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IKEA ditches Zigbee for Thread going all in on Matter smart homes

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Re: IKEA ditches Zigbee for Thread going all in on Matter smart homes

#121

Post by amluto »

izacus wrote: post #70
amluto wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tra…

> 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?

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?

Re: IKEA ditches Zigbee for Thread going all in on Matter smart homes

#122

Post by delusional »

turtlebits wrote: post #112
macNchz wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ca…

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.

> Certain manufacturer devices being flaky, yes, but as a platform

This makes me a little weary of your comment. I don't think I'd really care if my lights not working was due to a "manufacturer being flaky" if they worked yesterday, but don't today.

Are you talking about devices being flaky on first setup (which sucks, but is understandable), or are you talking about them being flaky after an update?

Re: IKEA ditches Zigbee for Thread going all in on Matter smart homes

#123

Post by wkat4242 »

dylan604 wrote: post #77
wkat4242 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 becaus…

> 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"?

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.

Re: IKEA ditches Zigbee for Thread going all in on Matter smart homes

#124

Post by bri3d »

mmastrac wrote: post #48
Asmod4n wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t talk to other devices unless you got the private key of them.

I know almost nothing about Matter but is this true? I though that if you control your own fabric, you can talk to any device on it because they trust your controller.

This is correct; the hand-wringing in this thread is fair in that Matter does have a central governing authority who determine which devices are trusted, but completely unjustified insofar as that making a DIY Matter fabric/network is extremely easy.

The part about Matter that's "closed" is the device attestation process; the Distributed Compliance Ledger (DCL) contains a closed set of trusted Product Attestation Authorities. The device's Device Attestation Certificate (DAC) needs to chain to these PAAs for a "production" Matter Commissioner to enroll the device in a fabric without additional steps.

Here's he thing: all available Matter Commissioners make it really easy to commission a device with an untrusted DAC; for Google you need to add the IDs for the device to a Developer account associated with device you're trying to use as the Commissioner, and for Apple (at least as of a year or so ago when I last tried this), you just press "Trust this untrustworthy device" on a dialog box.

https://developers.home.google.com/matter/primer/fabric

Re: IKEA ditches Zigbee for Thread going all in on Matter smart homes

#125

Post by imp0cat »

tzs wrote: post #86

Warning: a bit of a rant incoming... I've found Matter totally confusing. Given a device that supports Matter (e.g., a smart plug) and a set of devices I want to control that from (e.g., an Amazon Echo and an iPad) it is not clear to me what else I need. Apparently I need a "controller", which is not necessarily the thing that I as a user would think of the controller--as a user I think of the controller as the devic…

Some Amazon devices (see a list here: https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=37490568011 ) already support Matter devices, so you might already have everything that you need. The Tapo 110M (M for Matter) plug for example can easily be paired with them and work flawlessly (an also much faster than the non-Matter counterparts). And yes, they don't need internet access to work.

You still need the TP-Link app for some more advanced functions like power metering though.

Re: IKEA ditches Zigbee for Thread going all in on Matter smart homes

#126

Post by Cu3PO42 »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #103
macNchz wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ca…

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 .

For what it's worth, mine do. Nothing in my HA has ever broken after an update or randomly for some other reason.

Re: IKEA ditches Zigbee for Thread going all in on Matter smart homes

#127

Post by bevr1337 »

alsko wrote: post #16
nick__m wrote: post #8

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 aro…

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 w…

> 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.

Re: IKEA ditches Zigbee for Thread going all in on Matter smart homes

#128

Post by op00to »

delusional wrote: post #122
turtlebits wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Certain manufacturer devices being flaky, yes, but as a platform This makes me a little weary of your comment. I don't think I'd really care if my lights not working was due to a "manufacturer being flaky" if they worked yesterday, but don't today. Are you talking about devices being flaky on first setup (which sucks, but is understandable), or are you talking about them being flaky after an update?

I think one solid way of handling the instability is to use high quality light automation (Lutron Caseta, for example) for the things you'll really notice, but for stuff you care less about (for me that's cameras, temperature sensors) you can use cheaper ZWave stuff w/ home assistant. The lights turn on and off when I expect, but temperature might update a little less frequently if HA is flaky.

Re: IKEA ditches Zigbee for Thread going all in on Matter smart homes

#129

Post by op00to »

Cu3PO42 wrote: post #126
JoshTriplett wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

For what it's worth, mine do. Nothing in my HA has ever broken after an update or randomly for some other reason.

ZWaveJS used to break frequently for me, but I run an HA container on a Linux box, rather than the HAOS or whatever. I control the updates, and can rollback if things break, so it's not really a problem.

Re: IKEA ditches Zigbee for Thread going all in on Matter smart homes

#130

Post by amanda99 »

snickerdoodle12 wrote: post #114
CharlesW wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 wor…

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.

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