, Apple’s HomeKit, Google’s Weave, Zigbee Alliance’s Dotdot data models

Dotdot is basically ZCL over IP (in a way), but comes with a lot of legacy from ZCL.

Thread was my hope for a unified smart home network layer, but it didn't really get the adoption I'd hoped, and from a manufacturer's perspective, it did not include any application-layer messaging.

It looks like the goal is to standardize the application layer messaging (of which Dotdot was an attempt). Maybe call it Dotdot v2, but with better backing.

Re: Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance to develop connectivity standard

#39

Post by obituary_latte »

seedless-sensat wrote: post #29
melq wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>because the characteristics of the payload are quite orthogonal to the characteristics of the payload of other smart home devices. how so?

Higher bandwidth. Not sure if that is 'orthogonal' though, seems like the requirement is on the same dimension, just bigger...

I think you’re right. Typical smart home coms being short little on/off or temperature up/down type commands vs. streaming/recording video and audio with some having two-way audio up to and including machine learning/AI for object detection which most likely is done remotely.

Re: Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance to develop connectivity standard

#40

Post by oflannabhra »

supergeek133 wrote: post #32
H1Supreme wrote: post #17

Why not openthread? It's already there, it's open source, and from my somewhat limited experience, works well.

Openthread uses the zigbee radio. Hence zigbee being involved. On the surface this "appears" very similar. EDIT: Yes I'm aware the software layer is different, I was inferring the radios are the same.

This is incorrect. Openthread uses nothing from Zigbee, but does use 802.15.4 radios, the same as Zigbee does.
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