On this week’s episode of the IoT Podcast, we received a voicemail from Monty, who is just getting started with his smart home and is looking for a hub that supports Z-Wave devices. There are several options available, ranging from simple plug-and-play choices to others that require a little more know-how and effort.
For starters though, we suggest that Monty make sure he really needs Z-Wave radio support at all. Why? There’s a growing trend for hubless devices that only work with “the big two” radios: Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. That’s mainly because these are the most widely known and used, and because they don’t need a traditional hub. Additionally, smart home devices with these radios typically work with Google Home and Amazon Echo devices.
If Z-Wave is a must though, your first look should probably be either a Samsung SmartThings or a Wink Hub 2. Both of these support Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and Z-Wave, not to mention Zigbee too. They’re also relatively easy to use for both controlling and automating smart home devices. We’re fans of Wink but there are plenty of positive recommendations for SmartThings.
Hubitat makes a local hub but it only natively supports Zigbee and Z-Wave radios, providing you with the widest range of support smart home devices. You can use it with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth devices but it doesn’t connect directly to devices with them. It also differs from SmartThings and Wink in two ways: All data and automation actions are handled locally on the hub so none of your data goes to the cloud, and it’s better suited for those who don’t mind spending more time and effort to set up automation rules. For that reason, if this is your first foray into smart home hubs, we’d stick with Wink or SmartThings.
Another option if you only want Z-Wave support is Fibaro’s Home Center 2. I wouldn’t think this particular case is what Monty is looking for because it’s limited solely to a single radio, but it’s worth the mention. To hear Monty’s question and our discussion in full, tune in below to this week’s IoT Podcast Hotline segment.
Updated on 4/8/2019 to reflect that Hubitat does not speak directly to Wi-Fi or Bluetooth devices.
Stacey and Kevin, I am a recent subscriber to your podcast and really enjoy the show. Being in the home automation space for a while, I did want to ask why the Vera family of hubs are not even mentioned when you speak about hubs on the show? I have used a number of hubs on the market, and while I understand simplicity, I feel that even with a little know how, the Vera is a pretty powerful platform. Besides the standard hub functionality, it also has quite an extensive apps marketplace to integrate things like Honeywell wifi thermostats, MyQ wifi garage door openers and even robot vacuum cleaners. Besides a dated UI, I feel it is just as good or better than other hubs like Wink and Smart Things. Just a thought when talking about hubs on the show. Thanks!
Information about “Hubitat also makes a hub with those same four radios” incorrect, Hubitat does not support WiFi and Bluetooth
You’re absolutely correct; I misunderstood the info sent to use by Hubitat at that time – I’ll update the post to make the correction. Thanks!
It has been interesting to observe that you guys appear to be against one of the most popular home control technologies. Z-Wave has been around since 2001 in the U.S. (1999 in Europe) making it one of the more mature technologies, yet for some reason it appears you do not like it because you need a hub.
This article was another example because at the end of March, Silicon Labs released the 700 series Z-Wave chip which is ARM Cortex M4 based, and besides providing perhaps as much as 10 years for a sensor on a single coin cell battery, is going to open up the possibility for artificial intelligence with the sheer horsepower and memory accessibility of this new platform… yet here you talk about a chip that will not even be out until the end of the year – hopefully.
So what is it about a hub that you are against? The requirement for a hub for Z-Wave comes first from the fact that Z-Wave is sub-GHz based. Being sub-GHz based means that the signal penetrates building materials better than 2.4GHz technologies, has better range, and it does this at a much lower power consumption than 2.4GHz technologies. But if that was the only reason then we could surely just load up on the new wireless mesh devices and use WiFi like crazy, right? What happens when people buy WiFi, Bluetooth, and even Zigbee devices that do not require a hub, they get an app to go with the device. Once somebody has enough of these and realizes that they have to go through a half dozen different apps to turn things off every time they leave the home, they realize that what they really want is integration, and for those devices to be able to communicate with each other. A hub can provide all of that, so a hub is what everybody who really gets home control always ends up with – it should not be avoided “just because”. Does anybody have a solid reason for being against hubs?
Z-Wave, with its required interoperability certification and true application layer (which Zigbee also has) are they key leading technologies for consumer IoT products, and you really should give Z-Wave more of a fair shake rather than spending time on “one off” devices that consumers often grow to leave behind.
Sorry – can’t figure out how to edit a comment. I was originally posting this as a comment to another article (a more recent one talking about the Flex Logix chip) so disregard the part about the chip that won’t be out until the end of the year.