As the other poster said, both Zigbee and Zwave devices do not talk to the Internet. They can’t even connect to your Wi-Fi anyway. They need to connect to a device that acts as a router but specifically for Zigbee or Zwave, usually called a Hub or Coordinator.
There’s many different hubs around. Many commercial ones do indeed connect directly to the WiFi and therefore internet. But nothing is stopping you from buying a USB Dongle Hub with open source firmware and plugging it into a Raspberry Pi, if you want to eliminate the potential spying.
The Zigbee and Zwave networks inherently cannot communicate with the Internet. So the only risk of spying is if you installed something in the Raspberry that spies on you.
Both Philips Hue and IKEA Trådfri and many other vendors simply use Zigbee, which means you can bring your own Hub and completely eliminate the risk of spying.
I have some z-wave thermostats, which I know do not talk to the Internet, just a local system with a zwave dongle.
For a relative, recently set up a similar setup, but with a homekit thermostat. Similar deal, though it really really wanted to connect to a cloud server and you kind of had to trick it to a non apple homekit setup. The follow on model from that brand did drop homekit support, presumably because they wanted to force their cloud servers, which became required for any advanced functionally.
There are ways to get automation friendly devices without a cloud connected requirement, though admittedly you have to be paying pretty close attention. Generally offerings for business are more likely to be locally workable, but that’s hardly a given either
Tape a raspberry pi to the wall with some relays and a temperature sensor dangling and call it a day. Anything else is spying on you.
As the other poster said, both Zigbee and Zwave devices do not talk to the Internet. They can’t even connect to your Wi-Fi anyway. They need to connect to a device that acts as a router but specifically for Zigbee or Zwave, usually called a Hub or Coordinator.
There’s many different hubs around. Many commercial ones do indeed connect directly to the WiFi and therefore internet. But nothing is stopping you from buying a USB Dongle Hub with open source firmware and plugging it into a Raspberry Pi, if you want to eliminate the potential spying.
The Zigbee and Zwave networks inherently cannot communicate with the Internet. So the only risk of spying is if you installed something in the Raspberry that spies on you.
Both Philips Hue and IKEA Trådfri and many other vendors simply use Zigbee, which means you can bring your own Hub and completely eliminate the risk of spying.
Yeah, I use Zigbee with Home Assistant, it’s pretty great, except it sometimes bugs out and I have to restart a few devices.
Do you trust every device you buy without question?
Nope, but I trust the ones that lack the hardware for dialing home.
But generally I don’t buy devices unless I have reason to trust them.
Well that’s not quite true.
I have some z-wave thermostats, which I know do not talk to the Internet, just a local system with a zwave dongle.
For a relative, recently set up a similar setup, but with a homekit thermostat. Similar deal, though it really really wanted to connect to a cloud server and you kind of had to trick it to a non apple homekit setup. The follow on model from that brand did drop homekit support, presumably because they wanted to force their cloud servers, which became required for any advanced functionally.
There are ways to get automation friendly devices without a cloud connected requirement, though admittedly you have to be paying pretty close attention. Generally offerings for business are more likely to be locally workable, but that’s hardly a given either