Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 271 posts

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

#221

Post by kassner »

mongol wrote: post #33

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

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.

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

#222

Post by Eduard »

stego-tech wrote: post #46
alex_duf wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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.

> just like how some businesses would run IPX internally

when? In the 1990s?

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

#223

Post by lukeschlather »

bri3d wrote: post #168
lukeschlather wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Dev mode seems like such a nonstarter. I don't know what dev mode entails, ... what? All it means is that the "commissioner" (broker which attaches Matter devices to your Fabric) ignores the chaining of the device attestation to an approved CA. In the case of using Google's Commissioner, this requires adding a Vendor and Product ID in your account's Developer console. In the case of Apple's Commissioner, it's just…

I can't conceptualize exactly what the use case is here, but I get the impression there's a set of steps that have to be done in sequence after installing my light bulb, and that's another step to an already fairly involved process. All to screw in a light bulb. And the light bulb is the easy case. If it's actually two devices and I want them to talk to each other, and one of them is automatically trusted, and the other one is untrusted, I'm skeptical that just pushing the button is going to help. (Actually in general I'm skeptical that it will typically work without extensive research, and this is just one in a long list of potential gotchas.)

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

#224

Post by jekwoooooe »

markhahn wrote: post #190
jekwoooooe wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say that as if that’s a bad thing. I would love to have more iot security

where "security" here means "anything not explicitly sanctioned by the vendor is prohibited"?

No it means signed firmware and verified boot…

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

#225

Post by dieortin »

wafflemaker wrote: post #217
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…

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 any…

It’s not acceptable for any LED bulb, let alone one as expensive as Philips HUEs are, to die so soon.

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

#226

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#227

Post by dieortin »

snickerdoodle12 wrote: post #201
Larrikin wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matter has nothing to do with Google except they are supporting the standard. If you care so much about an open ecosystem Google Home shouldn't even matter, you would be worried about Home Assistant support.

Well, there appears to be some link. I'm not clear on what it is, but here are the Home Assistant docs for using a Matter dev board: https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/matter/#experimen... > NOTE for Android users: You need to follow the instructions at the bottom of the page to add the test device to the Google developer console, otherwise commissioning will fail. Anyway, you absolutely should care about Goo…

Are you seriously using some footnote about Android as proof that Google somehow has any control over Matter?

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

#228

Post by lurking_swe »

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 .

There is a tradeoff here. If your expectations are high you will always be disappointed with a smart device advertised as an appliance. it’s difficult to customize to make it _actually_ smart if it’s designed as an appliance, because every manufactures app is limited. Even apple home and google home are junk for automating things. It’s OK as a basic dashboard though.

Here are a few “smart” things my home assistant can do in my home, which are impossible with an “appliance”:

- when washer or dryer is done (detected via power monitoring), send push notification. But ONLY send it to the people that are home at this moment. If nobody is home, send it to the person that left home last. (i store this state in a custom _last_person_departure_ variable).

- if the washing machine door was closed after it was emptied, send push notification to the people that are home. Remind them to leave the door open. (front load washer where closing the door leads to mildew)

- If a water leak is detected, send a push notification. if not ACKed within 3 minutes, send a “critical alert” to everyone’s phone.

- If nobody is sitting on the couch (pressure sensor under the cushions), and no media is playing on the tv, turn off the tv after 20 minutes.

- turn on the hallway light if motion detected or if the front door is in an open state. but keep it on if the door remains open (chatting with a neighbor, bringing in packages, etc) Importantly, delay the “turn off” action with a timer and reset that time if more motion detected or the door is re-opened.

- when i’m on a work zoom call, automatically turn on a red light next to my home office, so family doesn’t interrupt.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. I also get a push notification when the printers ink is below 20%, and more.

Unfortunately a truly smart home requires effort to set up. Because a smart home is unique to YOU. Everyone has different workflows, habits, and preferences. It’s not a generic off the shelf component like buying a washing machine, where the user preferences can be simplified to a handful of settings.

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

#229

Post by WhyNotHugo »

Toutouxc wrote: post #31
WhyNotHugo wrote: post #21

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 Z…

> 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…

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.

See: https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/guide/usage/binding.html

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

#230

Post by baobun »

luckydata wrote: post #179
tommysve wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a shit load of disinformation you are spreading. Read up on Matter and Thread, please.

I don't know why you're downvoted, it's the same reaction I had tbh.

Because it's insubstantial and doesn't further the conversation in a healthy direction.
Post reply on HN