this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2023
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Home Automation

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Home automation is the residential extension of building automation.

It is automation of the home, housework or household activity.

Home automation may include centralized control of lighting, HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning), appliances, security locks of gates and doors and other systems, to provide improved convenience, comfort, energy efficiency and security.

Warning: Working with electricity can result in injury, property damage, or even death if it is not done properly. Please keep this in mind while assisting others. If you are not sure about what you are doing, hire a licensed professional.

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Would a Matter controller, plugs, and other stuff take some of the load off my Wifi router?

I've been experimenting with Wi-Fi enabled plugs, bulbs, and door sensors but my relatively weak WiFi router and internet connection seem to be struggling with all the extra devices. Not great when I work-from-home AND my kid wants Bluey AND I want to be able to control my lights, etc.

I'm thinking of picking up a Matter Controller (probably and Echo Show 8) on Black Friday, and some Matter-compatible plugs/bulbs. If I switch to Thread (or just Matter? Is the Thread part implied?) smart-stuff, will that take the load off my router and internet connection?

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[–] MikeP001@alien.top 1 points 10 months ago

Some silly stuff here. Wifi is not low latency, zigbee and other low rate networks are low latency esp across repeaters. Wifi rates are far, far higher. Slow zigbee response times are actually noticeable, fast local wifi appears instant to humans. Doesn't matter much for IoT (pun not intended). I'm not a fan of setting up duplicate networks on the same band - was of money. I use zigbee for battery switches and sensors exclusively, lower cost wifi devices for everything else.

Wifi does not suffer dramatically from interference, esp neighbor interference - if it did, forget about zigbee with it's weaker transmitters and forget router managed thread at 2.4GHz. Wifi is not a continuous carrier transmission protocol. It only transmits when it has data, and the closest transmitter will swamp out any transmitter further away. On the rare instances there is interference the protocol handles it easily and retransmits quickly, at wifi speeds there's lots of dead space. Folks complaining about wifi interference are almost universally non-network people falling into a classic logical fallacy "I don't know what it is so it must be ".

Wifi does suffer from crappy routers and APs that drop clients, udp, and multicast often used by wifi devices. Cloud devices suffer whether they're wifi, or the hubs managed through the cloud (which they must be if you have remote access or google home integration.

Ok z-lots, let the unsubstantiated down votes fly!