Generally, we will focus on hardware and software when we buy electronic products. For example, when you buy a mobile phone, consider hardware performance, workmanship and operating system experience (software). For smart home products, we also need to consider the third factor - communication protocol. Different smart home products will support different communication protocols, and the communication protocols will affect the way we use these products and experience.
For the simplest example, in the case of breaking the network, we cannot control the smart home products based on Wi-Fi protocol. In addition to everyone familiar with Wi-Fi, there are many other connection agreements, each with its own characteristics.
■ What agreement is domestic smart home?
Although there are many wireless communication agreements in the field of Internet of Things, there are so many applications in smart home fields. Everyone is now available in the country, the smart home products are available in Wi-Fi, Zigbee, Bluetooth, low-power Bluetooth, Bluetooth Mesh, RF 433, and Z-Wave, where the top five applications are the most widely used.
Xiaomi's Mijia is the largest brand of Zigbee products; Alibaba's Tmall Elf Series pushes the blue tooth Mesh; Huawei's Hilink is to support all of the target, compatible with ZigBee, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
After reading the market overview, let's take a look at what excellent shortcomings in each agreement, what kind of equipment is suitable.
■ Bluetooth
Bluetooth is already the least indispensable function of electronic products before the concept of smart home and the Internet of Things. After opening Bluetooth, we can make two products for continuous data transmission, such as Bluetooth transmission between mobile phones, Bluetooth wireless headphones listening to songs and using Bluetooth molars.
This persistence can meet the above use scenarios, but the cost is a high power consumption. In addition, the Effective transmission distance of Bluetooth is very close, does not support a large number of equipment simultaneously, so many "new" protocols come out in the intelligent home field.
At present, smart home products using Bluetooth on the market include smart door locks, smart speakers, temperature and humidity metering.
■ Low power Bluetooth
Low-power Bluetooth is the advanced version of ordinary Bluetooth, the power consumption is low, the transmission distance is enhanced, and the long-term decrease in the pairing connection of the device.
Low power consumption and ordinary Bluetooth operating frequency bands, but will not work after turning on, but only when it is necessary to transfer data, it is not needed to sleep low power dormancy. Low-power Bluetooth After opening and device establishment is only a few milliseconds of delay, and ordinary Bluetooth has 100 milliseconds. This "stop" is the characteristic of "ie," low-power Bluetooth can not affect the use without sleep.
Support for low-power Bluetooth intelligent printers
However, due to the need to sleep, low-power Bluetooth is not suitable for long-term transmission, only suitable for short-term transmission, so it is suitable for a short-term function that requires only a short time using only speech wakeups. At present, 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 connection performance in the Internet of Things, catch up with the pace of competitors (such as Zigbee), Bluetooth Mesh in 2017.
Bluetooth Mesh and the previous Bluetooth are the biggest difference to support Mesh networking. Similar to the Mesh router principle, all devices that have a wide range of mesh distributions through multiple devices can enjoy high quality connections.
As long as the version is over 4.0 or more, and the equipment's supporting hardware performance is sufficient, any normal Bluetooth device can support Bluetooth Mesh through the OTA upgrade.
And Zigbee, Z-Wave and other competitors, the biggest advantage of Bluetooth Mesh is the user without buying a gateway. Because almost a large amount of smart devices including mobile phones have Bluetooth, there is no mainstream mobile phone with ZigBee feature compared to it.
■ zigbee
Another Mesh Network Protocol ZigBee already exists in the Bluetooth Mesh 13 years ago. ZigBee and Bluetooth use the same 2.4GHz band, which are used for short-distance small amounts of data transmission, and the power consumption is also very low. Since the competitor is very small, ZigBee has been adopted by many products in the early days of intelligent home. Leading it has become one of the most widely used protocols currently in smart homes.
Like the same low-power protocol, ZigBee is mainly applied to equipment using batteries, such as home appliance control switches, human sensors, and temperature and humidity sensors.
■ Z-Wave
Before the birth of Bluetooth Mesh, the main competitor of Zigbee was Z-Wave. Z-Wave is also a close low data amount transmission protocol in a MESH network, which has low power characteristics. The band of Z-Wave is more special, using 908.42 MHz or 868.42MHz.
Although the 2.4GHz band of Bluetooth Mesh and ZigBee is very crowded, the interference problem is more. However, the 2.4GHz band is crowded because civil products are allowed to use this band all over the world. The band of Z-Wave is then universal, and in many countries will be restricted.
Plus the Z-Wave module cost is higher than that of ZigBee, the Z-Wave alliance is more strict, so Z-Wave does not have ZigBee in smart home products, especially in China. The mainstream brand smart home product has almost no use of Z-Wave, Z-Wave only exists on some small brand products.
■ RF433
RF433 is a RF protocol adopted 433 MHz band with a relatively strong penetration, and the cost is low, but the security is very low. At present, there are small applications in domestic smart home products, such as smart doorbells, etc.
■ 6lowpan
6LowPan is an IPv6-based emerging wireless protocol. The original intention of birth is to allow all devices to access the Internet of Things, even if the performance and battery life of these devices are very poor. So 6LowPan is very low for the battery life and performance. Walking a low price, convenient, low route. However, the 6LowPan protocol has not yet fired, and it is increasingly difficult to Brand's "brand" in Bluetooth Mesh and Zigbee.
■ First select the brand, then consider the agreement
Although there is different advantages of different agreements, everyone can only consider the agreement when choosing the product, and should first consider the brand. Because through smartphone APP control, smart home has become a habit of everyone. In the foreseeable future, there will be no brand will let other home App will control your own products. So the guarantee that chooses the same brand will save you a lot of trouble. Lock the brand, then choose which products you want to buy according to the agreement, so that you can maximize our experience.
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