Which Smart Home Protocol Fits Which Job

Zigbee, WiFi, Ethernet, Thread, Matter, Bluetooth Low Energy — the list of ways devices can talk to each other is long and the names say little about what they are good for.

I walk through them and sort them by use case instead of by spec sheet: what suits a battery sensor, what belongs on a cable, what makes sense for a device that only reports occasionally.

Picking the right one at the start saves a lot of rework later, because swapping the radio standard usually means swapping the hardware too.