Focus 2.4GHz – Choose between Bluetooth, Thread and Zigbee

Between Bluetooth, Thread and Zigbee your heart swings? We have interviewed our partners and collaborators to help you make your choice.

“Bluetooth is advantageous because it is present in smartphones and allows local interactions with objects, which facilitates updates. It consumes very little energy, and Bluetooth 5 increases the range of devices by several hundred meters. ” says Kévin Berton, CEO of Linkio.

According to Kévin, this protocol is ideal for both residential and commercial applications. For the commercial sector, its low power consumption makes it compatible with devices equipped with an energy recovery system, such as switches that include a micro-generator or sensors with a photovoltaic cell. These equipments don’t use batteries and are maintenance-free, which is crucial when a building is equipped with a large number of devices.

In the residential sector, it’s its presence in smartphones that makes the difference. This allows simplicity of use and flexibility in the use or not of a home automation system.

Indeed, as Nicolas Thiers, our project manager and electronics expert, explains, Bluetooth Mesh allows for a very low cost (both in terms of development and hardware). It also allows to have a mesh network and very low consumption. However, for him Thread is also a protocol of tomorrow.

“Thread, thanks to its standardized lower layers, is natively integrated into our home IP networks. This therefore allows for flexibility. ”

Finally, let’s mention Zigbee, which has been in the news a lot since its adoption by the giants. This protocol has the most profiles adapted to the smart home needs. At NodOn, the 2.4GHz platform, which is CE certified, allows us to respond to all uses and applications of our OEM customers.

“For me, it’s Zigbee 3.0 time. This is quite paradoxical, because the Zigbee protocol was born more than 20 years ago. It has already been adopted by many solutions that have often made it a proprietary solution, without keeping the interoperability aspect that we hold dear at NodOn. Today, Zigbee is mature. The 3.0 version of the protocol makes it a standard and corrects the lack of interoperability it may have suffered before.

The Connectivity Standards Alliance has carried Zigbee and made it a reference protocol for the IoT. But the future is already here, and at NodOn we are actively preparing it. It will be called Matter, the IP-based protocol whose mission is to enable all smart home and building devices to communicate together. Today is Zigbee, tomorrow will be Matter, via Thread . And the best part is that today’s Zigbee products will be able to talk to other products of different technology tomorrow, thanks to Matter via a dedicated bridge. ” says Alexis Polegato, CTO of NodOn.

At NodOn, we’ve made the move to Zigbee 3.0. If you are still unsure about the radio technology of your future smart product, our team is available to discuss it and help you make the right choice.

Kévin Berthon: The Bluetooth Mesh widget. It’s a feature that allows you to control one or more groups of objects from your smartphone, without having to launch the application.

Alexis Polegato: As a user, my preference is for Matter – and therefore Thread – which offers us the promise of absolute compatibility between any product and ecosystem. The end result would be to be able to buy a new product dedicated to the smart home, without worrying about whether it will be compatible with our existing ecosystem.

Nicolas Thiers: My installation is made up of objects using different protocols, but Zigbee meets all my expectations: consumption, range, feedback, responsiveness, compatibility with voice assistants.

Want to know more? Discover the pages dedicated to these technologies on our website: Bluetooth, Thread and Zigbee.