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IKEA moves to Thread (and away from Zigbee) (www.theverge.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/homeassistant@lemmy.world
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[–] 34 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I am pretty happy with zigbee so far. Is that a good thing? I haven‘t done anything with matter so far.

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  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Yeah so far it doesn't matter because zigbee and zwave still work fine.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    it doesn't matter

    Hehe.

    Anyway, I am also completely on Zigbee. While I like the concept of Matter over Thread, I wouldn't want to switch, because it will start with a too small network to cover a good distance and if I start replacing Zigbee devices, I effectively sabotage that network as well. So my only move would be to replace all Zigbee with Matter/Thread devices. And that seems insane. So I hope I keep getting new Zigbee devices for a while.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (1 child)

    I don't see why you can't keep your Zigbee network and start up a new Thread/Matter one. They should be fine to work together! Your Zigbee stuff will work in 20 years, besides component failure.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    @bdonvr @aksdb One zigbee device replaced by a thread device means that one node is removed from the zigbee network, making it smaller. Since it's a mesh network it will become less robust as a result. Likewise, the initial thread network will be very sparsely populated until a sufficient amount of devices has been added to it.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago*

    That's fair, though you could leave a zigbee router plugged in to bridge things even if you don't really need the device for example a smart plug.

    The other disadvantage is that for a zigbee device to control a matter device it will have to route through your home assistant/smart home hub instead of being able to pair a switch directly to lights for example with zigbee.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    @arschflugkoerper@feddit.org I have nothing useful to contribute, but I fucking love your username. Thank you for the smirk you gave me, have a nice evening mein Genosse 👋

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I am just getting started on this journey but zigbee seems great and I like that it works fine even if the wifi goes down. I'm not sure what the drawbacks are or the benefits of Matter.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    matter and thread are different things fyi…

    thread uses the same wireless communication as zigbee (zigbee has other stuff on top of it), so is a low power wireless protocol

    matter is the data format that devices use to communicate on top of an IP-based network like wifi or thread. it’s meant to standardise all these competing “works with google” “works with alexa” “homekit compatible”: if it works with matter, it should work with any coordinator that has matter compatibility (which all the big ones do these days)

    thread will work great if the wifi is down - same as zigbee!

    matter also (afaik) forces local devices: your coordinator (a homepod, alexa, etc) talks directly to the device without going through the internet. again, same as zigbee

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    Thanks for the explainer, that last point is really great actually and I'm surprised that Amazon/Google etc are pushing for Matter if the data isn't sent to the internet.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    me either, why do we need yet another standard?

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    All of the major platform holders agreed to come together and interoperate with this one. And like others said, it supports IPv6.

    Still yet another standard, but it’s one that’s not controlled by a single vendor. Its setup to be more like WiFi and Bluetooth than any other standard has been in the past. IMO.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    and worth noting as well that thread is only kinda another standard: it uses the same wireless communication as zigbee does

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    And Matter is modeled after HomeKit.

    It reminds me of how the MP4 container that became a standard is modeled after the MOV container.

    It’s common for standards backed by consortiums to be modeled after something that is already successfully achieving the goals of the system.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago
    1. Thread and Zigbee use the same physical layer and MAC layer (IEEE 802.15.4), so in most case it can use the same hardware and just with different firmware (if manufacturer want).
      There is even a project to run both Zigbee coordinator and Thread border router on the same chip. It works! Although it causes some issue so Home Assistant no longer recommand this "multiprotocol" way, but this is a strong demonstration of the interchangeability between Zigbee and Thread.
    2. Thread Group members is almost the same companies who found Connectivity Standards Alliance (former Zigbee Alliance). When Connected Home over IP (CHIP) project was renamd to Matter at 2019, they create Thread Group to unify the home connectivity: Only use one network layer named IPv6 and one application layer named Matter. Zigbee can't reach this target since it use its own network layer and application layer. So they invent Thread, which still based on IEEE 802.15.4, but with IPv6 as network layer and can transport Matter on it.
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