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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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[–] 62 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Man there are way too many IoT standards. What's the difference between these two? How do they each compare to Matter?

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  • [–] 65 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    Thread is a wireless standard meant to sit next to Bluetooth and WiFi.

    Matter is a home automation protocol can that be used over Thread or WiFi. Ideal Matter devices use Thread instead of WiFi because running a bunch of home devices like light bulbs or switches on your WiFi is a recipe for disaster.

    Matter is important because it provides native compatibility among different platforms.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    What kind of disaster specifically? I hear everyone discouraging from using WiFi for home devices, but never understood what the actual risks are.

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  • [–] 21 points 1 year ago (19 children)

    Let’s say your lightbulb(s) become comprised. A bad actor now has a toehold into your network.

    Maybe they run a spam relay through the bulb. Maybe they attack your network by attacking the printer that hasn’t had a firmware update in years.

    Point is, there’s someone with access to your network that isn’t you.

    https://old.reddit.com/r/Ubiquiti/comments/1fjspoc/what_is_the_point_of_having_a_separate_devices/

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

    I see someone replied about security. But I was just taking about stability.

    Most people don’t have super beefy wifi routers. Many have whatever shit their ISP sent them. These are fine for your average number of laptops and phones, etc. but if you then throw on 10 more 2.4GHz WiFi IOT devices, you are probally going to run into devices randomly dropping off the wifi, etc.

    Additionally, wifi is usually chosen over other protocols by manufacturers due to the cost of hardware and development. So they are often lower quality. (This is only one reason)

    But sure, if you have a super awesome 2.4GHz wifi setup and high quality wifi devices, maybe things will work out just fine. But my personal experience with WiFi tells me I shouldn’t clutter my WiFi.

    Also, if you were curious, yes: almost all WiFi IOT devices are 2.4GHz only.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    Thread is a bit more power efficient, which matters for battery powered devices that aren't connected to permanent power and don't need to transmit significant data, like door locks, temperature/humidity sensors, things like that. A full wifi networking chip would consume a lot more power for an always-on device.

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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)
    [deleted]
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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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  • [–] 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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    • [–] 34 points 1 year ago (10 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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  • [–] 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 (2 children)

    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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    [–] 18 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Crap. I use pretty much exclusively Ikea stuff with my Home Assistant

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

    It makes sense. Hopefully it's more reliable than my Zigbee devices. I constantly have to power cycle devices made by a variety of manufacturers to get them to register again. And I've tried more than a few zigbee hubs. Can't say I'm a fan.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Check interference with wifi signals wifi on channel 1 and zigbee on channel 25 gives you the most separation. As long as a neighbor doesn't blast on wifi channel 11.

    There is also software compatibility, I found hue to be the most stable for routers. Osram was terrible, recent firmware made it okay.

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

    I'm in literally the middle of nowhere, the next nearest house is 4 miles away and I'm not even connected to the grid. If there's a wifi signal detectable, it'll be mine. So I've shifted frequencies around trying to get it to stabilize, with little luck. I've primarily been using Sonoff, Aqara, Ikea and SMLight, and hubs from each of them.

    Honestly, I've been migrating to zwave since I don't seem to have issue with anything I use on that protocol.

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

    Isn't the HA cloud dongle able to do both because they're on the same 2.4 gigahertz or whatever?

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    [–] 10 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    xkcd 927 in action right there.

    Zigbee works just fine, but needs a hub to share out devices eg internet access or HomeKit. But it is quick. How thread compares remains to be seen.

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

    Remains to be seen? What other information are you waiting for?

    I’ve been using Thread devices for ~5 years now.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    How are the battery lives of your devices? I have motion sensors throughout my house connected via zwave, and I replace their button batteries about every 18 months. Does Matter run over a low energy technology?

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago* (5 children)

    Thread is just as efficient based on the few battery operated motion sensors I have. That’s another reason Matter over Thread is better than Matter over WiFi.

    I personally won’t buy another IoT device unless it’s Matter over Thread.

    With that said, if you already use home assistant, and what you have works well enough. I wouldn’t rush to upgrade. But I would choose Matter + Thread over older technologies moving forward.

    If you want to move to all HomeKit, then the upgrades are worth it.

    In an ideal future world, Matter + Thread devices won’t need a vendor app to work. They just connect to your Amazon Voice assistant, or your Google Home, or your Apple HomeKit setup directly. (Or Home Assistant)

    In the future we should see more vendors selling Matter compatible devices that don’t even offer an app. But this is down the road.

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

    So, if I'm invested in zigbee, but want to future proof, I should consider threads/matter, and a hub that talks to both?

    Can home assistant do that?

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    Yes if you have a Zigbee and a Thread antenna module connected to your HA instance you can run it as an Zigbee and Matter hub and connect Zigbee and Matter devices. A cheap antenna module is the Sonoff ZBDongle-E. You can flash the firmware of it and turn it into a Thread antenna module. It can also run as a Zigbee and Thread antenna simultaneously, but I never got that working properly. So I just bought two dongles. One for Zigbee and the other for Matter.

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    • [–] 5 points 1 year ago

    I’ve been using the OG tradfri devices since 2017/18 and have been very happy. Reliable, cheap to add a lightbulb or switch. Just works. Even integrated with home assistant v easily

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