Like my thermostat. To hook it to the wifi it has two parts. One connected to the furnace board that is the wifi board. Then a second device near my router that bridges the part at the furnace to the router. Why? Why can’t the part at the furnace board just connect directly to the router? I have several other things like this, most I don’t hook up.
edit Some clarification. Thermostat talks to furnace board via wire. Next to the furnace board is an add on board that is the wifi board. Next to my router is a small box that plugs directly into the router and the power. The wifi board at the furnace talks to this small box to get to the router. Why is the small box needed.
Another example. I am looking at a hot tub. To connect it to the wifi you need two parts. One wired to the tub, and one wired to your router. It talks wirelessly between the two. But why the box near the router, why not go direct from the wifi add on part at the hot tub to the router. Should cost them less.
edit, update: Some have commented they could be using a different protocol and/or frequency that allows greater range and such since they don’t need as much bandwidth. This would also reduce frequency conflict with existing wifi devices.
Others pointed out that configuring the wifi connection would require a way to give the board a password. Which they can avoid if they add that wired device that sits next to the router. Customers can interface with that via phone or computer and enter like a serial number for the board that will sync them.
Also, it has been pointed out that newer thermostats often do have direct wifi to the router, so no extra board on the furnace even.
Ok, so your question is why systems like Zigbee or Z-Wave has a bridge directly connected to the network and won’t just rely on the normal network.
That is because Zigbee and Z-Wave is a different technology than wifi.
I have Philips Hue lights at home, they use the Zigbee sytem, Zigbee is a low power meshing network, any commands are sent from the bridge, and relayed by the devices on the network until it reaches the specific node requested, the response is sent back through the network.
So why not just use wifi?
Plenty of smart home stuff does use wifi, it is a matter of what the manufacturer decided to use.
Personally I prefer Zigbee, I find it easier to work with and it doesn’t clutter my network with random smart lights.
I am building a NAS machine and will probably migrate over to using home assistant on that rather than just relying on the standard bridge from Philips.
Ok, I can buy that. But they don’t advertise compatibility with any home automation systems, and don’t seem to operate any kind of mesh. The furnace thing is more than 10 years old, seems newer thermostats have direct wifi on them instead of a special board connected to the furnace. But I have several other things that have these two part solutions as well that must be using their own proprietary protocol for some reason. I just can’t figure why they would do such a thing. Maybe there is no good reason.
ZigBee is way better and I’ll be doing that next time. I didn’t fully understand it all when I bought bulbs 5 years ago and wifi was easier. But now the network is crazy large and iot is just asking to get broken into or data leaked.