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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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[–] 28 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

An important difference between thread and zigbee/wi-fi I'm not seeing mentioned is that all thread devices automesh in a hub/spoke model as long as they're not battery powered. So your light bulbs, plugs, etc all become extenders and part of a self healing mesh network without a single point of failure. For me it works better than Zigbee for this reason.

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  • [+] 45 points 1 year ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)
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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Pretty sure than an underlying feature of both zigbee and zwave.

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  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago*

    They're different in their implementation. Zigbee automesh is more of a centralized router-hub model with self healing relying on routing tables. This caused significant issues for me. Thread is true automesh with all devices acting as a hub in a hub/spoke model, so there's no centralized routing table to act as a single point of failure.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Yes, Thread serves similar functionality to Zigbee, to the extent that some people describe it as Zigbee 2.0.

    However it’s a new protocol for a new standard, that has backing from all the big names in home automation, including Apple, Amazon, Google.

    Zigbee is a great protocol. Thread will bring better connectivity for the future (we hope)

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago

    Thread also works on the 2.4 GHz range but can utilize sub ranges of 868 in Europe and 915 in north America. The 868 and 915 GHz ranges are what LoRa operates on and provides a much greater range for low data rate transmissions.

    In fact Meshtastic operates on LoRa on 915 here in the U.S. and I have a node in my second floor window with a 3db antenna and I have been able to message both ways up to 3 blocks away.

    Long story short, utilizing 868 and 915 in these devices will make dead spots a thing of the past within a home, even with their lower gain internal antennas.

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