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WhyNotHugo
Toutouxc
> If you have a bunch of Zigbee devices, but at some point want to add some of the new ones, you need to start thinking about replacing all the perfectly working Zigbee devices or have a fragmented network.
Yes, if you're using the manufacturer's half-assed smartphone app, but if you're on Home Assistant, like basically anyone who's serious about their smart home, having multiple kinds of smart devices isn't really a problem. It's just one more radio to configure. Some people run both Zigbee and Zwave, some people run Zigbee + Wi-Fi or even Zigbee + Zwave + Wi-Fi + cloud integrations, Home Assistant doesn't care.
macNchz
Perhaps I never put enough effort into it, but I've slowly coalesced on only having IKEA smart home products after years of acquiring piecemeal stuff and trying to wire it together with Home Assistant. I've shut down HA, and with every non-IKEA "smart" thing I have nowadays I just use the manufacturer's app (though I've become pretty sour on most smart devices overall and avoid them when possible).
I didn't really care for the way it became a sysadmin job where the stakes of a bad update or me not reading some release notes were that my light switches didn't work until I sat there and futzed around with it. I'm a programmer, enjoy Linux admin, run a whole bunch of servers....but having to dive into logs and YAML configs because the lights in my kitchen won't turn off is just not ideal. Similar issues with HomeKit, except when things mysteriously stop working there's even less ability to diagnose, given Apple's design principles that everything "just works", so apparently providing detailed error messages or diagnostics is gauche.
turtlebits
Home Assistant "just works". Yes it has a ton of knobs, but in the 3 years I've been running it, it's had no issues. Certain manufacturer devices being flaky, yes, but as a platform, it's been rock solid. I've not touched its config in over a year and everything works as it should.
JoshTriplett
That's exactly the reason I'm hesitant to dive into Home Assistant myself. I want my smart-home devices to Just Work. I want them to be appliances.
radicality
Surprised at your issues with HA. Similarly to others that responded, my setup with HA / zigbee2mqtt and >30 zigbee devices (including some ikea buttons) has been pretty rock solid over many years, including easy migrations from an rpi3 -> rpi4 -> rpi5 (with ssd).
Usually when I had some zigbee issue, it was because of a crappy product (eg some wired air sensor that would spam the zigbee network every 1 second with a lot of data), so then I just stop using such devices and before I buy I check compatibility with HA / zigbee2mqtt.
barbazoo
What you’re describing hasn’t happened to me yet with Home Assistant luckily, even after 5+ years of running it. I can’t remember an update ever breaking any of my stuff. I’m running a docker container though so YMMV. Might be different with the other install types.
arcbyte
I use SmartThings and ive never missed with any configs at all. Only ever one single app - smartthings. Ive been extremely happy after dozens of devices.
wafflemaker
I have about 20 Phillips Hue bulbs at home. My younger brother laughed at me for spending a small fortune on them. Approx 1 bulb per year dies and requires a replacement. Other than that everything just works after the initial setup - daylight like automation.
I even once had my wife add a bulb and while it wasn't easy, she did it.
When a year later I asked brother about the some random bulb he had - didn't work anymore.
It's even better, because Norwegian law gives 5y guarantee on electronics - could just have this bulb replaced as faulty in the shop.
sshine
I also switched from Philips Hue to IKEA. I like how you can pair things by holding them close and pressing a button. Doesn’t need to get smarter than that for me.
petre
I just use Ikea's remote because I won't bother to link the light and the rmote through HA and set up scenes. It just works as a remote: on/off/dimmer. I can either pair the thing with the HA ecosystem or the remote, but the remote always works, regardlesif HA is on or not. I have just one set of lights.
lopis
I use HA and all my IKEA lamps are zigbee. Raspberry pi obviously doesn't have native zigbee radio support, so I have a USB zigbee antenna. Now this means if I buy any more IKEA lamps, I would need a second antenna, and the new lamps would not integrate into the zigbee mesh network. It really sucks.
buremba
I'm in the same boat; HA is making a considerable effort, but connectivity is challenging. I was a bit frustrated when I found out that the antennas don't support both Zigbee and Matter simultaneously, despite the claim. You can only support one at a time, so apparently we will need the second antenna.
cameronh90
Some USB zigbee dongles can be flashed to be "multi-PAN", but my experience is it's currently buggy and I would let them bake that for a bit longer.
Alternatively, both Sonoff and Home Assistant do a thread dongle for about $30 that you can use simultaneously with a zigbee one. Plus if you have any of the following, they can be used as a Thread border router: Apple TV, HomePod, Echo G4, Eero 6/7, Nest Hub, Nest Wifi, Google TV Streamer. There's also the OpenThread Border Router which can be used on certain ESP32 hardware (ESP32-S3 for $10 or ESP32-H2 for $6?) but that obviously requires more work.
darkwater
Yes, but then you have a hard-dependency on HA for inter-network communication, which I try to avoid as much as possible (but I fail to, for a couple of subsystems). My failure model is:
1) no electricity, everything down but fiber, wifi, HA and the doorbell (they run off an UPS)
2) internet down: no problem, you just cannot reach the home automation from outside
3) Home assistant down: zigbee devices are paired together (like buttons + bulbs) or I have physical zigbee relays controlling dumb bulbs.
But, as said, I have some subsystem not fully working when (3) happens, like a zigbee button controlling a tasmota-based fan control.
orev
I consider it a requirement of any smart home that alternative methods need to be available during failures. Simply having other devices around that aren’t smart, like an old fashioned light bulb and physical switch to get you through until you can fix whatever is down. 100% uptime is very difficult for large, well-funded IT companies, so I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect it from these consumer-grade devices.
We survived for over 100 years by getting up and flipping a wall switch, so the risk of a few hours without smart features shouldn’t be a showstopper.
philjohn
Yes and no.
Pairing a Matter device takes much longer than pairing a Zigbee device through Z2M in my experience, and the Matter add-on still sometimes needs restarting as it refuses to allow any more devices to pair after a while.
But - rather than need a Zigbee dongle (or manufacturer hub) if you've got Apple or Google devices such as HomePods you've got a ready made Thread network as they act as border routers.
cameronh90
It is still somewhat annoying for those of us with solid walls.
I can't just add a new Thread device at the other side of my house as the walls attenuate the signal between it and the border router. Equally I can't start replacing Zigbee devices willy-nilly in case I create Zigbee dead zones.
Not the biggest problem in the world but it does mean I'll likely need to get some pointless Thread smart plugs as temporary network extenders when I add my first Thread device.
archagon
I wish Matter accounted for mixed-mode networks. If a Thread device is nearby, use that. If not, try Wi-Fi.
WhyNotHugo
You can configure Zigbee devices to interact directly to each other, without using the hub as a middle-man for all their communication (the hub only does the configuration itself).
This doesn't work when mixing Zigbee+NonZigbee devices.
aenis
Depends on your 2.4GHz band's saturation. Where I live I have only a few "good" channels. I have about 350 zigbee devices over two separate networks - and thus two channels - and the remaining good 2.4GHz channels are used by the physically separate IoT WiFi network. I dont want to deal with yet another network that may or may not like the channel I have to put it on.
baq
zigbee has one great advantage over everything else: it's immune to DHCP and DNS failures and misconfigurations. if you're running a pihole or something, it can break iot devices in random ways if your DHCP server boots after your access points. (don't ask me how I know and the fix was to hard reboot my lights by cycling power in the distribution box. not great, not terrible.)
g1sm
Thread doesn’t depend on DHCP or DNS either.
OptionOfT
I don't think that is entirely correct.
Just like Apple HomeKit you can add devices that aren't certified. It shows a warning, but apart from that it functions like a normal device (for as far as I can tell).
I have been using https://github.com/t0bst4r/home-assistant-matter-hub to expose my home assistant devices to Google Home without having to expose my Home Assistant to the cloud.
Second, certification is what separates Z-Wave from Zigbee which in my (n=1) experience means less issues in terms of compatibility.
Of course, with that GitHub package I shared all of that goes through the window, but who cares? I can clone the code and modify it.
therealpygon
I’d say it was entirely incorrect. PKI and attestation are things done by the manufacturer using a publish open standard. Manufacturers are not required to certify anything or pay a single royalty. Certification is optional and has other benefits which includes jointing the Thread Group (which steers the standard); the costs are simply a way of funding both the certification process (which requires people) and the Group, which also provides support and other resources (which again, requires people).
Basically, it’s not much different than when an Open Source project is supported by a company that separately offers an “Enterprise” option where they host the application and provide additional Enterprise features and support. It’s not required, but a business might choose to do it.
CharlesW
> Just like Apple HomeKit you can add devices that aren't certified. It shows a warning, but apart from that it functions like a normal device (for as far as I can tell).
Correct.
wkat4242
Yeah and matter needs internet access in many cases. It was supposed to be the saviour of open home automation. But in practice it leaves too many strings attached that the manufacturer can take advantage of.
And despite it not being open enough for open source enthusiasts, it's also got a bad name with manufacturers. I work for one and I asked why we wouldn't implement matter and thread and it was laughed off because apparently marketing will never give up their own app as a data collection and cross selling vehicle. Of course those are exactly the reasons I don't want this.
I didn't even know about the certification that only big players can do and the locked firmware requirements. It's ridiculous. Why were thread and matter hailed as the open revolution when they're exactly the opposite?
arghwhat
Matter doesn't need internet access, it's an entirely local protocol even when you integrate to other vendor ecosystems.
Now, something like Google Home might decide to go online to talk to a Google Home Hub device, which is where Google wants to initiate all Matter communication from, but that's a Google thing, not a Matter thing.
Volundr
Technically Matter itself doesn't require Internet access, but you'll come across many devices that won't operate (or even join) without a functioning border router. What's in the spec and the lived experience are sort of different here.
K0balt
>Why were thread and matter hailed as the open revolution when they're exactly the opposite?
Subterfuge PR or the subversion of original intention by greed.
Also, wasn’t there recent news that thread was being abandoned by manufacturers, even declaring it EOL? Or am I conflating that with something else?
umbra07
I remember an interview [1] with the Nanoleaf CEO (they switched to Thread over Matter years ahead of everyone else) about why Thread/Matter was so difficult, why everyone else didn't adopt it, and that they're going to wait for Thread to get better before they launch new products with it.
On the other hand, I believe all the major Thread Border Router manufacturers (Apple, Google, Amazon, Samsung) have updated their Thread routers or committed to updating their Thread routers to Thread v1.4, which is a pretty major upgrade.
[1] https://matter-smarthome.de/en/interview/nanoleaf-ceo-gimmy-...
dylan604
> Why were thread and matter hailed as the open revolution when they're exactly the opposite?
Because consumers are lazy and dumb, and do not do any kind of research. They believe what is written on the tin. Why is OpenAI called "open"?
Sloowms
Because people on hn think consumers don't have better things to do than to look up vague tech stacks they don't understand for their iot devices. The trick is that consumers don't have time to make an informed assessment because a consumer only has 24h in a day while a business has all the time to mess with the information.
As long as people keep claiming this asymmetry doesn't exist we will keep getting things like Thread
wkat4242
But it's not just consumers. I know the tech press hailed it as the end of manufacturer-specific closed systems, and so did some of the developers like the ones from Home Assistant.
FabHK
> Matter is a closed ecosystem
If "closed" means open to anyone that has their product certified to adhere to the rules, then I'm ok with that.
olalonde
That's incorrect. Matter is an open standard.
devnullbrain
>the ability to commission a finished product into a Matter network in the field mandates certification and membership fees,[15][16] entailing both one-time, recurring, and per-product costs.[17] This is enforced using a public key infrastructure (PKI) and so-called device attestation certificates.[15]
Thank you for the clarification?
arghwhat
To be clear, this is the same organization that developed Zigbee, which requires paid certification - without, you're not allowed to say the product supports Zigbee or to use the Zigbee logo.
You can connect devices without this, it just shows a warning during commissioning that the device is not certified. No impact whatsoever.
undefined
vorpalhex
Matter is "open" in that it is published. It is not "open" in that you can make a matter device in your basement.
Here is the Silabs explainer on the certification process: https://docs.silabs.com/matter/latest/matter-certification/
CharlesW
> It is not "open" in that you can make a matter device in your basement.
You can! You just can't ship it/sell it without certification.
https://www.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/comments/1adh8ah/esp3...
olalonde
> It is not "open" in that you can make a matter device in your basement.
I did exactly that last week... Certification is required if you want to use the trademarked logo in your marketing materials (same as with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth afaik).
undefined
Larrikin
I didn't believe any of the information in this post is correct.
tommysve
What a shit load of disinformation you are spreading. Read up on Matter and Thread, please.
echelon
Can I make a Matter device for myself?
comandillos
This isn't entirely true, isn't it? I mean, the whole internet runs on a PKI and we need such a mechanism to ensure secure communication across devices in the network. I understand home devices that contain all sort of sensors and actuators should be handled in a similar fashion, isn't it?
I mean, that PKI doesn't exclude non-approved manufacturers from producing Matter devices, you can always trust their PAA (their CA) in your border router if it's not a well-known manufacturer. And also, I am pretty sure that if this is the case the Matter border router should warn you of this and ignore the fact that the PAA is not in the local store of root CAs (as we did in the times when we had https without Let's Encrypt and didn't want to pay Comodo to sign our certs)
vineyardmike
You’re partially correct, but you’ve got enough details wrong details that you’re misrepresenting reality.
Matter has a public blockchain with certificates added to enforce which products are considered certified. This is called the distributed compliance ledger (DCL). The hardware devices are expected to ship with certificates on them that match the public ones, and it’s generally not possible to change the on-device certs.
This is distinct from “normal” internet PKI certificate authority where you can just swap out a few files or grab a new cert from Let’s Encrypt. Because this uses a dedicated blockchain with a history of signatures. Depending on how you want to control the device, you’d need to rebuild the whole chain of trust, including eg signatures from Google or Apple.
Also, from a practical perspective, I’m not sure of any actual controllers that let you point to different certificate sources. You can create devices with a “test vendor ID” (0xFFFF) and the controllers are supposed to ignore certs. This has downsides, like OTA updates require signing, you can’t encode proper identifiers in the device so info pages in apps are wrong, etc.
Also, the “border router” isn’t really the point of trust here, it’d be the actual controller device. A border router is just that, an IP router, like a WiFi router or a Ethernet router.
gorgoiler
My first reaction here was horror: Home Assistant and Zigbee integrate perfectly with IKEA’s devices, and the devices are beautifully designed! Please don’t take these away! Only the other day did I marvel at how a low battery indicator flashes on one of my remotes when I use it. A design flourish that I really appreciated.
But I read that Thread supports IPv6 via mesh networking. It did always feel a bit awkward having Zigbee networking and IP networking competing over the same site. It would be very nice to issue commands from any peer to any other peer, using standard networking. Can anyone here confirm that Matter/Thread will be a bright, open, and happy new future?
A lot of people I know would scoff at “smart home” stuff. I used to. Having a programmable house is incredibly useful though. When all your lights and sensors are available for programming you can do stuff that’s cool not because it is particularly innovative but because it is incredibly easy to implement:
- my partner can control a “do not enter, call in progress” red light bulb;
- my outside lights trigger off PIR, door sensors, or Ring motion detection;
- I have a series of indoor lamps come on in succession if motion is detected outside at night;
- we programmed a push button to turn a light green on one tap and red on a double tap for a fun game of twenty questions;
- and my indoor Ring cameras shut down unless both my partner and I are out of the house.
All of these things were trivial to do given that everything is available on one Home Assistant instance!
WhyNotHugo
> Can anyone here confirm that Matter/Thread will be a bright, open, and happy new future?
Sorry, it’s a closed ecosystem. It relies on PKI and device attestation to ensure that only devices from approved partners are usable. It’s unlikely that small players can participate, and zero chance of any homebrew scene.
bri3d
I disagree that there’s zero chance for a homebrew scheme; it’s pretty easy to enable development mode and commission self-made devices using Google Home or Apple Home on both iOS and Android.
lukeschlather
Dev mode seems like such a nonstarter. I don't know what dev mode entails, but I don't want to be running my kitchen light in dev mode, I'll just use an analog switch.
0x000xca0xfe
And manufacturers tend to lock down their Matter devices, too, so you can't flash Tasmota or ESPHome on them. See: Shelly, Sonoff.
3nwf248
Not just tend to, have to. Matter certification requires flash encryption and FW signing.
madwolf
What? You can buy a very cheap ESP32 with Thread and easily build your own device with Matter/Thread and it will work. Doesn't seem that closed. There is OpenThread that is an open source implementation of Thread. Home Assistant is compatible with Matter over Thread devices... What's closed about this?
Asmod4n
You can’t talk to other devices unless you got the private key of them.
ValentineC
> It’s unlikely that small players can participate, and zero chance of any homebrew scene.
I personally think the worst part of this is that China manufacturers are less likely to produce Matter/Thread equipment.
Cheap China equipment has been great for Zigbee adoption. They're much less reliable, but fantastic for getting a smart home going for cheap.
petre
I wouldn't worry too much. Espresiff is going to flood the market with countless units of this chip available for cheap. It can do Zigbee/Thread/BLE.
magicalhippo
Z-wave requires certification[1] which includes alliance membership and compliance testing, and there you can do your own stuff using shields or modules[2].
Some manufacturers also make Z-wave devices, like this[3], which has some generic low-voltage inputs and outputs.
So while not as trivial as other things, it's possible to do a lot of DIY stuff.
[1]: https://z-wavealliance.org/development-process-overview-2/
alex_duf
> It did always feel a bit awkward having Zigbee networking and IP networking competing over the same site
Funny, to me that's a feature. It makes the threat of a hacked device that exfiltrate data from within your network much less likely. I avoid any wifi device because of that.
stego-tech
This. The network fragmentation is the point, just like how some businesses would run IPX internally and use a proxy for web/IP traffic to protect corporate infrastructure from malicious devices or software.
Not everything has to be on TCP/IP. For smart home connectivity, I’d say that’s a feature, provided said networking standard is just as open as TCP/IP.
Eduard
> just like how some businesses would run IPX internally
when? In the 1990s?
vachina
Yes, not to mention WiFi is so much more power hungry.
thedougd
The thread border gateway (Apple TV, HomePod, Google Nest Speaker, etc) sends an IPv6 router advertisement to the network for the Thread IP space. Multiple border gateways can advertise the same IP space for redundancy.
I have/had a segmented network, so I made sure my router accepted this route so that devices on different networks could communicate with the Thread devices. It worked, usually. However, I ran into some challenges with the reliability of communicating from my phone to various devices. I never quite got mDNS reflection 100% correct, and I strongly suspect that's my problem. If you look at an mDNS entry for a device, you'll see some advertise all their IPv6 addresses including link local (fe80::). I suspected some clients were dumb, trying the first IP they found, and giving up when it didn't work. I was working on modifying the golang mdns-reflector project to filter these entries. I had some success, but I haven't finished.
pixxel
[dead]
nick__m
I don't understand the problem that thread solves that zigbee doesn't! The article says that thread doesn't require a hub but it require a border gateway that is almost indistinguishable from a hub. And as far as my home assistant setup is concerned, it doesn't require a hub, only a zigbee radio.
The only thing that seems to advantage thread is manufacturers support, but I don't see what's stopped them to regroup around zigbee.
Any one has clues on why Thread was needed when zigbee already existed?
alsko
Matter was created by the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA), formerly known as the Zigbee Alliance! Basically, Matter is the next generation Zigbee. Thread as a protocol predates Matter, and it is just one of the supported transports, together with Wifi and Ethernet (for now).
Edit: One thing Matter adds that was not in Zigbee is Bluetooth provisioning, letting you use your phone to add a device to your network without QR codes or numbers to type in.
Also fun fact; Homeassistant is part of the CSA and apparently, Google, Apple and others use HA for testing!
bevr1337
> Edit: One thing Matter adds that was not in Zigbee is Bluetooth provisioning, letting you use your phone to add a device to your network without QR codes or numbers to type in.
What follows are my two pennies as a developer working in home automation for 7 years. In this venue, readers may even have more knowledge regarding security, but I hope to speak to a common case.
I develop this exact feature though not for Ikea. Having made the sausage, some of these UX-first flows are worrisome.
Consider a lightbulb that factory resets given a rapid succession of power cycles. Most consumers won't have redundant power during a brownout, so there is an edge case where dirty power can mistakenly send the bulb to a reset state. (More plausibly, a child tugging at a light switch?) Now, any device in radio range has an opportunity to take over the bulb.
Provisioning is rare. Unless the owner enjoys tinkering, a residential IoT device is provisioned a handful of times in its life. I personally think it's a waste of time to optimize this flow if the improvements are also vulnerabilities.
Suppose I have a great new smart bulb. I'm ready for a larger market so I prepare a demonstration for Lowe's, hopeful for space in their lighting and rough electric aisles. Lowe's has seen this before. My bulb works fine but my users aren't technical. Lowe's replies, "we can't carry this. Users must deploy and control from a single app in 5 minutes." If I want my smart device to compete, my hand may even be forced to implement UX-first provisioning.
Companies like Lowe's and IKEA don't want to be in the tech support business. My bulb is a liability because their customers will call with complaints or questions.
I find QR codes to be a slick implementation. They don't even need electricity! Users can manage the system even when components go offline. Folks are trained on social security numbers and PINs for bank cards. It's easy to comprehend the QR code as a password.
umbra07
on the other hand - I had contractors install our Nanoleaf recessed light cans (thread over matter) in our new house. In all the hubbub, I forgot to make sure to save the light cans boxes that had the QR codes inside. I found around half the QR code stickers, but I lost the other half. The light cans also have the QR codes printed on the top, but we have nailed-down attic flooring that covers them completely. So I'm basically just praying that Nanoleaf's CS can give me the pairing codes based on my order number, haha.
lukeschlather
I feel like the problem is a lack of realism about what is required to meet the usability standards of traditional analog switches. Like, I hear you talking about a tradeoff between security and usability for a "rare" provisioning event but I think in practice if you imagine a device has a 10 year lifespan, I would guess that making the provisioning hardware probably translates into at a minimum a full month of downtime over the lifespan of the device, with many devices being down for months or years at a time because no one can be bothered to figure out why.
The security concerns probably have typically zero impact on the operation of the device. I'm not saying that the security concerns are unjustified. Really I'm actually leaning more that this is completely impractical and not a good replacement for a dumb physical switch. The security issues are unacceptable and the downtime caused by even the useless security measures available is even worse. (Also, the security measures seem more concerned with whether or not I have a license to watch my video on that particular device than preventing people from turning on my toaster.)
luckydata
while your example is correct, I have many many examples in my experience why scanning a qr code is simply infeasible in some situations and as a owner of a heavily automated home I welcome the development with open arms.
mns
So we should expect that in around 10 years the CSA and some other companies decide that they want to create a new standard that, but this time make it right, and everyone will have to switch from Matter devices to the next - this time really better and efficient - standard?
AceJohnny2
> letting you use your phone
Requiring you to use your phone.
I understand the value in streamlining the flow for the Average Joe, but as a power user I wish there were an escape hatch. Ultimately, it's a minor quibble. It is a much more streamlined setup.
amluto
As I understand it, Thread can transparently extend its mesh over regular IPv6 (Ethernet, Wi-Fi, etc), whereas extending a Zigbee (or Z-Wave) mesh beyond useful mesh range is a mess. I have a Z-Wave network that uses two controllers, and it sucks. It’s utterly obnoxious to maintain, the whole concept of multiple controllers is barely supported by zwave-js-ui, it is far to dumb to recover quickly on its own if it transiently loses connectivity to a node, and roaming between controllers is a complete non-starter.
I haven’t tried Thread yet, but I’m delighted by the concept of having a couple of easy-to-maintain base stations (routers or whatever they’re called) connected to the local network and having devices automatically roam between them.
I am not delighted by the fact that an Apple Home Thread network, a Google Home thread network, and a Home Assistant native thread network appear to be different things that are not entirely compatible with each other.
umbra07
I believe this is what thread v1.4 is attempting to solve. Apple has already updated their Thread border routers to v1.4, and Google, Amazon, and Samsung have all promised to update their border routers too.
mox1
Yes this is indeed a problem. You can get around this by piping the Z-Wave or Zigbee information into a MQTT server and basically run them as separate networks, with Home Assistant and MQTT tying it all together. But you will need some type of Zigbee to Ethernet adapter (Sonoff makes one, Raspberry Pi, etc.) or Z-wave to ethernet adapter (again Raspberry Pi). It's definitely clunky. But doable.
I am running multiple Zigbee networks near each other (in a house and in a detached garage) with Home Assistant, MQTT server and a Sonoff Zigbee bridge, with Tasmota.
izacus
> I am not delighted by the fact that an Apple Home Thread network, a Google Home thread network, and a Home Assistant native thread network appear to be different things that are not entirely compatible with each other.
Hmm, in what way? The Matter standard does demand that devices support at least 5 of such "fabrics" at once. Where is the issue in practice?
amluto
Maybe there isn’t one. Can I “pair” a Thread device with, say, an Apple TV and have it talk to the Apple TV via radio to an IKEA Dirigera hub and then IPv6 over Ethernet from the Dirigera to the Apple TV?
AndrewDucker
My understanding is that Thread is lower latency and lower power than Zigbee.
nick__m
How is that possible when thread use an ipv6 stack over 802.15.4 while zigbee use a simpler stack also over 802.15.4 ? The only thing I see is that manufacturers prefer an ip stack because it's "easier" to develop for.
AndrewDucker
An excellent question - all I can do is point you at the research. See the top graph here: https://www.reddit.com/r/homeautomation/comments/nxmehn/clea...
RandomThoughts3
> The only thing I see is that manufacturers prefer an ip stack because it's "easier" to develop for.
It is easier to develop on an ip stack.
You have great tooling and great libraries out of the box because pretty much everything uses ip nowadays.
Plus, at least part of the controllers people use for their smart home will use ip anyway. A non ip network will need a bridge.
> How is that possible when thread use an ipv6 stack over 802.15.4 while zigbee use a simpler stack also over 802.15.4?
Easy, zigbee doesn't use a simpler stack. Using the same physical layer protocol doesn't tell you anything about the rest of the stack.
It's actually pretty simple. 6LoWPAN which is what Thread uses is more efficient than the Zigbee network protocol. Packets are smaller and the routing is better. It's not particularly surprising to be honest because Thread was designed by people who knew Zigbee really well and were aiming for an improvement.
ianburrell
Thread can talk to your phone using a gateway. Thread is IPv6 based. The gateway, called border router, is no different than access point in function.
Current systems require a hub, talk protocol to hub, hub talks Zigbee to device. Home Assistant is great, but you still need device running it. Thread requires border router, but that is simpler device and only does networking.
Matter is the other part of Zigbee, the home automation profile. I get the impression it is bloated with multiple companies involved, but it is standard. Matter means that your phone can talk to Wifi device with your choice of apps.
AndrewDucker
I am hoping that this is the thing that triggers Matter/Thread to go mainstream.
I'm currently blocked because Google and Amazon don't support "Generic Switches". Which means that if I switch over a light-bulb to being a smart one I can't use something like the Arre Smart Button to control them. Which seems like such a standard requirement that I do not understand why it's not supported.
If Ikea will let me set that up then I'll be delighted.
brulard
I'm not sure what I am missing, but isn't it completely possible to connect any kind of smart button to control a light bulb? Isn't this exactly what home assistant is being used for? I only tried it, but was able to add a generic smart button to HA and let it control a USB switch with some led lights. How is your use case different?
UPDATE: Ok, is this about the state of Matter implementation? I think I misunderstood that.
cheeze
For how much hype Matter had (I remember everyone saying "Just wait! Any day now!") it sure... hasn't delivered
AndrewDucker
Yeah.
I've got it up and running with some Nanoleaf lights and Amazon Echo running as border routers, and it's rock solid nowadays. But my wife hates voice-controlled devices, so I can't put them in elsewhere until I can slap in some buttons to control them. And that's basically not supported, which leaves me thinking that either the spec is a disaster or Google/Amazon are deliberately kneecapping it.
whitehexagon
I only recently discovered and invested in the IKEA ZigBee hardware, about the only product their MBAs havent destroyed. The hardware is very well built, and sensibly priced. What I liked most of all was that the hub was optional, and thus no cloud account required.
I ended up pairing mine with a 'ConBee II' and with a bit of Go code was able to receive sensor data with very little latency, and activate switches and lights very quickly.
What a shame they discontinue such a great product line. But I already decided this is the last home automation technology I'll invest in. ZigBee seems perfectly suited for this role, and no idea why we need yet another new standard. Although I also said that switching away from x10, if anyone still remembers that.
ocdtrekkie
My house is largely Insteon-based, which used to be backwards-compatible with X10.
whitehexagon
Nice, the posh stuff! I seem to recall that system included remote access and nice control panels.
I managed to get remote access working via an iobridge IO-204 X10 module and a custom iOS App. Great fun. I still have the X10 stuff lying around because I was then trying for local only using the X10 serial controller that I never managed to hack.
mft_
Huh... anyone know what this will mean for people with legacy Ikea lightbulbs and hub?
e.g. if I add future Ikea lightbulbs or other equipment, will this mean managing them via a different system?
(By the by, I've been very happy with Ikea bulbs so far; while other people complain of LED bulbs with a short lifespan, [touches wood] I've not had a single failure with Ikea smart bulbs, with ~7 years and counting on one of mine.)
Spooky23
The newer DIRIGERA hub has both radios, and recently added full thread support in a firmware update, so you should be good if you have it. Otherwise, add that or an upcoming hub or migrate the old bulbs.
I love my Ikea smart home gear, it works really well. Odd that a cheap furniture store that sells meatballs seems to have a more coherent smart device strategy than major tech companies!
kedikedi
I think that applies to many other electronics they sell too. I find them pretty well engineered overall.
My guess is that it’s because they sell any particular piece of hardware in millions and it’s in their best interest to design it properly so they don’t have to deal with the returns.
api
Isn’t this the history of home automation? The money is in getting people locked into a “system,” but the systems are things that tend to rapidly become dated. So people will invest in a system and either get disillusioned due to the downside of lock in or the system goes obsolete and the newer stuff is not compatible because it’s a whole new system. Rinse, repeat.
There have been many attempts at industry standards but they fray around the edges. Nobody understands that a protocol and a spec is not a user experience, so the standards just become the basis for closed walled garden “systems.”
It’s why I stay away from it.
jkestner
“[Matter in its current version] doesn’t really help resolve the key issue of the smart home, namely that most companies view smart homes as a way to sell more individual devices and generate recurring revenue.”
https://staceyoniot.com/matter-only-solves-about-one-of-the-...
nick__m
That's the strength of a DIY approach backed by a community of users like homeassistant, it doesn't get obsolete.
I will just have make sure that I have a spare zigbee radio in case they eventually disappear from the market.
madwolf
I mean... I have an Aqara Matter over Thread smart lock that connects via AppleTV (which is a Thread border router) to Home Assistant. And I can control the lock both with HA and Apple HomeKit. And this whole thing works flawlessly. Aqara, Apple, open source HA. Never thought this would be so smooth.
I think the whole point of Matter is that the devices are manufacturer independent and you can use any device with any hub.
umbra07
I have an Aqara Thread over Matter smart lock too. The only thing I can do with it via Home Assistant is remote unlock/lock and get the battery %. I can't do user management or the million other features that require me to use the Aqara app.
AndrewDucker
Looks to me like they'll continue to work. There are multiple mentions of backwards compatibility in the article.
vachina
Haha. Imagine a light switch that becomes obsolete like your wireless router.
lotsofpulp
Why can’t it keep working via manual control?
gorgoiler
These types of switches will always retain manual control. It is common to separate the user facing switch from the actual electronics and everything still works manually. This means you can take any new or existing switch furniture and make it smart:
https://sonoff.tech/products/sonoff-mini-extreme-wi-fi-smart...
This is good because manufacturers of well built physical switches are usually rubbish at technology, and high tech electronics manufacturers are rubbish at making aesthetically pleasing, durable switches. Separating them gives you the best of both of worlds.
The obsolescence is in the radio integration whereby one day you can control it remotely, the next day you cannot.
bluGill
IF they design it to work that way it can. Do you trust the manufacture to do that though? This is not only do they need to design it that way, but also that they need to ensure it works in all the edge cases. I've been in software long enough to know there are a lot of weird edge cases nobody thinks of that are then missed for years.
lotsofpulp
If you toggle or otherwise manually manipulate a light switch, surely it is physically disconnecting the circuits? I don't see how that mechanism could ever not work, absent mechanical issues.
cheeze
> Do you trust the manufacture to do that though?
... Yes?
I use Lutron so I'm less concerned about obsolescence... but yeah. Pretty much every smart light switch I've ever used is just a normal light switch with additional networking capabilites.
snickerdoodle12
RIP. The ikea zigbee stuff was close to being best in class. Matter is still an unusable mess.
CharlesW
In my experience, Matter already works better than Zigbee and Z-Wave ever did, and it gets better every year. I'm interested in what your unusable mess of a system consists of, if you don't mind elaborating.
snickerdoodle12
Just look at how long this page is:
https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/matter/
Adding a device now requires a whole song & dance with bluetooth, a mobile phone and god knows what else.
Meanwhile zigbee is:
1. Buy a zigbee stick, there are dozens, they all work great
2. Press the permit join button in home assistant
3. Press a button on the device for 10 seconds or 3 times or whatever
4. You're done and it works!
Oh, and for some reason https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/matter/#experimen... involves google cloud in the process of me testing a device I created locally on my own network
The final nail in the coffin is:
> It is recommended to run the Matter add-on on Home Assistant OS. This is currently the only supported option. Other installation types are without support and at your own risk.
So I can't even officially use this stuff without uprooting my entire operating system.
amanda99
Look, I agree with you and as someone with Home Assistant, I much prefer Zigbee.
But if you imagine a typical consumer, not a tech nerd, I think "smartphone and bluetooth" is by far preferable to your 4-step process.
kstrauser
That’s been my experience. My older Zigbee/Z-Wave stuff seemed to work… up until it didn’t, and then cue wailing and gnashing of teeth. My Matter gear was initially a little flaky but is now vastly more reliable than Zigbee ever was.
J_Shelby_J
No it wasn’t. My impression is it’s nice looking, but poorly implemented. I have near 100 zigbee and z wave devices. IKEA stuff is the only ones that have given me problems. I have their square color light panels and had to write a HA automation to flick them every power cycle because they get stuck and nonresponsive.
Maybe I judge them poorly because they’re the cheapest devices I let myself buy? Idk. They look great though.
Marsymars
I have stuff that didn’t support Matter on launch, that I updated to Matter, and it seems exactly the same in practice.
evadne
This is horrible news. Zigbee has been trouble-free and Thread has been nothing but Trouble to the point I had to throw out everything based on Thread…
mongol
My IKEA was missing a lot of Trådfri assortment when I visited this week. I started to have doubts if they had abandoned the home automation niche. Now when I am searching their site, much is gone. But I guess they are clearing the inventory for a Threads relaunch
brabel
That's such a shame. I bought quite a few IKEA devices as they were the cheapest in the market and were Zigbee-driven, which meant I could use it with my custom-made SmartHome software (which does what Home Assistant does but without a heavy runtime) and they connected with other manufacturer's devices (they form a mesh, so as long as you have a Zigbee device every few 10s of meters, the devices can communicate with the central hub even from very far away). I wonder if I will be able to connect to Thread devices at all now.
kassner
I’d not read much into that. My local IKEAs have stock issues since 2020. There is always a couple of products that are completely gone.
They are also pretty good at labeling the products in their website, you can search by “last chance to buy” (or local language equivalent) to see the list.
victorbjorklund
This really sucks. I have a smart home with home assistant and most of my things are Zigbee and Ikea stuff are great. They are affordable and they are high quality. So now I have to find another provider of especially light bulbs.
madwolf
What stops you from adding a Thread border router and adding new Matter devices to Home Assistant? It works.
riknos314
This could easily have as much to do with support costs as anything with the technical side of the protocols.
A member of my family works in customer support for a company making devices using both zigbee and thread, and claims that support calls for debugging zigbee are often among the longest (and thus most expensive) calls they handle.
Unsure what IKEA's tech support looks like, but I assume that most issues not solved by support turn into returns, which are also bad for the bottom line.
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This sucks. Matter is a closed ecosystem, enforced using a public key infrastructure (PKI) and device attestation certificates. Thread seems to require paying royalties if you want to ship devices. It’s disappointing that IKEA claims that this move is towards a more open ecosystem.
On top of that, the switch breaks compatibility with existing hardware (except for the Touchlink functionality). If you have a bunch of Zigbee devices, but at some point want to add some of the new ones, you need to start thinking about replacing all the perfectly working Zigbee devices or have a fragmented network.