Home Automation Domotica Forum Europe, Bwired Forum

I'm orientating on domotica and want/need to start from scratch.
Now i read that Zigbee could be the thing of the future.

As a example:
The dutch company Green Peak has signed a contract with ComCast (on of the biggest cable company's in the USA).
ComCast is going to use the Zigbee chip(sets) in there new modems/routers. The router/modem from ComCast can then become the center of homeautomation in a house and gives the customer a startpoint for homeautomation.

http://www.greenpeak.com/Company/PressR ... ntrol.html

What would be the advise for a new system?

My advise would be to choose something which is available. How stupid that suggestion sounds at first hand, it's not...

See for instance http://domoticaforum.eu/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=4901.

As for zwave versus zigbee, I can only pleed for zwave as I only have experience in that department. Zwave has proven to be a very stable solution in my house, which is the most important feature I seek before I am willing to trade it over conventional solutions. Perhaps you should specify a bit more, what you are trying to accomplish.

Hi Freemann,

My suggestion would be to go with Z-wave, for several reasons:
- (many) more products available (both in the US and Europe. I don't know where your reside)
- stable and wide interoperability of products from different manufacturers
- a lot more vendors who sell Z-wave than Zigbee products
- a lot more practical experience/support available. Small example is this forum. Z-wave posts outnumber Zigbee postings by a factor of 20.
- probably an higher rate of product innovations and new product introductions
- every indication that Z-wave will be around for many years, given the growth of vendors and new products hitting the market.

As a concept, Zigbee appears to be superior. It adheres to an open standard (Z-wave chip made only by 2 companies) and some big corporate names have given their backing.
BUT.... the devil is in the detail. Interoperability is poor, every Zigbee product-manufacturer seems to interpret the standards in such manner to make it closed to other Zigbee products and/or controllers.
As such, the level op uptake of Zigbee products is lagging behind Z-wave. Especially in the Home Automation side.

Where Zigbee seems to be making their primary growth is in industrial/commercial buildings, with one Zigbee supplier supplying everything for that particular building. And then primarily (solely?) on energy management.

Maybe some interesting links to read on basic comparison discussions:
frostdale.wordpress.com/2011/01/06/zigb ... ve-part-1/
zwavereviews.com/index.php?artid=3& ... mp;catid=1
cocoontech.com/forums/topic/18230-home- ... hardwired/

hope it helps.
Cheers,
Olof