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IKEA launches new smart home range with 21 Matter-compatible products

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Re: IKEA launches new smart home range with 21 Matter-compatible products

#211

Post by skopje »

cameldrv wrote: post #136

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. Unfo…

Matter is nice because of its mesh and low power wakeup. but esh networks are hard to get right. Matter is better than BLE mesh but still not perfect. If you like to build yourself better to use MQTT (deal with a little latency when you turn on your light) on esp32 (nice and low power modes) and Wi-Fi repeaters around the house.

Re: IKEA launches new smart home range with 21 Matter-compatible products

#212

Post by mholm »

ArchOversight wrote: post #168
afavour wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Which sellers? I have been looking for custom ones because I have some weird window sizes.

I went through the whole blind research rabbit hole and ended up with Smartwings via Amazon. I had looked into a lot of other providers and nothing had a similar combination of reliability, cost, and customer service.

Re: IKEA launches new smart home range with 21 Matter-compatible products

#213

Post by randyrand »

charlie-83 wrote: post #119
vollbrecht wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A standard where you have to pay to play. Cheapest option is 3000$ per product and 500$ annual.

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.

Use a pre-certified module and do your own unintentional emitter testing. It's not that hard.

You don't need UL for smart home sensors.

Re: IKEA launches new smart home range with 21 Matter-compatible products

#214

Post by bestouff »

microtonal wrote: post #75
astronads wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

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…

So these things are phoning home. The exact opposite of why Home Assistant is existing.

Re: IKEA launches new smart home range with 21 Matter-compatible products

#215

Post by upsuper »

moshib wrote: post #3

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.

I have quite different observations. IKEA's Zigbee devices are the least stable devices I own and with smaller feature set.

For example, I have more than a dozen Zigbee smart outlet around my home, and the IKEA one is the only one that ever hang and became uncontrollable, yet its also the only one without a physical button to toggle and without power monitoring.

One of IKEA's Zigbee remote controls I have also regularly drops connection and I have to remove its battery to reset it from time to time.

The ones I bought from AliExpress of unknown brands are, unfortunately, much cheaper, have more functionalities, and more reliable.

Re: IKEA launches new smart home range with 21 Matter-compatible products

#216

Post by pta2002 »

darkwater wrote: post #91
pta2002 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 t…

Thanks, I didn't know that this worked! I guess this is more of an informal standard that they ended up following Philips' lead on, but still, better to have this kind of thing be officially defined.

Re: IKEA launches new smart home range with 21 Matter-compatible products

#217

Post by pta2002 »

acheron wrote: post #205
pta2002 wrote: post #7

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…

“Backed by Google” is an anti-recommendation.

The alternatives are all closed-source protocols. A ton of things are backed by Google. It doesn't mean that they have anything to do with it other than them being consulted in its design and providing some official support. And considering Google makes the most popular mobile OS, and also the most popular TV OS (which is relevant considering it's smart home), it's good that they're in on it. Otherwise you end up with a fractured situation like you currently have with things like Airplay, Chromecast and Miracast, which are all the same thing with slightly different implementations because they couldn't agree on a protocol.

And I'd vastly prefer it that Google (and Apple, and Amazon, and Home Assistant, and IKEA, and Philips, and...) all agree on the same protocol than each vendor making up its own thing.

Re: IKEA launches new smart home range with 21 Matter-compatible products

#218

Post by Libidinalecon »

tokioyoyo wrote: post #40
ifh-hn wrote: post #31

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?

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.

I know I am not. I am such a luddite that I just can't understand solving the triviality of flipping a light switch.

It seems like something for bored, married people.

Re: IKEA launches new smart home range with 21 Matter-compatible products

#219

Post by SebastianKra »

IKEA's previous line didn't have a great lifespan:

I had two Tradfri Smart Plugs - both broke down in the same way after the same time.

I had to swap 3 out of 9 GU10 lights due to flickering.

I'm also unhappy with how long their motion sensor takes to register, but that seems to be a problem with motions sensors in general.

Re: IKEA launches new smart home range with 21 Matter-compatible products

#220

Post by marmarama »

close04 wrote: post #200
torginus wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 you…

Having bought a few Matter devices now, I have discovered that, in practise, Matter is just as full of vendor extensions as ZigBee, and the quirks ecosystem that allows for interoperability despite vendor extensions is far less mature than with ZigBee.

Maybe this will get better with time, but we're half a decade into the Matter era and the end-user experience is _worse_ than with ZigBee. In that sense, Matter has failed.

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