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How would you use this and ensure privacy and security? Without investing time in becoming an amateur network engineer?
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.
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?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 ac…
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_...
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?
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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)
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.
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.
(I've done paid work on Matter so I'll avoid giving possibly-tainted opinions on any particular vendor's products.)
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?
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…
Otherwise, I used floor lights in the past with WiFi switchable sockets before I switched to ZigBee. The WiFi ones wanted to dial home.
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?