[HN Gopher] IKEA launches new smart home range with 21 Matter-co...
___________________________________________________________________
IKEA launches new smart home range with 21 Matter-compatible
products
Author : lemoine0461
Score : 271 points
Date : 2025-11-06 13:26 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ikea.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ikea.com)
| 63stack wrote:
| I have never heard of Matter before, but I was super satisfied
| with Ikea's zigbee products. Does anyone know why they switched?
| frenchtoast8 wrote:
| It's less of a switch and more of an upgrade. The hub will
| continue to work with Zigbee devices, it just adds Matter
| support to those devices you already have.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Might be an upgrade if you're using devices through Ikea's
| hub, but if you've been buying Ikea's zigbee devices for use
| with some other zigbee network it's a bummer that you won't
| be able to get them anymore.
|
| Even if you're all in Ikea's ecosystem it will still mean
| whatever new devices you add from now on are a separate mesh
| network and can't use the existing zigbee products as
| repeaters. If the next thing you want to add is at the far
| end of your house from the hub, it won't have reception there
| with Matter until you put other new devices in between.
| pta2002 wrote:
| It's a newer standard backed by multiple vendors (importantly,
| Apple, Google and Amazon, who make the devices that you
| ultimately want to use to control these things).
|
| Zigbee is great for communication instead of WiFi, but it's
| just one part of the equation - it says nothing about the
| specific commands a device will respond to. You couldn't pair a
| Philips remote with an IKEA lightbulb.
|
| Matter attempts to fix it by actually defining the protocol
| that these devices use. It's also fully local and open source,
| which is great. The actual transport layer can be WiFi, but it
| can also be Thread, which is a newer standard based off Zigbee,
| and AFAIK some Zigbee controllers can be reprogrammed to
| support it.
|
| They don't specify what transport layer they are using here,
| but considering the kind of devices they are showing (battery-
| powered remotes) it's almost definitely Thread.
| noir_lord wrote:
| Matter is definitely a step in the right direction, SDK is
| under Apache and the actual spec is freely available[1]
|
| Might give it a year or three and if they continue on that
| path I might have to reasses my "No smart devices in the
| house" "rule".
|
| [1] https://csa-iot.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2022/11/22-27349-001_...
| PaulHoule wrote:
| They've been talking about it for _years_ and now they
| finally have a product?
| milliams wrote:
| https://www.theverge.com/tech/814928/ikea-matter-thread-
| diri... has some quotes from IKEA saying that they're using
| Thread. It's strange they didn't say in this release though.
| pta2002 wrote:
| I guess because to most consumers, it doesn't actually
| matter. It uses matter and connects to a matter hub, the
| way it does it is an implementation detail unless you're
| making your own hub with homeassistant or something.
|
| Even iPhones have been able to talk to thread devices
| directly for a while now, so it's a fairly transparent
| process.
| teamonkey wrote:
| The way I understand it (please correct me) is that:
|
| * The old Ikea Zigbee products will remain Zigbee. They will
| still require a Zigbee coordinator.
|
| * The new products will be Matter-over-Thread. They require a
| Thread coordinator (or whatever the Thread equivalent is
| called).
|
| * The existing Ikea hub has had a firmware upgrade that
| allows it to be simultaneously a Zigbee and Thread
| coordinator.
|
| * The Ikea hub adds a Matter compatibility layer to the
| devices that don't natively support Matter.
| j45 wrote:
| Helpful datapoints thanks.
|
| Backwards compatibility is huge.
| teamonkey wrote:
| I could be wrong! I'm trying to work out the details
| myself!
|
| But I have heard that old devices will be backwards
| compatible.
| Latitude7973 wrote:
| > or whatever the Thread equivalent is called
|
| Thread Border Router (for info).
| gorbypark wrote:
| This is correct more or less. The Ikea hub has had the
| ability to bridge its zigbee devices to Matter for a while
| now. So in my case, Apple Home has no idea my lights and
| switches are not Matter, they just show up there even
| though they are actually zigbee.
|
| Ikea recently did an update to enable the hub to be a
| Matter controller itself (over thread or Wifi). This means
| you can add matter devices to the Ikea hub directly and use
| the Ikea Home Smart app the control them instead of Apple
| Home or etc. You can add non-Ikea matter devices as well as
| Ikea matter devices (when they are released).
| close04 wrote:
| Zigbee is the wireless network protocol. The equivalent to it
| on the Matter side is called Thread, also based on Zigbee from
| what I read (was developed by Connectivity Standards Alliance,
| formerly known as Zigbee Alliance). Zigbee and Thread operate
| at OSI L1-3, Matter is L3/4-7.
|
| Matter is a communication protocol adopted by a lot of
| manufacturers but I think practically for the buyer the real
| benefit is that you no longer need a bucket of hubs for each of
| the device ecosystems one might use. It's more future proof so
| it makes sense IKEA would add support for it in their hardware
| including existing hubs I believe.
| darkwater wrote:
| You never needed a bucket of hubs with things like
| zigbee2mqtt or the Zigbee implementation in Home Assistant.
| That's enough a proof that the issue was not in the protocol.
| Actualyl you can also pair between them different vendors
| products (i.e. Ikea remote with Philips bulbs)
| pta2002 wrote:
| While you could do that, the hub needed to implement the
| logic to actually convert the different "APIs" that the
| products spoke. E.g. imagine an IKEA remote sends
| "button_on" to turn on the light, but the Philips remotes
| send "light_on" or something. Philips lights will work with
| their remotes but not with IKEA remotes, since they
| wouldn't know what to do with "button_on". Zigbee2mqtt and
| ZHA are great projects that implement a compatibility layer
| to all of this, but they do have to explicitly support
| every device (and they support basically _every_ device
| there is, thanks to a ton of community work, they're
| genuinely great projects and something that wouldn't really
| be possible without open source). You mention that you can
| pair between different vendor's products, but that's not
| quite the case - you can pair different vendor's products
| to the hub, and the hub can translate between them. But
| while you can pair an IKEA remote to an IKEA bulb without a
| hub, you can't really do that between different brands.
|
| Matter simplifies this. It defines the API layer. You can
| use Thread without Matter, at which point you basically
| have Zigbee + IPv6, but the power comes with Matter since
| now every device is speaking the same language and can
| actually understand each other.
| darkwater wrote:
| > you can pair different vendor's products to the hub,
| and the hub can translate between them. But while you can
| pair an IKEA remote to an IKEA bulb without a hub, you
| can't really do that between different brands.
|
| Yes you can, I did that with Ikea, Philips and Innr
| brands. No hub, not even Z2M involved. Yes, as you say
| they do need to agree on a "protocol" and AFAIK they are
| all following Philips lead on that, but they can totally
| work in a P2P fashion without any hub. They negotiate
| their own key, you just need to pair them with a very
| close distance (less than 5cm approx).
| comfydragon wrote:
| > Matter simplifies this. It defines the API layer.
|
| Technically Zigbee _also_ defines an API layer -- the
| Zigbee Cluster Library, or ZCL -- but that's more like an
| opt-in standard you _could_ implement, rather than any
| hard requirement. And no surprise, the Matter Cluster
| Library Specification, being authored by the same CSA
| that made ZCL, is eerily similar to ZCL...
|
| But as I understand it, you're right that Matter is
| essentially "hey everyone, let's _actually_ standardize
| around a common application layer". It isn't
| technologically revolutionary (the building blocks have
| been around for more than a decade), but it's a better
| packaging of it all.
|
| Source: My employer has been involved with Zigbee and
| other low-power network technologies for a long time.
| close04 wrote:
| > You never needed a bucket of hubs with things like
| zigbee2mqtt or the Zigbee implementation in Home Assistant
|
| That works, I am doing the same. But the average consumers
| don't want to be bothered to run HA, they want things to
| work out of the box with minimal fuss setting up or
| operating. This usually meant having the Philips hub, the
| IKEA hub, the Samsung hub, etc.
|
| > That's enough a proof that the issue was not in the
| protocol
|
| For sure not in the Zigbee protocol, which is standard. The
| differences are in the logical communication protocol, at
| application level. Each manufacturer wanted to fully
| control their product, with no alignment with other
| manufacturers, which made devices and hubs mostly
| incompatible outside of each ecosystem. This is what Matter
| is looking to fix. One controller coordinating over a
| standard protocol a bunch of IPv6 devices connected via
| WiFi, Ethernet, or Thread.
|
| And best part, Matter certification means the devices have
| to be able to operate locally. No more "cloud polling" [0]
| type integrations even for basic functions.
|
| [0] https://www.home-
| assistant.io/blog/2016/02/12/classifying-th...
| whitehexagon wrote:
| some background:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44507971
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| Vendor lock in.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45658056
|
| edit: Feel free to down but the evidence is in the products.
|
| Zigbee will work with any other Zigbee device if it is properly
| implemented. not so with Thread.
| RealStickman_ wrote:
| Please enlighten me how the ip-network-using mattress in any
| way relates to a Matter and Thread network
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| >I can only speak to my experience, certified devices by
| the largest firms will mostly not interoperate (fails
| around authN).
|
| >Apple: Keeps Thread credentials locked to HomeKit's border
| routers.
|
| >Google: Shares some credentials, but only within Google
| Account environment.
|
| >Amazon: TBD, but their Matter implementation is mostly
| cloud-tied.
|
| >Samsung: Hybrid approach; still best when used inside
| SmartThings, their 1.4 update seems to support for joining
| existing Thread networks. Still have to test it.
|
| >So, even though Thread theoretically allows full
| interoperability, no vendor wants to be reduced to a dumb
| router in someone else's ecosystem.
|
| >there is no easy way to bridge Apple Thread to Home
| Assistant or Google Thread, even though it is theoretically
| supposed to be possible from a protocol standpoint.
|
| >If you have such solutions, let me know, because I would
| take full advantage of it, and will regale your
| contributions in multiple home automation threads.
| torginus wrote:
| It's an application layer standard that describes how devices
| should present themselves and present information and accept
| control signals in a standard way.
|
| It can run over Wifi or Thread which provides the physical
| interface and networking support.
|
| In contrast Zigbee defines both the application layer and the
| networking.
| moshib wrote:
| IKEA's Zigbee devices have been some of the more stable smart
| devices I owned. I wasn't running their hub, opting to run with
| deCONZ in the past and moving to Zigbee2MQTT in recent years.
|
| I do wish the new range would include blinds; the previous
| generation (FYRTUR) is out of production, and it doesn't seem
| like there's a replacement yet.
| metadat wrote:
| Fwiw, Smartwings blinds are cost effective and have worked
| great for me for years now. Cone in both z-wave and zig
| flavors.
| cromka wrote:
| US brand only.
| scosman wrote:
| Word on reddit is they discontinued the blinds due to
| reliability problems. I have 3 and 1 failed so makes sense to
| me. They want to bring them back, but it's a complete redesign,
| not just normal planned product lifecycle iteration.
| ericd wrote:
| I hope they make them quieter this time!
| greggsy wrote:
| I have non ikea electric blinds. Sure they're a a little
| grindy but it's like 30 seconds two a day.
| ericd wrote:
| I'd agree, except one of the main reasons I bought them
| was to wake up to natural light, not to wake up to
| WHIIIRRRRRRRRR.
| donavanm wrote:
| FYI someone made their own firmware which will drive the
| motor at a slower speed. Significantly reduces the noise.
| deanc wrote:
| Using the blinds with a second gen hub now for about four
| years. No problems at all. Dreading the day they fail as
| they're non-negotiable during the summer.
| afavour wrote:
| FWIW I bought some Zigbee blinds from Amazon and they've
| been great. My windows weren't the right size for the IKEA
| ones and the sellers on Amazon will custom make them for
| you to within 1/8 inch or something like that.
| ArchOversight wrote:
| Which sellers? I have been looking for custom ones
| because I have some weird window sizes.
| bjoli wrote:
| The open/close sensors have been amazing.
| yborg wrote:
| The FYRTUR blinds were kinda crap, constantly had issues with
| them losing their minds and having to redo the setup. I also
| have the later Tredansen cellular shades, and those have been
| good ... but I just checked and those seem to be discontinued
| as well.
|
| Perils of being early adopter, but kind of soured on the whole
| smart home concept unless you are wealthy enough to redo all of
| your home lighting and window treatments every 10 years. Apart
| from the effort, it creates yet more e-waste. I have 30+ year
| old manual window shades and lamps and they all still work.
| zamalek wrote:
| > constantly had issues with them losing their minds and
| having to redo the setup
|
| I forked out for SmartWings blinds. You can choose between
| either Zigbee/Matter or Z-Wave (or neither I think?). The
| first-party hub is completely optional (that's important to
| look out for with Zigbee, which can be vendor-locked). They
| are drastically simpler than the average motorized blinds
| I've seen around, so I haven't had any of the mechanical
| failure nightmares. Pretty happy overall; though I haven't
| had them for 10 years.
|
| I do use them as a kind of alarm clock as I am absolutely
| horrific with mornings, so manual ones wouldn't really work
| out for me.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Yeah, I have a Dirigera hub, motion sensors and lights running
| pretty stably. I connect them into HomeKit via HomeBridge and
| it's been solid.
|
| I was also somewhat impressed, and happy, that the Dirigera
| supported the older (I think discontinued now) Tradfri devices
| rather than making you replace things.
| warp wrote:
| I installed some IKEA bulbs and switches with the IKEA dirigera
| hub, and had a terrible time. For example a LED strip lost
| connection a few times, and wouldn't connect on its own without
| unplugging/plugging.
|
| I replaced the hub with a Home Assistant Green with ZHA, and I
| haven't had any issues since.
|
| So in my experience each of the devices seem fine over Zigbee,
| but the hub doesn't seem verify good.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Does this mean they're abandoning Zigbee compatibility? In my
| experience, Ikea was making the most reliable Zigbee devices
| considering the price (as someone who just uses Zigbee and no
| Ikea hubs, just HA+Zigbee), and would be a shame to lose that,
| but maybe it's a clear sign I should investigate starting to use
| Matter more instead?
| j45 wrote:
| Investigate using home assistant and keep using both from one
| place.
| james-bcn wrote:
| Isn't Matter derived from Zigbee?
| devttyeu wrote:
| Both use 802.15.4 but iiuc zigbee does that with some
| incompatibilities.
| namibj wrote:
| That in itself is an umbrella.
|
| There's 3~5 variants that require separate radios or at
| least separate frontends to work probably.
|
| Notably these days are the ZigBee PHY and the FiRa PHY.
| gorbypark wrote:
| Yes and no. Zigbee is both the transport and the protocol,
| whereas Matter is a protocol but can run over different
| transports. Most common in Thread or WiFi, but it could be
| over ethernet or anything else, really. I would say Matter is
| not derived from zigbee, but Thread could be considered a
| derivative.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| The new Dirigera hub supports both for now
| (https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/customer-
| service/knowledge/articl...) so they'll probably slowly
| transition.
|
| It depends on your setup how easy it would be, but the Zigbee
| stick I use for controlling Ikea stuff also has firmware
| available for using it with Matter. There's a good chance
| whatever IoT solution you use can be hooked up to Matter.
| bluGill wrote:
| Matter is now a standard not just a common spec. Everyone
| should demand all new smart home devices support matter. (it is
| okay if you use Zigbee or some other alternative to control it
| today but you should still demand matter for the day you switch
| - that day should come)
|
| In particular note the bane of all smart homes: if you have to
| move the next owner won't have a clue what you did. In the
| worst case you have to hire an electrician (no DIY allowed
| since it isn't your house anymore) to rip that out so your
| house is livable. If you are using matter there is a chance
| they can start using your system in their own way. The more
| matter takes off the more likely this is. Also the more likely
| others will use it - perhaps you next house will have matter
| installed for you and so you can just automate it where you
| want to instead of rewiring the house first.
| guerrilla wrote:
| So, right now I use a Zigbee dongle on my a Raspberry Pi. Is
| that goimg to be possible with Matter?
| nexus7556 wrote:
| Yes, here is the one I use https://www.home-
| assistant.io/connectzbt1/
| kristofferR wrote:
| Matter is just the software. A lot of Matter devices use
| Thread as their radio protocol (think of it as "Zigbee
| 2.0") though, and you need a separate radio/dongle for
| that.
|
| Seems like Home Assistant will launch a combo Zigbee/Thread
| dongle with great range in two weeks, might want to wait
| for that: https://old.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/comments/1
| opak9w/new_...
| guerrilla wrote:
| Right, that sounds familiar. It's been so long since I've
| looked into this. Thank you.
| vollbrecht wrote:
| A standard where you have to pay to play. Cheapest option is
| 3000$ per product and 500$ annual.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| More information here:
|
| https://wizzdev.com/blog/how-much-does-it-cost-to-launch-
| mat...
|
| But, yes, Matter/Thread is more expensive than Zigbee by a
| lot.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| I wasn't aware of that. One other concern I have with
| Matter is that, if I understand correctly, Thread+Matter
| devices get their own IP address with internet access,
| whereas with Zigbee all of that has to be controlled by the
| gateway.
|
| In theory that's a win for Matter, but I'm a little
| concerned about the security and enshitification problems
| that might cause. I kinda like the idea that I can buy a
| cheap IoT lock off Temu and as long as my Zigbee gateway is
| secure there's very little chance of that decision coming
| back to bite me...
| cptskippy wrote:
| Having network access is my primary concern. The protocol
| was developed by the largest adware companies on the
| planet...
|
| I'm sure someone will chime in and say you can setup a
| VLAN and restrict all Matter devices from the internet
| yada yada...
|
| You don't have to do that with Z-Wave or ZigBee. And with
| ESPHome you know exactly what the device is doing because
| you have 100% control over it.
| protimewaster wrote:
| This is, to me, one of the absolute biggest selling
| points for ZigBee and Z-Wave.
|
| I can get some random, vendor I've never heard of, ZigBee
| sensor, and I know it won't do anything rogue on the
| internet because it doesn't have any way of getting to
| the internet.
|
| Also, ZigBee is extremely power efficient compared to
| WiFi. With ZigBee, I don't mind putting a sensor in the
| crawlspace or somewhere a pain to get to. It won't need
| the batteries changed for a year or two anyway.
|
| I know Matter can work over more efficient means than
| WiFi, but most of the cheaper devices I find are WiFi. A
| cheap ZigBee device is still ZigBee.
| ianburrell wrote:
| Many Matter products are running on Thread, which uses
| the same radio as Zigbee and has the same power savings.
|
| Thread doesn't have accessible IP address. It uses IPv6
| and the ULA space which is non-routable.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| Others have pointed out I might be wrong about this. See:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45837052
| ssl-3 wrote:
| Neither Matter nor Matter-over-Thread require Internet
| access.
|
| We really should be yelling for advancements in simple-
| to-configure dedicated, restricted VLANs and SSIDs for
| IOT devices instead of yelling about how inappropriate we
| think that using IP is.
|
| (Historically, IP wins in these conundrums anyway. IP has
| been succession of grand successes for decades.
|
| Resistance is futile. We should work to prepare for the
| eventually of what is to come.)
| DavidPeiffer wrote:
| >We really should be yelling for advancements in simple-
| to-configure dedicated, restricted VLANs and SSIDs for
| IOT devices instead of yelling about how inappropriate we
| think that using IP is.
|
| What is the lay of the land for typical consumers in this
| respect? Any products you've worked with or would
| recommend?
|
| I've recently started with Home Assistant and have been
| adding devices to my single network. The ISP provided
| eero modem/router doesn't provide VLAN capability.
| 05 wrote:
| Unless you're running Home Assistant and open source nodes.
| You can build a Matter+Thread node that works on a nrf52840
| MCU, there are examples in the Nordic SDK. But then, why
| would you bother with Matter which is so bloated it doesn't
| even fit in flash properly? The only example that works on
| 52840 requires external flash to hold the B partition for
| OTA updates :)
|
| So I'm using ESPHome for everything that could be wall
| powered and BTHome (with those same nrf52840 chips, you can
| buy boards for like $2 on Aliexpress) for everything that
| needs to run on battery.
| ValentineC wrote:
| > _Unless you 're running Home Assistant and open source
| nodes._
|
| I think the parent is referring more to manufacturers
| than end users.
|
| It would suck to have fewer low-cost competitors,
| especially from China manufacturers.
| charlie-83 wrote:
| That's not bad compared to Bluetooth. Also, you will need
| FCC cert by law and probably some UL certs if you actually
| want to sell you product anywhere so you are already
| looking at 10s of thousands even if you choose ZigBee. I
| would love to live in a world where indie hardware can
| launch wireless products without huge cert cost but that's
| not the world we live in.
| zamalek wrote:
| This is a double-edged sword.
|
| Zigbee's issue was that anyone could make devices _and
| modify the protocol._ Tons of devices are vendor-locked to
| their first-party hub. Philips attempted to do this
| recently with a firmware update and only backed off due to
| extremely bad PR.
|
| Z-Wave has the same "problem" as Matter. You have to pay
| the consortium per product. Part of that what that pays for
| is testing, and cross-vendor compatibility is mandatory. As
| a consumer you are _guaranteed_ that a Z-Wave device will
| work with any hub (and therefore Home Assistant /completely
| locally). You _own_ Z-Wave devices.
|
| I ran both in my old home, and used Zigbee devices where
| possible (Z-Wave devices are often more expensive).
|
| I would much rather have it the way of Z-Wave and Matter.
| It is the lesser of two evils.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Definitely will not be buying Matter stuff. Way too
| complicated, doesn't address the real problems in smarthome
| technology.
|
| I usually take my smart devices with me when I move. It's a
| pretty expensive thing to leave behind for a new owner that
| probably won't use it anyways. If someone offered me extra to
| leave them I might and then I'd also leave a manual.
| devttyeu wrote:
| It does address quite a few reliability issues - you can
| have multiple gateways into the thread network so it is
| actually highly available.
|
| It's definitely complicated, but it's a kind of usb-c of
| smart home - you only worry about the complex part when
| building a product. Just wish there was a better device
| reset/portability story.
| 05 wrote:
| > I usually take my smart devices with me when I move.
|
| Considering you can't even set up Matter devices if you
| lost the enrollment QR code (and the manual enrollment code
| is printed on the back of those ceiling downlights), it's a
| very good idea to take them with you and avoid frustrating
| the future occupants :)
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Yeah as noted I don't have any Matter-based systems.
| Also, all of mine are designed to work with or without
| smart components: Aka, a light switch turns on or off the
| lights when you touch it.
| kyriakos wrote:
| you can get a Zigbee / Matter / Thread coordinator and continue
| using HA as before (google SMLIGHT)
| nerdjon wrote:
| Is there an article that has the US pricing anywhere? It doesn't
| look like any of these are on the US site yet so I am curious
| what these will actually cost.
|
| I keep hoping that Ikea would come up with something that can go
| over a switch to manually control it. Seems like it would be very
| much within Ikea's target market (renters). There are devices
| like this on Amazon but having used them in the past they are
| finicky at best.
| conception wrote:
| When I rented I just replaced things and kept them in a box and
| put everything back when I left.
| whitehexagon wrote:
| The ZigBee range used to include a bulb and remote, so you just
| leave the mains switch on.
|
| Otherwise, I used floor lights in the past with WiFi switchable
| sockets before I switched to ZigBee. The WiFi ones wanted to
| dial home.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Tangential but I was wondering if anyone knows of a thermostat
| that can work with a security system for the most simple and
| accurate location sensing possible- when I press away on the
| alarm it turns the HVAC to eco type settings to save energy. I
| used to get this with Google Nest and location sensing from my
| phone but Google as always is killing my generation of Nest
| thermostat. I think I'd like to get away from location sensing
| entirely. Every time I leave the house I do the alarm, so that is
| all I need.
| ramses0 wrote:
| Certainly there's something with home assistant (or apple
| shortcuts) you can do? There's some nest firmware replacement
| that's a bit DIY, but HomeAssistant and friends will be the way
| to bridge between differing home automation bits/services.
| j45 wrote:
| Check out ecobee. It should set away mode how you need.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Oh interesting didn't know they made security systems too.
| j45 wrote:
| My initial thought was if ecobee might integrate with the
| rest of what you already ave.
| Loic wrote:
| If you are retrofitting a complete house at the same time, look
| at KNX. If not, do not explore this rabbit hole.
| kevstev wrote:
| Can be relatively simple inside of Home Assistant. I have my
| alarm attached to Konnected, and that has an HA integration. I
| can both arm and disarm my alarm through an HA dashboard, and
| also have it arm itself if both myself and the wife are out of
| the house. You may not even need the alarm integration part-
| you can just use the home/away functionality and set the
| thermostat. The thermostat integration part I am less sure
| about, just because I haven't used it, but it should be fairly
| easy to set the set temps based on your home/away status.
|
| Of course you need Home Assistant set up for this, but if you
| are interested in these types of things, it will be very
| useful.
| carderne wrote:
| What "hub" thing do I need to use this? I use an iPhone but
| really just want to use some physical remote switches.
|
| I currently use Home Assistant but want to shift to something
| more "mass market" as I'm bored of being family tech support.
| k33l0r wrote:
| An Apple TV or HomePod mini, if you want to stay within the
| Apple ecosystem...
| fundatus wrote:
| You could get an IKEA Dirigera, but one of the upsides of
| Matter is that you do not need the manufacturers hub anymore.
| So an Apple Homepod or a Home Assistant instance with a Thread
| stick will do as well! (Or any other Matter hub for that matter
| of course)
| petepete wrote:
| I use an IKEA Dirigera, which speaks both Zigbee and Matter.
| kps wrote:
| For some degree of future-proofing you'll definitely want a
| device with a Thread radio.
|
| (I've done paid work on Matter so I'll avoid giving possibly-
| tainted opinions on any particular vendor's products.)
| thedougd wrote:
| You're looking for a Thread border gateway. Lots of stuff
| already has it. Someone mentioned AppleTV and HomePod mini.
| Newer Google Nest speakers/displays have it as well.
|
| But you can do it with just Home Assistant and a Thread radio:
| https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/thread#turning-ho...
|
| Personally, I pair my wifi and Thread matter devices to my
| Apple Home, as each Apple TV behaves as a redundant, ethernet
| connected gateway. I then do a secondary pairing to Home
| Assistant and Google Home. Local control and it works very
| well.
| carderne wrote:
| Is it absolutely necessary to have a base/gateway? This Verge
| article[0] seems to imply not, but it's not at all clear to
| me what I lose.
|
| If I just want a smart switch that controls a smart light,
| can I do that without a hub? Can I use my phone to control
| that light/switch in a pinch? I'm not averse to spending $100
| or whatever, but it's just more _stuff_ that I'd rather not
| think about.
|
| [0] "Apple now lets you add Matter devices to Apple Home
| without a hub"
| https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/18/24246581/ios18-matter-
| sma...
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Can't Matter devices connect directly to Apple HomeKit? So if
| you have a HomePod (or even a MiniPod though I'm not sure) it
| should connect all these Ikea devices too.
| AndrewDucker wrote:
| Excellent.
|
| I have some Thread/Matter smart bulbs, and they work well, but
| Ikea joining in shows that it's finally ready for the mass
| market.
| LeafItAlone wrote:
| Their new smart plugs finally seem reasonably sized. I love
| IKEA's smart home products, but their smart plugs (and many of
| their device power plugs) are comically sized in the US. Their
| original US version of the TRADFRI plugs wouldn't even allow for
| two to be plugged into the same (standard size) dual wall outlet.
| Their more recent TRETAKT is much better, but still larger than
| competitors.
| ifh-hn wrote:
| I've never really got the smart home thing, and the shit being
| pulled with the likes of "smart" TVs and cars has really put me
| off any sort of network connected device I can't control.
|
| How would you use this and ensure privacy and security? Without
| investing time in becoming an amateur network engineer?
| kristofferR wrote:
| That's half the point, these are using local communication
| (Matter over Thread) and are not cloud based. Privacy by
| default
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| Easy -- you're not their target demographics. Almost all of my
| friends have some sort of "smart" devices, and I've helped
| personally to install them when things were a bit annoying
| (Spotify not syncing, dhcp not working properly and etc.).
| Absolutely not a single person cared about the "privacy and
| security" issue.
| kristofferR wrote:
| That's just untrue, these are the exact products a privacy
| conscious demographic would/should buy.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| Of course there are. IKEA just doesn't care about them
| because the market is so small it's just not worth it.
| vablings wrote:
| I think IKEA does care about this kind of stuff. In the
| past couple of years there has been an ongoing
| enshittification of smart home devices to move into the
| IoT space requiring a Wi-Fi connection that always pings
| a "home server" and when aws-east-1 is down your lights
| don't work or whatever.
|
| Despite this IKEAs devices have been mostly Zigbee and
| have worked very well with ZB2MQTT and Home Assistant out
| of the box. You are not required to buy a hub either that
| talks to some random server. Not to mention that IKEA had
| the to make sure the new smart hub the released was
| compatible with Matter/Thread meaning that customers are
| not forced to send more E-waste to landfill. The bar is
| pretty low these days and I feel IKEA exceeds that by a
| large margin
| microtonal wrote:
| You can have both, Zigbee/Z-Wave devices are really easy to
| set up _and_ they are purely local.
| delecti wrote:
| It's not that complicated to get, some of them have useful
| features.
|
| It's just a personal tradeoff between features, downsides, and
| risks. Most people don't consider the risks at all (implicitly
| down-weighting that factor), and the value assigned to the
| features and downsides varies by person. I have some smart
| lights, because I like the convenience of those lights being on
| voice control. My TV is "smart" but doesn't get internet
| because I don't consider the risk of ads acceptable.
| buckle8017 wrote:
| ZigBee, Thread, and Matter are all locally controlled if you
| have a local controller that is controlled locally.
|
| You'll still end up being an amateur network engineer though.
| microtonal wrote:
| I don't have much experience with Thread + Matter (except the
| only device I have, an upgraded Eve Energy being a PITA), but
| for Zigbee/Z-Wave you do not have to be an amateur network
| engineer. Pairing is really straightforward and devices will
| automatically mesh and get routed by most mains-powered
| Zigbee/Z-Wave devices. It's not like you have to set up DHCP,
| manage an IP address range or anything like it.
| kobalsky wrote:
| running home assistant on a raspberry with a zigbee usb hub is
| a weekend project and it gives you full control of your
| devices, you don't need internet access or any cloud
| subscription to control them.
| seanalltogether wrote:
| As someone who is a bit of a luddite when it comes to smart
| home features, there are 2 things that really stand out to me
| that i would like.
|
| 1. Open/Close sensors, I would like to put sensors on my shed
| door and side gates that can tell me if they are open or
| closed. I will occassionally leave these open, or the kids may
| leave them open and would prefer they be closed each night.
| It's impossible for me to tell if they are closed at the moment
| without stepping outside.
|
| 2. Smart plugs. Being able to remotely operate / schedule plugs
| to shut off or on seems pretty nice. Outdoor lights being one
| usecase. Kids media area is another.
| thedougd wrote:
| I use YoLink products for #1. LoRA radio based with 1/4 mile
| range and low power consumption. I have one on my shed door.
| Frequently on sale at Amazon.
| magixx wrote:
| Open/Close sensors + lights (and optionally luminance sensor)
| is what I find to be useful. When I open my home door the
| light turns on automatically if it's dark enough.
| teamonkey wrote:
| It seems like you have a strong enough use case to justify
| it!
|
| I started with similar needs and thought it would be
| frivolous, but now I find it genuinely useful and can't
| believe I waited so long.
| astronads wrote:
| The solution is home assistant [0] it lets you manage and
| control all kinds of smart devices with a lot of customizable,
| hackable things. And it runs locally, so if you buy the right
| types of devices that don't phone home to the cloud (or you
| shitcan their internet access) you can fully manage your own
| system.
|
| [0] https://www.home-assistant.io/
| microtonal wrote:
| Or if you want something more of an appliance, some other
| Hubs with Zigbee, Z-Wave, and Thread + Matter support are:
| Homey Pro, Homey Bridge, Aeotec SmartThings Hub, and Hubitat.
|
| I only have experience with the first three (besides Home
| Assistant) and they work very well (though the SmartThings
| hub is somewhat limited when it comes to device support,
| graphing, etc.).
|
| I should also mention that with Homey Bridge the dashboard is
| in their cloud, though the Zigbee/Z-Wave devices are fully
| local. Homey Pro is also local. (I think they have a Homey
| Pro Mini in the US now.)
| torginus wrote:
| Imho Home Assistant is the way to go - there's just so much
| weirdness going on in a regular home you need to accomodate
| that with any of these 'turnkey' solutions, you'll run into
| some limitation that you can't get around.
|
| HA is fiddly but with enough effort you can make anything
| run the way you want to, and the community is pretty
| active.
| microtonal wrote:
| I tried Home Assistant, but found it fiddly and to have
| weird limitations, e.g. the recommendation to limit
| statistics collection to 90 days for performance reasons
| (so you have to set up something like InfluxDB
| otherwise). The UI is also weird and not very logical.
|
| _weirdness going on in a regular home you need to
| accomodate that with any of these 'turnkey' solutions_
|
| Homey Pro supports user apps written in HomeyScript
| (which is JavaScript-based). Similar to Home Assistant,
| there are many community extensions, including more
| obscure things. For instance, our not-very-common heat
| pump is also supported in Homey. A lot of vendors make
| Homey apps as well.
|
| In a household with more than one person, everyone
| eventually has to use the home automation system and with
| Homey (but also SmartThings), I am sure my wife can also
| manage it when necessary if I'm on the go. Managing Home
| Assistant + the hardware is going to take a lot more
| effort to learn.
| c-hendricks wrote:
| Luckily me and my partner are all Apple, so even though
| the smart home is backed by Home Assistant, our interface
| to it is via the Home app (or Siri)
| rpcope1 wrote:
| > any sort of network connected device I can't control. How
| would you use this and ensure privacy and security?
|
| This was exactly the nice thing about Zigbee (and Z-Wave).
| They're not IP networks, they basically just work with any hub,
| and have no way of phoning home at all. You can use them with
| Home Assistant or other open source tools or write your own
| stack if you wanted. The thing that really blows about the
| switch to matter, is that it is IP based, and it looks like
| vendors will have another opportunity to tie specific
| functionality to their own hubs (and probably find a way to
| exfiltrate telemetry). There really wasn't anything wrong with
| Zigbee or Z-wave that couldn't be fixed in incremental protocol
| revisions (IMHO), but they don't generate money the way WiFi
| devices collecting telemetry or hardware churn for the sake of
| hardware churn does.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| Before buying any IOT devices, see if you can download the
| firmware from the manufacturer's website. If you can't, do not
| buy that product.
|
| I like Shelly's doodads. They are easy to work with, you can
| flash their firmware with an alternative if you want (Tasamota
| is popular). They have a decent onboard scheduler and the only
| app you need is a web browser pointed at its IP address. They
| don't need internet access.
| whitehexagon wrote:
| Although I have been trying to only buy 'needs' not 'wants'
| recently, I did stockpile a few IKEA ZigBee gadgets before they
| retired them. One of the few product lines their MBA's hadn't
| destroyed.
|
| I was working on some Golang code, talking to them via the very
| open ConBee II ZigBee gateway. Great fun, and very fast once I
| got subscribe vs polling working. So now I get an SMS for door
| access, but kinda hopefully never for a water leak.
|
| No interest in yet another 'standard', especially since Matter
| seems to mandate PKI device attestation. ZigBee just feels more
| open to me, and I have enough eWaste devices with expired
| certificates.
| mongol wrote:
| Will zigbee2mqtt be able to talk to these? Or are they in a fully
| different type of network? If not, any other software that can do
| MQTT bridging with these?
| kiney wrote:
| sadly not, and afaik they don't plan on adding matter support.
| Thats a big reason I'll stick with zigbee for now.
| martin_a wrote:
| I find pairing my IKEA bulbs and switches and whatnot to my
| Conbee 2 stick sometimes hard to do.
|
| I'm thinking about buying a Dirigera hub instead, using that for
| the IKEA devices and using the Conbee stick only for non-IKEA
| products.
|
| Does that work flawlessly when being controlled via HA or are
| there other issues to be expected?
|
| edit: Maybe even ditch the Conbee stick after all, build some
| ESPHome devices as replacements (temperature/humidty - or wait
| for the IKEA version of that).
| whitehexagon wrote:
| Agreed. I had no problem with the conBee II itself, but it did
| take me a while to figure out different IKEA ZigBee devices
| required different 'secret handshakes' to tigger pairing. eg
| number of button presses within a second, I think one was 5x,
| another 4x, and lights were different again. Still, I prefered
| that hasle than having a hub dialling home.
|
| But it was pretty stable once it was setup. Just occasional
| reboot on the rPI but I think that was my flakey SMS gateway
| code.
| loufe wrote:
| I just bought an AirGradient sensor and set up home assistant.
| What an absolute joy, both experiences (though I had issues
| building AirGradient's firmware due to some issues on their end,
| to their credit their dev team told me they're going to adopt my
| recommendations) are streamlined and professional and super easy
| to set up for a techie. I've already got in the habit of opening
| the window to the office as the sensor detects elevated CO2
| (happens faster and more often than expected, very glad I
| invested).
|
| However, I also bought a 3 SCD41 sensors and ESP32 C3 Superminis
| from the most reputable sellers on AliExpress, that's been an
| abject failure. I wanted additional sensors in other rooms less
| at risk, and wanted to try using ESPHome and putting together my
| own soldered little devices. Got counterfeit sensors (no laser
| engraving on the side as Sensiron indicates is without reception
| the case in genuine parts) and either counterfeit or defective
| microcontrollers (cannot connect to wifi, even 2.4GHz WPA2, a
| common enough problem from my research with ). The spread from
| reputable sellers in NA was absolutely ridiculous and worse then
| buying premade pieces by a large margin.
|
| All to say, as fun as DIY is, I'm grateful to have trustworthy
| products available affordably. I'll still block internet access
| and leave them on a dedicated IoT VLAN, but I can at least not
| worry it's going to incorrectly label the air quality for a
| child's bedroom. I'll probably pick up 3 of the CO2 sensors from
| IKEA, if reviews look good.
| bjoli wrote:
| I really hope that is CO2 and not eCO2.
| scosman wrote:
| I suggest the SenseAir sensors. They don't seem as susceptible
| to fakes, and auto calibrate when exposed to fresh air.
| Supported by ESP home so build is simple.
|
| Any evidence the Ikea sensor are actual CO2 censors and not
| just cheap "eCO2" sensors? Lots of the "CO2" censors our there
| are just cheap VOC censors with an calculation to estimate CO2.
| exabrial wrote:
| I'm not investing in any smart home products unless:
|
| * I can fully control them without the cloud on a non-internet
| connected network
|
| * I can either pay for updates, or they have free updates for at
| least 12 years, ideally 15
|
| If a hurricane or tornado strikes, or some dictator tries to tell
| me what I can and can't do, my devices need to remain under my
| command.
| nixgeek wrote:
| These are all Matter-over-Thread and meet your requirements,
| yay!
| davidmurdoch wrote:
| Elegrp switches can be used offline. They need to be
| provisioned online first though, unless you flash with esphome
| (which can't currently be done wirelessly), but then you'll
| have to write a custom integration config.
|
| Pros: very inexpensive, and they look great. Cons: WiFi/ble
| only, they feel cheap, dimmers don't support a "transition"
| comment, so you cant dim over time easily.
| culebron21 wrote:
| I have accumulated so much smart-stuff fatigue, I can't stand
| anything branded as "smart". This means, as you point out, 1)
| any outage in the chain between me and the vendor's app shuts
| everything down for me, 2) stuff behaves inconsistently all the
| time. (e.g. Bluetooth speakers with a smartphone/tablet player
| app -- every other time something goes wrong: the app frozen
| completely because search autocomplete lost packets; you can't
| find the damn playlist buried in a sea of features; another
| your device wakes up and steals the bluetooth speakers.)
|
| Regarding the electric switches, I was fond of bypass switches
| (where you can turn on/off by flipping any of the switches
| connected to a lamp) and made a lot of them in my apartments.
| Turned out not all of them were needed. I didn't need much
| control at home, e.g. I don't need to control the lighting
| above the kitchen desk when I'm not in front of it.
|
| Wifi switches allow a lot of freedom in positioning and re-
| positioning them, but they escalate everything to the
| unreliable realm of IP/internet devices. I'd probably vote for
| a controller on a lamp, and switches not actually inerrupting
| 230V~, but be connected with a thin and flat 12V= bus, and just
| signalling, and hence be easy to put under wallpapers. (5V=
| would be hard to send further than 3 metres.)
| torginus wrote:
| Modern smart switches are pretty small (most of them are
| designed to fit into wall sockets behind plugs/light
| switches).
|
| I personally think relays are a much more reliable than solid
| state switches and are very unlikely to fail in a dangerous
| way, and fully interupt the circuit, but they do have a
| 'click' some people dislike, and have a lifetime of 100k-ish
| switches, so for an application where you keep switching
| rapidly (e.g. not light switches), this might be a problem.
|
| Ikea used Thread and Zigbee which are not Wifi, they use a
| mesh network and don't suffer from saturation the way Wifi
| does, in fact adding more devices tends to make the network
| more reliable since devices can route around failing or
| congested nodes.
|
| I've had good experience with them in practice, but do be
| mindful that they share the 2.4GHz band with Wifi so in an
| apt building, you might run into radio channel congestion.
|
| Personally I use smart home stuff for controlling heating
| devices and a few other key items, I don't think it makes
| sense to make every light switch smart, but technically
| people have done so and it tends to work all right.
| Loic wrote:
| Currently renovating our house, everything will be KNX based.
| Offline, no servers needed (even within the house) but nice for
| visualization, standard, 500+ vendors of compatible hardware.
| Highly recommended.
| kleiba wrote:
| Also currently renovating our house, will not put any smart
| home stuff in it at all.
| torginus wrote:
| All previous Zigbee and current Thread devices are physically
| incapable of connecting to the internet - the hub they talk to
| might, but since these are standardized (Matter and/or Zigbee
| define standard protocols for devices like this), you wont have
| problems picking another hub.
|
| As for software updates, they can be updated, but these devices
| are so simple they can be reasonably bug free after a while -
| and security's not a concern (that much) since they don't
| really have internet access.
|
| Some devices were known to have vulnearbilities where the
| attacker was physically present to get in radio contact with
| the device, but those are pretty rare and impossible to exploit
| en masse.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| I realize Thread devices need a border router, but once
| they're connected to that router don't they get an IPv6
| address with internet access? Or am I just misunderstanding
| the protocol?
| torginus wrote:
| Not 100% sure about Thread as I'm more used to Zigbee, but
| afaik the Thread router acts as either a proxy between your
| regular network and the Thread devices (you can wrap IPv6
| packets so they can be exposed over regular ethernet) or
| the router is the smart hub itself and the nodes are not
| really accessible from the Wifi network.
|
| How it works in Home Assistant afaik is that the border
| router is a piece of software running in docker that has
| access to the radio, and then HA talks to the thread
| devices via the virtual network interface of Docker.
| nagisa wrote:
| A border router is not necessary in a typical installation!
| Its something you only need if you want to do fancy things.
| Otherwise a commissioner is sufficient (to bring the device
| onto the network.)
|
| That said, it is entirely up to you how you would configure
| the system that the thread border router connects to.
| Thread specification uses local addresses for the thread
| devices, so in order for these devices to get access out
| into the public internet you would need to NAT the IPv6
| pretty much (or the devices would have to be smart enough
| to figure out a globally routable IP address, via e.g.
| DHCP.) At the same time since it is all bog-standard IPv6,
| you also get full control with firewall rules,
| NAT/forwarding and such.
|
| Overall you'd need either a very unusual device or a major
| misconfiguration off the beaten path to get thread devices
| talking on the public internet.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| Almost all real-world Thread networks I'm aware of have a
| border router in the form of an Apple TV, Nest Hub,
| Amazon Echo, etc, so I'm not particularly reassured by
| the fact that the protocol doesn't technically require
| one.
|
| I was under the impression IPv6 doesn't need NAT. But
| you're saying they only get unique local addresses, so
| even with a border router bridging the connection back to
| my local Wi-Fi network they still can't send packets out
| to the internet? "They would have to ask DHCP for a real
| IP first" doesn't seem like much of a barrier.
| close04 wrote:
| > the hub they talk to might, but since these are
| standardized (Matter and/or Zigbee define standard protocols
| for devices like this), you wont have problems picking
| another hub.
|
| For Matter (regardless of network connectivity - WiFi,
| Ethernet, or Thread) this is part of the certification, the
| devices must be controllable locally and without internet
| connectivity at least for basic or core functions.
|
| For Zigbee there's no such thing. Zigbee is the network
| protocol and the manufacturers usually implemented whatever
| communication protocol they wanted on top. This is why my
| Tado thermostats that communicate with the hub over Zigbee
| aren't compatible with any other hub and need the cloud
| connectivity even when integrated with HA [0][1].
|
| [0] https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/tado/
|
| [1] https://www.home-
| assistant.io/blog/2016/02/12/classifying-th...
| torginus wrote:
| Pretty sure Zigbee also defines a control layers, so
| there's such a thing as a standard switch or power meter,
| or thermostat which can be controlled by any generic piece
| of software.
|
| A lot of devices are not compliant though and either have
| extra functionality exposed in a nonstandard way, or don't
| comform to the standard well enough.
|
| So your Zigbee light switch will probably workout any fuss
| regardless of vendor but more complex devices might not.
| close04 wrote:
| > A lot of devices are not compliant though
|
| That's exactly the problem, there was no standard
| protocol for communication over Zigbee. Manufacturers
| could implement whatever they wanted on top of it and put
| the Zigbee logo, like you can put the WiFi logo on a
| device that speaks a proprietary protocol over WiFi. You
| bought into an ecosystem and if you wanted a device from
| outside of it, you needed another hub.
|
| > So your Zigbee light switch will probably workout any
| fuss
|
| Big "depends". _Out of the box_ it will only work for the
| few manufacturers who look to be compatible with some
| other hubs. I tested a lot of basic devices (simple
| switches or bulbs) with various hubs with little success.
| Philips, IKEA, Bosch, Tuya, Aqara, Osram, etc. Couldn 't
| discover, add, or control them properly without the
| corresponding hub.
|
| If you use a device with HA and a Zigbee stick
| (router/coordinator) then you benefit from a lot of
| development done in the background to "translate" between
| all the variations. But that's not something non-techies
| want to deal with, it's too much of a hassle.
|
| This is the problem that Matter solves. Certified devices
| must implement the standard communication protocol over
| the network of choice. So no matter the manufacturer, if
| I see a Matter logo I know the device will work with my
| Matter.
| thedougd wrote:
| I really wish wall switches and dimmers were included in the
| first drop. I've long been in the market for affordable Matter
| over Thread switches with a matte white finish from a reliable
| vendor.
|
| They need to cover all the categories too (single, multi-pole,
| dimmer, and maybe fan speed) so I know I won't end up with a
| hodge podge of brands and looks.
|
| I'll keep holding out.
| nixgeek wrote:
| Is anyone aware of or working on an equivalent to zigbee2mqtt but
| for both Matter-over-WiFi and Matter-over-Thread devices?
|
| It's so darn convenient to have MQTT in the picture for home
| automation and my #1 challenge in imagining a future world past
| my 400+ ZigBee devices is what replaces zigbee2mqtt and has a
| similar "owner experience".
| Maxious wrote:
| https://github.com/matter-js/matter.js has a MQTT example for
| familiarity but the intention is that devices just communicate
| over UDP
| gniv wrote:
| Do any of these devices alert when the electricity is cut? I
| never hear talk about this but I had this happen -- power went
| out while I was on vacation and I didn't figure it out until much
| later when I tried to cook some of the food from the freezer.
| macNchz wrote:
| There are many options for simple digital refrigerator/freezer
| thermometers that will show you a historical maximum, for that
| particular issue, some of which have smart integrations. There
| are also "maximum-registering" analog thermometers with a
| little indicator that gets pushed along as the needle goes up,
| then stays in place when it drops again.
| jjkaczor wrote:
| Still looking for a good "smart stove" for the mother-in-law who
| is showing early stages of Alzheimer's/dementia, but in complete
| denial and will not seek medical advice. So, I need something to
| be able to monitor it, turn it off, etc. LG or Samsung seem to be
| the only games in-town - I have also looked at a smart-plug
| capable of 220v, but - that "all-or-nothing" may be overkill.
| rkomorn wrote:
| An induction stove doesn't answer your monitoring needs, but
| it's probably the safest thing to cook with. Only heats up when
| there's a pan, not prone to fires, ours even complains loudly
| if something unexpected is happening (eg lots of spilled
| liquid).
| jonplackett wrote:
| Every induction stove I've ever used though, was designed by
| someone who either has never heard of human interface design,
| or has done and entirely hates the concept of it.
|
| Eg, buttons so close to the heating element that they hurt to
| press
|
| Buttons to turn it off that only work when dry, places near
| where a spill would go.
|
| Buttons you have to press up to 10 times just to get it to a
| reasonable heat.
|
| Why does induction also have to equal no buttons, and no
| dials?
| don_neufeld wrote:
| There is an ease of cleaning value that comes from a single
| unbroken surface.
|
| That said - placement needs some work. Or put the UI in a
| phone.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Dials are easy to pop off and clean behind. What sucks
| with the flat buttons is they wear out in 10 years now
| you get cleaning solution behind the plastic into the
| internals.
| kristofferR wrote:
| I think the parents are mostly talking about touch
| buttons below the glass though.
|
| I am very pleased with my induction stove controls:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhZjqhs8314
|
| So easy to control and to clean, I shudder at the thought
| of cleaning fat splashed physical dials/buttons.
| throwup238 wrote:
| I like the Impulse Labs hob which has an unbroken surface
| and magnetic knobs that can be removed for cleaning.
| baq wrote:
| This one is absolutely legit amazing, but the price, oof.
| creaturemachine wrote:
| LG has built induction models with knobs for years. The
| touch surfaces are nice but can be difficult for the
| elderly.
| pphysch wrote:
| Yep the LG induction models have a sensible UI with big
| knobs. The oven is pretty good too IME.
| rkomorn wrote:
| Yeah there are admittedly lots of designs that make me
| scratch my head.
| mynameajeff wrote:
| I housesitted at a very nice house with an induction stove
| and it was one of the most anti-human designs I've ever
| experienced in a stove. If I wasn't being as clean and tidy
| as possible for the sake of the homeowners I couldn't
| imagine how much worse it could've been as the entirely
| touch based interface added a whole other layer of
| frustration on top of the extremely confusing UX. I thought
| this was maybe unique to this stove but every other
| induction stove I've seen sold at appliance stores has had
| the exact same layout. I truly don't understand it.
| kraftman wrote:
| I spent a year in a bunch of airbnbs and every time there
| was an induction hob it had at least one of these issues. I
| really like them otherwise but the buttons are just so bad.
| kristofferR wrote:
| Isn't a stove/cooker guard actually what you're looking for?
|
| They're legally mandated in Norway, there's already a big
| section of them, some have Zigbee, like this one:
|
| https://www.firefence.org/
| https://www.bekkelund.net/2024/02/19/firefence-komfyrvakt/
|
| I'm sure there are products in other markets too.
| poisonborz wrote:
| For the power user, I don't see much that Matter/Thread offers
| over Zigbee. The "unified command protocol" is not much of a
| problem with attentive device selection (and for chinese products
| there is Tuya) and as for Thread, it's not dramatically better.
| There were debates around this 4+ years ago, and will be 4+ years
| from now. The standard is out forever, search any marketplace,
| you will find that Zigbee/Wifi outnumber Matter devices 10:1.
| notatoad wrote:
| >For the power user
|
| i don't think it does, or that it's even trying to. the problem
| it's trying to solve isn't the power user who's already got a
| home assistant server running. matter/thread is for the person
| who buys cheap smart home products off amazon and ends up with
| a half-dozen poorly-translated proprietary apps on their phone
| to manage it all.
| poisonborz wrote:
| Another take: what does it offer companies? They don't really
| want interoperability. Google, Apple, Alexa are the
| gravitational forces, and most mainstream devices already
| support them. Matter makes device maker's platform/own device
| portfolio aspirations weaker.
| notatoad wrote:
| for a smart home device company who wants to be the
| platform by means of vendor lock-in, it offers them
| nothing. but that's not everybody, and hopefully the
| companies trying to do that fail.
|
| for companies that make some appliance and don't have
| aspirations to be a smart home platform, matter and thread
| gives them an easy way to get their device into the apple
| or google home apps and check off the "smart" box on the
| spec sheet without having to build an app and run servers.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > There were debates around this 4+ years ago, and will be 4+
| years from now. The standard is out forever, search any
| marketplace
|
| The submission you're commenting on seems to indicate some
| movement at least, from a very large company that seems to be
| moderately popular already because of built-in Zigbee support.
| So if anything, the tides are somewhat turning, but as always
| with standards, it takes a long time for end-user products to
| actually appear on the market.
| Eduard wrote:
| that same vendor IKEA has also abandoned Zigbee after their
| support of a few years.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| So what's the skinny with Matter devices? I was potentially
| looking into one so that I could plug my Moccamaster into a smart
| timer (wonderful coffee maker, but the lack of programmable
| functionality has my wife constantly wanting to pull out our old
| Ninja), and I liked what I read about Matter. But it would be my
| first Matter device and I started to get discouraged when the
| documentation said I would need to purchase a Matter "hub" or
| something to act as the controller, so I held off.
| notatoad wrote:
| the skinny with all smart home tech is that if you try to get
| by without a hub of some sort, you're signing up for endless
| frustration.
|
| can you use a dumb timer instead of a smart one? if you just
| want to set a schedule, there's no need for an internet
| connection there.
| vardump wrote:
| I hope these new IKEA light bulbs finally reproduce deep greens.
| Some cyan shades were also nearly white. Blue and red shades were
| fine. (Not so coincidentally green shades are always missing from
| IKEA's product photos.)
| cameldrv wrote:
| I really like the idea of an open, local standard for this stuff.
| I have been a little annoyed at the matter standards immaturity
| still. Two things I've noticed is that there's not good support
| for very low power devices that use WiFi. What you'd like to do,
| for example for a battery powered sensor, is to go into deep
| sleep and disconnect from the WiFi and then wake up periodically
| and report the sensor reading. Unfortunately as far as I can
| tell, you can't really tell a matter hub that you're going to
| disconnect from wifi and when you expect to reconnect and not
| have matter mark the device as missing. There are some things you
| can do with certain WiFi routers, but they're not universally
| supported and they have time limits.
|
| The device type catalog is also somewhat limited, for example
| there's no garage door device type.
| kps wrote:
| >there's not good support for very low power devices that use
| WiFi
|
| That's what Thread is for.
| niceguy1827 wrote:
| I've seen somebody on Reddit using LoRa stuff for the home.
|
| The problem with these wifi based sensors is that you
| eventually run out of IP addresses (yes you could get fancy
| with subnet setup but still). Another problem is that at some
| point you might want to swap routers -- I had to swap out a
| faulty Netgear router, and the re-set was a major PITA. For
| these reasons I've been moving to Zigbee.
| gregmac wrote:
| It's good to move to Zigbee/thread/z-wave anyway because
| they're all better protocols for smarthome stuff. Plus wifi
| means you might be buying stuff that relies on cloud, which
| is a non-starter for anyone that doesn't like buying future
| paperweights.
|
| But your criticisms are strange. You have more than 254
| devices connecting (which implies a complex setup) but can't
| increase the subnet size? Or does your router just have an
| absurdly small default DHCP range?
|
| I also don't understand the swap your router problem, unless
| you're also using default SSIDs and not changing it.
| Configure the SSID and PSK to be the same as before and
| everything will just work.
| StopDisinfo910 wrote:
| 10.0.0.0/8 is entirely reserved for private use. I don't see
| any home users needing more ip than that and even then you
| could just switch to v6 and be done with the worry.
|
| Bandwidth and interference will likely be an issue far before
| ip scarcity.
| ArchOversight wrote:
| That's why Matter and Thread are IPv6. You don't need IPv4 at
| all... and if you run out of IPv6 address space, I'd love to
| see just how many devices/sensors you have in your home.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| Approximately every home wifi router I've ever used has a
| class C subnet configured by default, out of the box.
|
| That's enough for over 250 networked widgets to be
| concurrently connected with IPV4. That's a lot of widgets for
| one home.
|
| If a person is getting into the realm of having a home with
| more than 250 networked widgets and addressing is becoming
| problematic in ways that are beyond their understanding
| and/or ability, then:
|
| I might suggest that this is roughly equivalent to any other
| household thing that a homeowner doesn't fully understand (or
| that they don't want to understand), and that it would be
| completely fair to remind them that it is perfectly normal
| and acceptable to hire a qualified person or company to --
| you know -- look into that for them.
|
| (It's ok to hire a plumber, or a roofer, or a painter, or a
| cleaner, or any number of other professionals to help with
| making stuff work. It's also OK to hire someone to work on
| the network.)
| gregmac wrote:
| > there's not good support for very low power devices that use
| WiFi
|
| That's why we have Thread. Wifi just isn't a very efficient
| protocol for using with deep sleep. The radio takes more power
| to run, the overhead of connecting is higher, and the device
| needs a full IP stack. Even with power save mode (if supported
| by client and AP), the radio is on for hundreds of milliseconds
| to send a message.
|
| Thread has "sleepy end device" profile built-in where the hub
| will queue messages and expects the device to be in deep sleep
| most of the time. And since it doesn't have so much overhead,
| the radio only has to be on for tens of milliseconds.
| cameldrv wrote:
| Thread is fine, but also wifi is fine. Sleepy end device
| doesn't work very well with wifi, as I understand it, (from
| trying to implement it using the ESP32 SDK), because Matter
| generally wants all devices to check in several times an hour
| at least.
|
| Take a smart scale for example. Mine uses wifi and is in deep
| sleep almost all of the time. When you step on it, it weighs
| you, connects to wifi, and sends the measurement. This does
| fine on battery because it only gets used a few times a day
| max, and I think it may power up the radios to look for a
| software update once a day or something. If it had to power
| up the radios every 5 minutes though it wouldn't last a year
| on a charge.
|
| Another example would be a water/flood sensor. The
| overwhelming majority of the time, it has nothing to report.
| Maybe once a day or so it should report the battery level and
| that it's still there. You can still get great battery life
| as long as you don't have to turn on the radio all the time,
| but Matter doesn't really let you do this, in my
| understanding, at least as of the current revision.
| 05 wrote:
| ESP32 has inherent sleep issues and before their latest
| chip (c6 I think) 'deep sleep' was really a gpio- or rtc-
| triggered boot followed by a power off. Doesn't mean it's
| impossible to implement wifi sleep efficiently, but if you
| do the math anything wifi based won't work off cr2032 for
| even a year unless daily updates is all you need. Motion
| sensors are supposed to fire more often, and with much less
| latency that can be done via WiFi, so it doesn't really
| work for battery powered sensors in the general case. You
| could probably use ESPNow and a custom gateway node but at
| that point it's just another custom RF protocol and you're
| better off with something standard like 802.15.4 or BLE..
| cameldrv wrote:
| You can put the ESP32 into deep sleep, and it can wake
| based on a timer, or it can run the ultra-low-power core
| which is a very slow, very low memory, very low power
| core. It's good enough to look at ADC or I2C devices and
| do a little math. This can be woken up fairly frequently
| to check a sensor, and say, compare against a previous
| measurement, and then wake up the main core if you need
| to process the measurement or do WiFi.
|
| I think you're right that this won't work well with a
| CR2032, but if you're careful about using good voltage
| regulators it can last a long time on 4 AAs.
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| These guys have prices: https://9to5google.com/2025/11/06/ikeas-
| new-lights-sensors-a...
|
| Was looking for this one: ALPSTUGA air quality sensor: PS25 (~$33
| USD)
| lynndotpy wrote:
| Coming as a very disgruntled and burned Philips Hue owner. Only
| four bulbs, but Philips is a name which leaves behind bile when
| spoken.
|
| Ikea's Tradfri line was very refreshing for being entirely
| configurable with the wireless remote it comes with. You can
| connect multiple bulbs to one remote, without ever tinkering with
| an app or a hub or Home Assistant, etc.
|
| Crucially, old TRADFRI communicated from the remote control to
| the bulb directly, so Ikea couldn't burn me the way Philips did.
| I'm hoping the new KAJPLATS end up working the same way.
| russdill wrote:
| It's because tradfri is zigbee. matter is in some ways an
| independent successor to zigbee.
| uplifter wrote:
| I'm curious why you are disgruntled with Philips Hue. They were
| quite honestly one of my happiest purchases, though I bought
| them when they were the only programmable color lights
| available to buy and I would probably get another model today.
|
| Was it the dropping of support?
| lynndotpy wrote:
| They started requiring an account to use the lights, and
| support started stating stating that the bulbs will not be
| usable without an account or the app, with the CTO stating
| intention to deprecate the local APIs entirely. This flies in
| the face of why I bought Hue. These are woes I thought I'd be
| "safe" from when I bought from Philips. I never wanted to
| create an account or use an app.
|
| After spending time setting up Home Assistant, figuring out
| what I'd need to do to prevent a firmware update from hitting
| the bulbs, etc. I decided just to chalk the bulbs up to trash
| and sell them.
| microtonal wrote:
| Do you have pointers about the firmware update part? Aren't
| they just Zigbee devices in the end that you can connect to
| any other Zigbee hub? I thought it's primarily required
| when using their bridge?
| lynndotpy wrote:
| Not sure, I washed my hand of the whole thing a few years
| ago.
| mikepavone wrote:
| FWIW, they still seem to have not actually pulled the
| trigger on the account requirement and they've removed the
| "Starting soon" portion of the nag bar text in the Hue app
| (though it's still on the web page you get to when hitting
| "Learn more"). I do wish they would either get it over with
| or make it clear they're not actually going ahead with
| forcing accounts though.
| imp0cat wrote:
| It is a shame really, because the Philips Hue hardware and
| software was superior to the Ikea ones (logarithmic vs linear
| dimming curves).
| kevinsundar wrote:
| Matter does have the concept of Binding which is exactly this.
| Not sure if ikea implemented it, but the spec supports it!
| oritron wrote:
| Most of my current-gen IKEA switches will pop out from their
| steel cradles with normal button presses, because of the curved
| back of the switch and the curved cradle it connects to
| magnetically. They've thrown in die-cut double sided adhesive
| tissue in what I assume was an afterthought, which doesn't peel
| from one backer sheet in any of the packages I've opened... Maybe
| it's humidity or temperature sensitive? After a couple of drops
| on the ground, some internal plastic cracks and tactile response
| is lost. I ended up using my own double sided tape but it's not a
| good user experience. I would bet the new switches don't have a
| curved back, certainly they've had a number of returns because of
| this aesthetic choice.
|
| I don't care at all about Thread vs Zigbee (this press release
| doesn't actually say Thread), beyond the very basics in smart
| home things you want a computer involved and at that point the
| way it communicates stops being a big concern. I strongly
| recommend Home Assistant on a low spec mini pc, beats a Raspberry
| Pi in ~every metric for this use case.
|
| I've been burned by trusting Matter to mean broad compatability;
| my Aqara lock doesn't indicate how the door was unlocked over
| Matter despite showing up in their app, and this is after having
| to buy their Zigbee bridge because it won't connect to Zigbee
| devices from other brands. Even with Matter, home automation
| still needs a geek.
| 05 wrote:
| > I've been burned by trusting Matter to mean broad
| compatability; my Aqara lock doesn't indicate how the door was
| unlocked over Matter despite showing up in their app, and this
| is after having to buy their Zigbee bridge because it won't
| connect to Zigbee devices from other brands.
|
| Matter was made by the same guys that created Zigbee,
| proprietary vendor extensions are their bread and butter.
| Anything trickier than a contact sensor or motion detector, you
| should definitely research compatibility and definitely not
| update firmware once it works.
| Fwirt wrote:
| I have been spending hours the past couple weeks "ensmartening"
| my home with IoT switches and power outlets. Home Assistant is
| gorgeous and is an absolute feat of engineering and a testament
| to the power of open source, but messing with it you can tell
| that it's very much "by nerds, for nerds". I don't expect my
| wife to learn to edit YAML files so she can customize a
| dashboard. The drag and drop editor mostly works but it's
| missing a lot of functionality. And if your network topology is
| anything but flat (i.e. everything connected to one consumer
| router, which probably does cover 95% of people) then good luck
| with any of the discovery technology like mDNS or broadcast
| domains. I have dnsmasq allocate hostnames and static IPs for
| all my stuff and manually punch in the hostname for 99% of
| things in HA.
|
| The ecosystem I've had the best luck with is, sadly, Tuya, aka
| Smart Life, aka giant Chinese conglomerate. Pretty much any
| small brand (or even some bigger brands) use Tuya to build
| because they have easy off-the-shelf solutions, and I have some
| confidence that they're large and entrenched enough that they
| won't randomly shut off their cloud services. But even if they
| do, enough reverse-engineering work has been put in that you
| can run most of your devices locally without a cloud
| connection. The cloud connection is pretty seamless and is the
| easiest thing I've had to configure in HA. Once you add a
| device in the Smart Life app you just reload the HA integration
| and there it is, ready to go. I actually get less latency
| toggling lights through HA than through the Smart Life app. I
| don't really worry about them knowing when my front door is
| shut or my living room lights are off, and I keep all that
| stuff on its own VLAN with no outgoing access to the rest of my
| network.
|
| As I start dabbling with Zigbee and Thread and Matter and
| stuff, it seems like all of these other "open" "ecosystems" are
| really complicated and require buying a bunch of hardware I
| don't want and coordinating another network on another
| protocol, whereas the Wi-Fi stuff just usually works. It makes
| (some) sense for extremely low power devices that need to run
| for years on a battery, but lights and outlets don't really
| need to be Zigbee devices. BLE devices over an ESPHome
| Bluetooth proxy work surprisingly well too, and BLE is a less
| crummy technology than Bluetooth proper and seems to be low
| power enough for a lot of battery operated devices. I wish
| everything would just support MQTT because that seems like the
| most "universal" IoT protocol there is.
| oritron wrote:
| There are also Tuya zigbee devices and people have hacked
| local control of Tuya wifi bulbs to varying degrees. My best
| stuff is IKEA: their battery powered devices use AAA so I can
| throw in rechargeable cells and there isn't a ton of waste in
| CR2032s, and they make the only inexpensive Zigbee buttons
| I've seen that don't include a double-click (Rodret, not the
| very similar Somrig). The benefit there is commands are
| nearly instantaneous, rather than waiting for the maximum
| double click time before deciding it's a single click. The
| RGB bulbs don't have a lot of brightness to them in color
| modes, I wonder if that will change with the new products.
|
| I've got a few locally-controlled wifi bulbs that I bought
| before seriously getting into home automation. They are Tuya
| white-label, I'm using the tuya-local integration. Since I
| can't do something like a zigbee `bind` they are fully
| network dependent, when they go I'll replace them with IKEA
| bulbs.
|
| I agree Home Assistant still needs a nerd for setup and
| tinkering but the default dashboard is impressive and all of
| the functionality is outstanding.
| kalaksi wrote:
| Years ago, I specifically went with zigbee because it's low-
| power and a simpler protocol stack (and open). No need to
| even think if the device will run offline or what kind of API
| it will use. I'm running HA and all the hardware I needed was
| a USB zigbee dongle and that's it. You pair your sensors,
| outlets etc. to it using a GUI and by pressing a physical
| button. No need to coordinate anything yourself, the mesh
| network can take care of itself.
| maxglute wrote:
| Still waiting on an IKEA bidet.
| idbehold wrote:
| The term "range" (in the context of a "home") typically describes
| a multi-function cooking appliance that features a rangetop for
| heating pots and an oven directly beneath it. Why is this page
| about lightbulbs? The subtitle even has the word they should've
| used instead of "range": "products".
| aquova wrote:
| "Range" here refers to a range of products, in this case a
| collection of Matter supported devices
| idbehold wrote:
| "Products" would have had no such ambiguity.
| AndrewDucker wrote:
| Range (noun): a set of similar things
| https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/range
| idbehold wrote:
| Range (noun): a large box-shaped device that is used to cook
| and heat food, either by putting the food inside or by
| putting it on the top https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictio
| nary/english/range#ca...
| andylynch wrote:
| Observe how you have to scroll down past the other senses
| mentioned to reach this one; dictionaries usually put the
| common senses first.
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| To be fair, I think most usage is of the form "range of
| ____". Even the definitions provided illustrate this with
| "range of options", "range of opinions", "range of model
| railway accessories". The exception is "This jacket is part
| of our autumn/spring range", which is a formulation that I've
| personally never heard; I would generally expect
| "autumn/spring line".
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