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.
IKEA launches new smart home range with 21 Matter-compatible products
121–130 of 241 posts
Re: IKEA launches new smart home range with 21 Matter-compatible products
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
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 inductio…
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.
Re: IKEA launches new smart home range with 21 Matter-compatible products
#123For 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 outnum…
>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.
Re: IKEA launches new smart home range with 21 Matter-compatible products
#124For 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 outnum…
> 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.
Re: IKEA launches new smart home range with 21 Matter-compatible products
#125Do 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.
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.
Re: IKEA launches new smart home range with 21 Matter-compatible products
#126So 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 purchas…
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.
Re: IKEA launches new smart home range with 21 Matter-compatible products
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's just untrue, these are the exact products a privacy conscious demographic would/should buy.
Of course there are. IKEA just doesn’t care about them because the market is so small it’s just not worth it.
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
Re: IKEA launches new smart home range with 21 Matter-compatible products
#128For 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 outnum…
>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.
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.
Re: IKEA launches new smart home range with 21 Matter-compatible products
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
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'…
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?
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.
Re: IKEA launches new smart home range with 21 Matter-compatible products
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 d…
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.
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.