this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023
17 points (90.5% liked)

Selfhosted

40132 readers
683 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
17
Security considerations of WiFi vs Zigbee for self-hosted IoT (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
16 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Hi everyone. Before anything else, I would like to mention that I do not plan to expose absolutely anything to the internet other than using a VPN, and that's if necessary.

Now, if I understand it correctly, ZigBee compatible devices need a controller attached to the computer to decipher messages? Since we are talking about security, it seems that the ZigBee network has its own encryption technology.

Coming to WiFi which was my original plan, we have established protocols like WPA2. I had intended for all of my IoT devices to be locked in a separate VLAN with no external access.

Which one of them do you think is better for privacy and longevity? I am going to use the basics such as lights, temperature/motion sensors (would like to flash with custom firmware like Tasmota if possible) - alongside some custom devices, which would also be programmed from scratch (ESP32 based). The problem I have with the devices from the latter proposition is that I have to keep on top of security trends myself, but I suppose that's the trade-off one makes with custom devices.

Please tell me what you use at home and why, between Zigbee and WiFi?

Thanks

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's a good point. Another one I have is sort of failure tolerance. I used to have a really unreliable router which would often crash and could only be reset using a full power reset. While it was in this state, wifi obviously stopped working but my zigbee devices where still available. I used to have a zigbee button linked to a smart plug for toggling my router off and on again.

This shouldn't be a concern for most people obviously but I wanted to share my experience.

Another point I want to mention is that zigbee works at 2.4Ghz just like basic wifi so they can still interfere with each other.

Zwave on the other hand uses another frequency (I think it was around 860MHz) but is more expensive.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Do you think I'll be able to use 915Mhz (I'm in the US) for ZigBee devices using the Sonoff controller and IKEA devices/custom devices? Or is it reserved for specific purposes?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Isn't Zigbee always on 2.4GHz regardless of country? Trying to shift the frequency to 915MHz for all devices sounds like a lot of work with questionable benefit

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Won't it interfere with 2.4Ghz WiFi?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Well, theoretically yes but it doesn't continuously send data and both WiFi and Zigbee also allow for operation on various channels. Does your neighbors WiFi interfere with yours?

Also, most WiFi devices now support 5GHz WiFi anyway so it's even less of an issue anymore. The bigger problem would probably be WiFi interfering with ZigBee. But again, that can be resolved by changing the channels.