On top of that, the switch breaks compatibility with existing hardware (except for the Touchlink functionality). 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.

But I read that Thread supports IPv6 via mesh networking. It did always feel a bit awkward having Zigbee networking and IP networking competing over the same site. It would be very nice to issue commands from any peer to any other peer, using standard networking. Can anyone here confirm that Matter/Thread will be a bright, open, and happy new future?

A lot of people I know would scoff at “smart home” stuff. I used to. Having a programmable house is incredibly useful though. When all your lights and sensors are available for programming you can do stuff that’s cool not because it is particularly innovative but because it is incredibly easy to implement:

- my partner can control a “do not enter, call in progress” red light bulb;

- my outside lights trigger off PIR, door sensors, or Ring motion detection;

- I have a series of indoor lamps come on in succession if motion is detected outside at night;

- we programmed a push button to turn a light green on one tap and red on a double tap for a fun game of twenty questions;

- and my indoor Ring cameras shut down unless both my partner and I are out of the house.

All of these things were trivial to do given that everything is available on one Home Assistant instance!

The only thing that seems to advantage thread is manufacturers support, but I don't see what's stopped them to regroup around zigbee.

Any one has clues on why Thread was needed when zigbee already existed?

I'm currently blocked because Google and Amazon don't support "Generic Switches". Which means that if I switch over a light-bulb to being a smart one I can't use something like the Arre Smart Button to control them. Which seems like such a standard requirement that I do not understand why it's not supported.

If Ikea will let me set that up then I'll be delighted.

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 lights very quickly.

What a shame they discontinue such a great product line. But I already decided this is the last home automation technology I'll invest in. ZigBee seems perfectly suited for this role, and no idea why we need yet another new standard. Although I also said that switching away from x10, if anyone still remembers that.

e.g. if I add future Ikea lightbulbs or other equipment, will this mean managing them via a different system?

(By the by, I've been very happy with Ikea bulbs so far; while other people complain of LED bulbs with a short lifespan, [touches wood] I've not had a single failure with Ikea smart bulbs, with ~7 years and counting on one of mine.)

A member of my family works in customer support for a company making devices using both zigbee and thread, and claims that support calls for debugging zigbee are often among the longest (and thus most expensive) calls they handle.

Unsure what IKEA's tech support looks like, but I assume that most issues not solved by support turn into returns, which are also bad for the bottom line.

A pity there's no home standards for audio streaming. Matter Cast is an abomination, unfortunately: from what I can tell it requires native apps for each device, and there's not really an app store system, and indeed seemingly many devices only can stream via the pre-installed software!!

Really emphasizes the incredible power of Netflix's DIAL protocol, which tells a device to go to a URL & opens some command channels. Which is, if you squint, what Chromecast 's protocol was for a long long time (now I think there's also the ability to ship native apps to devices too?).

Really glad to see Ikea on board here. This creates a lot of pressure for other devices makers to modernize & use the much improved Matter stack, with much better network performance & much more standardization for Apple Google & potentially other control fabrics to make viable home systems, something Z-wave and Zigbee weren't positioned to make great progress on.

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 device I issue command from. A Matter controller is apparently a hub for connecting the thing I'm using to issue commands to the IOT device I want to control.

And maybe I need a "Thread border router"?

As far as the controller goes, apparently at some point Apple added the ability for iPads to be Matter controllers, so you could use a Matter device with just an iPad (if the Matter device used WiFi...if it used Thread then you would need a separate Matter controller and I'd guess one of those Thread border routers).

I was able to briefly use a Matter smart plug with my iPad without having a separate hub, but it stopped working not too long after. I deleted the plug from the iPad and did a factory reset on the plug and tried setting up again, but now when the iPad searches for the device during setup it doesn't even see it.

Apple still has instructions on their site for setting up devices for direct use from iPad, but several sites on the net report that they actually dropped that support from iPad.

So lets say I go get an actual Matter hub. Do I need a separate hubs for using my Matter devices from my Apple devices and using my Matter devices from my Amazon devices? How about if I need a Thread border router--will I need one for Apple and one for Amazon? What if I add Home Assistant later--am I going to need a third hub?

All I'm really trying to do for now is use this one TP-Link Tapo smart plug that supports Matter from Apple Shortcuts without having to use the Tapo app. The Tapo app does integrate with Shortcuts but you have to be logged in to your TP-Link account on the app for it to work. Every so often you have to re-login, breaking your shortcuts until you do.

What I'm currently considering is installing Home Assistant somewhere, probably in a VM on my Mac for now but latter on a dedicated RPi if the experiments in a VM show that it will work, and setting it up to be my Matter controller for the smart plug. Shortcuts (or Siri) won't be able to directly use Matter to control the plug with that setup, but there is a Home Assistant app for iOS/iPadOS that can do so and that supports Shortcuts.

It will basically be like I'm doing now with the Tapo app but instead with the Home Assistant app and no need to be logged in to TP-Link (or to even have internet access).

PS: I wouldn't need any of this if Apple would just get around to implementing for iPadOS the same 80% charge limit option that they have had on iOS for ages. I'm using the smart plug and Shortcuts as a kludge while waiting for that. I charge through the smart plug and have a Shortcut automation to turn off the smart plug when the iPad's battery level rises above 80%.

.. but all I can remember from growing up is the X-10 POWERHOUSE

So it's a closed ecosystem that makes money for a cabal of corporations