Recently, when collecting topic selection materials, Zhijia.com discovered an interesting phenomenon: Xiaomi Mijia seems to have abandoned the ZigBee protocol product and adopt more Bluetooth Mesh solutions.
After querying relevant information, Zhijia.com found that it is not only , Xiaomi , which has done this in the industry, so why is this? Is ZigBee no longer sought after? Today, Zhijia.com will discuss it with you.
01
Highlight moment
Time went back to 2015, Xiaomi officially launched a smart home set, including multi-function gateway, human body sensor, door and window sensor, wireless switch and other products. Smart Home Network believes that the release of this product can be said to have opened the curtain of smart home in my country. Although there have been smart home brands in the industry that adopt the ZigBee protocol, Xiaomi has let the general public learn about smart home for the first time.
And this set of products adopts the ZigBee protocol. As a leader in the smart home and even smart hardware industry, Xiaomi has pushed ZigBee to the public for the first time. Some netizens also believe that this is ZigBee's "few highlight moments" in the country.
After that, with the help of the ecological chain enterprise Green Mi, Xiaomi Mijia launched smart products from multiple brands such as: intelligent multi-mode gateways, sensors, switch sockets, etc. Smart homes have begun to enter thousands of households.
However, such a glorious moment did not last long. Starting from 2018, Xiaomi Mijia began to deploy Bluetooth Mesh solutions.
Now if we search for ZigBee products in Xiaomi Mall, except for the gateway, all switches and sockets of the ZigBee protocol are removed from the shelves.
The newly released multimode gateway 2 still supports ZigBee devices in order to backward compatible with , while the central gateway, which is more in the position of "controlling the brain", only supports Bluetooth gateways (the hub gateway can indirectly control ZigBee devices through scheduling of multimode gateways).
02
Gradually lose favor
So, why does Xiaomi Mijia no longer use ZigBee?
We all know that ZigBee has many advantages such as ad hoc network, star network, and low power consumption, but the inconvenience is that it requires a gateway to use it. From the perspective of whole-house intelligence, this logic is not very problematic. But it is not suitable for mijia , which is both a platform and pursues cost-effectiveness.
For example, Xiaomi has launched the ZigBee version of smart socket . If users want to achieve regular power-off of electrical appliances or use Xiaoai classmate voice control, I'm sorry, in addition to the socket itself, you have to buy another gateway.
The advantage of Bluetooth is that any Bluetooth device can act as a gateway for Bluetooth Mesh (or Xiaoai Speaker can act as a Bluetooth gateway), so most ordinary users who do not want to buy an additional gateway can use entry-level smart homes.
Xiaomi Mijia’s more ecological chain brands and Xiaomi’s huge user group have led to a very diverse product demand and supply. Therefore, “the complexity of the user population has led to Mijia’s rejection of the ZigBee protocol that must be used with a gateway.”
In fact, since Xiaomi launched smart homes in 2015, ZigBee has been at the lowest priority. Sun Peng, director of Xiaomi's ecological chain, wrote an article in 2015:
"After many rounds of attempts, we finally determined a principle of choosing a protocol, which must be used with standard protocols, and the priority is as follows:
1) Plug-in devices, using WiFi; 2) If you need to interact with your mobile phone, use BLE; 3) Use ZigBee for sensors.
It can be seen that ZigBee was first used in Mijia's planning, and the priority is at the last.”
03
First breakup
The real decision to completely abandon the ZigBee protocol was that Xiaomi had fully upgraded its Bluetooth device to Bluetooth Mesh protocol in 2018.
Although Bluetooth Mesh still had many shortcomings at that time, the biggest advantage was that any device mentioned above could be used as a gateway. This is undoubtedly very convenient for users.
The smart home network checked the Xiaomi IoT developer platform and found that the access types provided by the Xiaomi IoT platform are WiFi, BLE and BLE Three types of Mesh.
In the description section, Xiaomi IoT developer platform clearly stated that the access solution of ZigBee is no longer promoted. Sensor category products (such as human sensors, temperature and humidity sensor , smoke alarms, etc.) are recommended to use BLE access solution. Hardware products using BLE access solution not only support access to Bluetooth gateways, but also have the ability to report data and trigger event notifications in Zigbee solution.
It can be said that this means that whether it is Xiaomi's own products or third-party ecological brand products, the above three methods can only be used in the way of accessing Mijia. One of the cases is not ZigBee (of course the product itself can support ZigBee).
In fact, in addition to Xiaomi Mijia no longer adopting ZigBee due to platform characteristics and user needs, other brands have also given up ZigBee's support.
Yeelight Yilai CEO Jiang Zhaoning once said: "ZigBee Alliance (Smart Home Network Note: Now renamed CSA Alliance) is that the leader brings his own private goods, and is a referee and an athlete at the same time... This should be one of the main reasons why we went from ZigBee, WiFi, BLE to directly giving up ZigBee. ”
In addition, Jiang Zhaoning also mentioned that the Bluetooth market has a good foundation, promotional advantages, ecological advantages and cost advantages, etc. These are the considerations of manufacturers when choosing a protocol.
04
Written at the end
In fact, as early as early as 2015 when Xiaomi released the smart home set, ZigBee protocol is better than Bluetooth 4.0 in the same period in terms of power consumption and link stability.
But with the successive release of Bluetooth 5.0 and Bluetooth Mesh, the advantages of Bluetooth with a broad market foundation are gradually emerging, so in the past two years, we have seen more and more industry manufacturers push Bluetooth solutions.
Will Bluetooth replace ZigBee in the future? Zhijia.com believes that it will not be.
First, based on the above, you can see that the manufacturer chooses a technical protocol , which is a comprehensive consideration of many factors such as user needs, product functions, development costs, promotion costs, ecological effects, etc. It is not just for replacement.
Secondly, in terms of whole-house intelligence, ZigBee is still the main protocol of most brands, and currently most of the gateways of each brand support the three mainstream protocols of ZigBee, Bluetooth, and WiFi.
As for what changes the Matter standard released by the CSA Alliance will bring to the market, it is worth witnessing.
So what do you think about manufacturers giving up ZigBee? Welcome to share your views in the comment area~~ Due to the editor's level, the article will inevitably have errors, and everyone is also welcome to criticize and correct me!
Reference source:
Geek Park : Why choose Xiaomi Smart Home Set ZigBee protocol?
Leifeng.com: Which one is used for WiFi, ZigBee, and BLE? This is how Xiaomi chooses
Xiaomi IoT developer platform
Zhihu : Why don’t smart homes use ZigBee now? Instead, they are keen on Bluetooth and Wi-Fi?
Zhihu: Finally, Xiaomi may also give up Zigbee
Zhihu: Why does Green Mi new products do not support Mijia?
