If you don’t understand wireless protocols, you may end up buying “unusable” smart home products

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If you don’t understand wireless protocols, you may end up buying “unusable” smart home products [Copy link]

Generally, when buying electronic products, we focus on hardware and software. For example, when buying a mobile phone, we consider hardware performance, workmanship, and operating system experience (software). For smart home products, we also need to consider a third factor - communication protocol. Different smart home products support different communication protocols, and different communication protocols will affect the way we use these products and the experience effect.

To give the simplest example, when the network is disconnected, we cannot control smart home products based on the Wi-Fi protocol. In addition to the Wi-Fi that everyone is familiar with, there are many other connection protocols, each with its own characteristics.

■What protocol is used in domestic smart homes?

Although there are many wireless communication protocols in the field of IoT, only a few are currently used in the field of smart home. The smart home products that you can buy in China now are only Wi-Fi, ZigBee, Bluetooth, Bluetooth Low Energy, Bluetooth Mesh, RF 433 and Z-Wave, among which the first five are the most widely used.

Xiaomi's Mijia is the domestic brand with the most ZigBee products; Alibaba's Tmall Genie series mainly promotes Bluetooth Mesh; Huawei's HiLink aims to support everything and is compatible with multiple protocols such as ZigBee, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

After looking at the market overview, let’s take a look at the specific advantages and disadvantages of each protocol and what kind of equipment it is suitable for.

Bluetooth

Before the concepts of smart home and the Internet of Things became popular, Bluetooth was already the most indispensable function of electronic products. After turning on Bluetooth, we can enable two products to continuously transmit data, such as transferring files between mobile phones, listening to music with Bluetooth wireless headphones, and using Bluetooth keyboards and mice.

This continuity can meet the above usage scenarios, but at the cost of higher power consumption. In addition, the effective transmission distance of Bluetooth is very short and does not support a large number of devices connected at the same time, so many "new" protocols have emerged in the field of smart homes.

Currently, smart home products using Bluetooth on the market include smart door locks, smart speakers, thermometers and hygrometers, etc.

■Bluetooth Low Energy

Bluetooth low energy is an advanced version of ordinary Bluetooth, with lower power consumption, longer transmission distance, and significantly reduced pairing and connection time with devices.

The working frequency band of low-power Bluetooth is the same as that of ordinary Bluetooth (2.4GHz ISM), but it will not work all the time after it is turned on. Instead, it will work only when data needs to be transmitted, and will be in a low-power sleep state when it is not needed. After low-power Bluetooth is turned on, it will only have a delay of a few milliseconds to establish a connection with the device, while ordinary Bluetooth has a delay of about 100 milliseconds. This "start and stop" feature allows low-power Bluetooth to be used even when it is dormant.

Smart printers supporting Bluetooth Low Energy

However, due to the need to sleep, low-power Bluetooth is not suitable for long-term transmission, but only for short-term transmission, so it is very suitable for functions that only need to be used for a short time, such as voice wake-up. Currently, smart home products using low-power Bluetooth on the market include smart alarm clocks, voice controllers, and smart drawer switches.

Bluetooth Mesh

In order to achieve better connectivity performance in the IoT era and catch up with competitors (such as ZigBee), Bluetooth Mesh was introduced in 2017.

The biggest difference between Bluetooth Mesh and previous Bluetooth is that it supports Mesh networking. Similar to the principle of Mesh routers, the mesh distribution of multiple devices allows all devices within a large range to enjoy high-quality connections.

As long as the Bluetooth Mesh
version is 4.0 or above and the supporting hardware performance of the device is sufficient, any ordinary Bluetooth device can support Bluetooth Mesh through OTA upgrade.

Compared with competitors such as ZigBee and Z-Wave, the biggest advantage of Bluetooth Mesh is that users do not need to buy a gateway. This is because almost all smart devices, including mobile phones, have Bluetooth, while no mainstream mobile phone has ZigBee function.

ZigBee

Thirteen years before Bluetooth Mesh was introduced, another Mesh network protocol, ZigBee, already existed. ZigBee and Bluetooth use the same 2.4GHz frequency band, both for short-distance, small-volume data transmission, and low power consumption. With few competitors, ZigBee was adopted by many products in the early days of the rise of smart homes, making it one of the most widely used protocols in the field of smart homes.

Like similar low-power protocols, ZigBee is mainly used in battery-powered devices, such as home appliance control switches, human body sensors, and temperature and humidity sensors.

Z-Wave

Before the birth of Bluetooth Mesh, ZigBee's main competitor was Z-Wave. Z-Wave is also a short-range, low-data-volume transmission protocol in Mesh networking, with the characteristics of low power consumption. Z-Wave's frequency band is quite special, using the 908.42MHz or 868.42MHz frequency bands.

Although the 2.4GHz band used by Bluetooth Mesh and ZigBee is very crowded and has many interference issues, the reason why the 2.4GHz band is crowded is that civilian products are allowed to use this band all over the world. The Z-Wave band is so universal that it is restricted in many countries.

Z-Wave
, coupled with the higher cost of Z-Wave modules and stricter protocol standards of the Z-Wave Alliance, is not as common as ZigBee in smart home products, especially in China. Z-Wave is rarely used in smart home products from mainstream brands, and it only exists in some small brand products.

RF433

RF433 is a radio frequency protocol that uses the 433MHz frequency band. It has strong penetration and low cost, but low security. It is currently used in a small number of domestic smart home products, such as smart doorbells.

6LoWPAN

6LoWPAN is an emerging wireless protocol based on IPv6. Its original intention was to enable all devices to access the Internet of Things, even if the performance and battery life of these devices are poor. Therefore, 6LoWPAN has very low requirements for device battery life and performance. It takes a cheap, convenient, and low-threshold route. However, the 6LoWPAN protocol has not yet become popular, and it is becoming increasingly difficult under the siege of big "brands" such as Bluetooth Mesh and ZigBee.

6LoWPAN
■ Choose the brand first, then consider the protocol

Although different protocols have different advantages, you should not only consider the protocol when choosing a product, but also the brand. Because controlling smart home through smartphone APP has become a common habit, in the foreseeable future, no brand will allow other companies' APP to control their products. So making sure to choose the same brand will save you a lot of trouble. After locking in the brand, choose which products of the brand you want to buy according to the protocol, so that we can maximize our user experience.