[–] 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

This sort of makes it sound like the advantage of Thread is merely that it's new, and therefore nobody will be affected by having a poor pre-existing Thread setup. If ISPs were sending people Zigbee hubs, it sure would be the cheapest shit available, which could very well translate to similarly terrible Zigbee performance.

I see your point, but there should be much more merit to the specialized IoT protocols than just that nobody has yet flooded the market with terrible Thread/Zigbee devices.

I'm not sure manufacturers choose WiFi because of hardware costs. There are often other reasons (some good, some terrible) for this choice, but I'm certain Zigbee support has to be cheaper; having disassembled plenty of such devices it's almost always a dedicated IC and a tiny PCB trace for an antenna. WiFi support requires a fairly complete TCP/IP stack implementation, basic certificate management etc. which will inevitably require a small SoC; and while prebuilt solutions are plentiful, Zigbee alternatives are an order of magnitude cheaper.

I can imagine software development costs being lower, though, given how every other programmer knows a fair deal about TCP/IP networking, while good comprehension of dedicated IoT protocols is a much rarer skill, there are also much less community resources and open-source solutions available etc.

  • source
  • parent
  • context
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (3 children)

    Both Zigbee and Matter do not rely on cloud connectivity as a protocol

    In my ideal world, no devices would not rely on cloud connectivity ever, regardless of their choice wireless transport layer. The fact that the nature of Zigbee or Thread stop device manufacturers from stupid practices (such as relying on direct WAN access) is nice, sure, but does being less capable really make them better suited for the job? I would prefer to appreciate Zigbee or Thread for what they are and have, rather than by the fortunate side effects of what they can't do.

  • source
  • parent
  • context
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    but that also comes with more and frankly just as bad security implications, just different ones

    What do you have in mind? Surely, no solution is perfect, but at least on the surface it sounds much better than the alternative of no isolation at all, so I'd love to learn what worries you.

  • source
  • parent
  • context
  • view more: next ›