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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

#241

Post by frosted-flakes »

umbra07 wrote: post #152
bevr1337 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

on the other hand - I had contractors install our Nanoleaf recessed light cans (thread over matter) in our new house. In all the hubbub, I forgot to make sure to save the light cans boxes that had the QR codes inside. I found around half the QR code stickers, but I lost the other half. The light cans also have the QR codes printed on the top, but we have nailed-down attic flooring that covers them completely. So I'm…

Usually these LED puck lights are only held in place with little spring-loaded arms that grip the back side of the drywall, and all you need to do to remove them is tug on them a bit and they'll come out. The light is connected to the electrical junction box with a short low voltage cable with a plug on it, and the LED driver and line voltage connections are all inside this junction box.

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

#242

Post by snickerdoodle12 »

dieortin wrote: post #227
snickerdoodle12 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I am seriously quoting the home assistant docs that tell me I need to involve Google if I want to test my own Matter device, yes.

Are you saying the home assistant docs are wrong? Please, elaborate.

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

#243

Post by snickerdoodle12 »

iamdelirium wrote: post #214
snickerdoodle12 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are no technical limitations preventing this.

You cannot legally certify something as Zigbee with paying a fee. This is the same for Matter.

Then why did matter feel the need to lock it down technically?

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

#244

Post by snickerdoodle12 »

vineyardmike wrote: post #212
snickerdoodle12 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are no technical limitations preventing this.

No technically limitations, just legal ones. Which are famously irrelevant to international commerce?

That's a good thing. The only thing these legal limitations protect are the american stakeholders and no one should care about them, they are already worth billions.

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

#245

Post by eternityforest »

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…

Is HA ready for non-hobbyists yet?

It always seems like you need $100+ dollars of hardware to run it well, not just a pi and an SD card.

It seems like it's a lot better now, but until recently it didn't seem like it was anywhere near PLC grade reliability.

Is it up to the level where you could install it at a non-technical users house and expect it to run for five years without maintenance?

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

#246

Post by whitehexagon »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #238
whitehexagon wrote: post #27

I only recently discovered and invested in the IKEA ZigBee hardware, about the only product their MBAs havent destroyed. The hardware is very well built, and sensibly priced. What I liked most of all was that the hub was optional, and thus no cloud account required. I ended up pairing mine with a 'ConBee II' and with a bit of Go code was able to receive sensor data with very little latency, and activate switches and…

My house is largely Insteon-based, which used to be backwards-compatible with X10.

Nice, the posh stuff! I seem to recall that system included remote access and nice control panels.

I managed to get remote access working via an iobridge IO-204 X10 module and a custom iOS App. Great fun. I still have the X10 stuff lying around because I was then trying for local only using the X10 serial controller that I never managed to hack.

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

#247

Post by Sloowms »

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"?

Because people on hn think consumers don't have better things to do than to look up vague tech stacks they don't understand for their iot devices. The trick is that consumers don't have time to make an informed assessment because a consumer only has 24h in a day while a business has all the time to mess with the information.

As long as people keep claiming this asymmetry doesn't exist we will keep getting things like Thread

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

#248

Post by arghwhat »

pavon wrote: post #200
arghwhat wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, this is the same organization that developed Zigbee, which requires paid certification - without, you're not allowed to say the product supports Zigbee or to use the Zigbee logo. You can connect devices without this, it just shows a warning during commissioning that the device is not certified. No impact whatsoever.

So by analogy, Zigbee is like USB in that it encourages certification through trademarks, while Matter is like HDCP or Blu-ray in that it enforces certification through technical means (cryptographic signatures)?

They both enforce certification for products, just that one is enforced through trademark and copyright law and the other cryptography.

In both cases can ignore certifications and have a working product. I run uncertified, open source Matter things myself.

It's not like HDCP in that HDCP is a technology no end-user wants, but something certain content creators want.

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

#249

Post by arghwhat »

Volundr wrote: post #164
arghwhat wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matter doesn't need internet access, it's an entirely local protocol even when you integrate to other vendor ecosystems. Now, something like Google Home might decide to go online to talk to a Google Home Hub device, which is where Google wants to initiate all Matter communication from, but that's a Google thing, not a Matter thing.

Technically Matter itself doesn't require Internet access, but you'll come across many devices that won't operate (or even join) without a functioning border router. What's in the spec and the lived experience are sort of different here.

A border router does not provide internet connectivity.

A border router is used to bridge e.g. Thread networks onto a regular IP network so that your non-Thread smartphone can talk to it, and so Matter devices on different network types can link up directly if you want a Thread switch to control a WiFi light for example.

Matter devices use link-local IPv6 addresses and cannot route packets onto the internet even if they wanted to.

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

#250

Post by lopis »

eternityforest wrote: post #245
Toutouxc wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Is HA ready for non-hobbyists yet? It always seems like you need $100+ dollars of hardware to run it well, not just a pi and an SD card. It seems like it's a lot better now, but until recently it didn't seem like it was anywhere near PLC grade reliability. Is it up to the level where you could install it at a non-technical users house and expect it to run for five years without maintenance?

I've been using HA with a Pi, an SD card and a second hand zigbee dongle for the past 3 years. As long as you are able to read instructions to flash the SD card, you can use HA.
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