IKEA moves to Thread (and away from Zigbee)
IKEA moves to Thread (and away from Zigbee)
Man there are way too many IoT standards. What's the difference between these two? How do they each compare to Matter?
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.
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.
I exclusively use ZigBee. It automeshes.
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.
Thread is a network layer thing, comparable to WiFi or Bluetooth. Matter is an application later thing, comparable to HomeKit or Google home.
Zigbee is both network and application layer.
This article has a decent overview https://www.smarthomeperfected.com/zigbee-vs-thread/
Thread works with matter, these devices will use Matter over Thread.
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.
Remains to be seen? What other information are you waiting for?
I’ve been using Thread devices for ~5 years now.
Thread is basically the same thing, but with a different upper level layer (IP), lower lever is still 802.15.4
Crap. I use pretty much exclusively Ikea stuff with my Home Assistant
I just bought the last thing I wanted from them and finally moved to their infrastructure. Like, yesterday. Welp, I hope I don't have to change anything ever again.
It's not like it'll stop working once this is introduced
No, but going forward you'll need another antenna on your server, and build with a new kind of devices.
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.
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.
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.
Never had this with ZigBee, one hub lots of different devices. Had to switch hub to USB2 at beginning to reduce interference but after that smooth sailing.
Same, I have about 40 devices on my network and it works great
Isn't the HA cloud dongle able to do both because they're on the same 2.4 gigahertz or whatever?
The dual stack firmware was deprecated because of issues, I believe.
It's still marked as experimental, not deprecated, just will likely stay that way. However, it does work with both protocols individually, and the first-use wizard asks you which dedicated firmware you would like to install:
https://support.nabucasa.com/hc/en-us/articles/26124710072861-Enabling-Thread-support
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?
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.
You can flash the SLZB-06 to use Matter over Thread too. I like those because they use Ethernet and can be powered via PoE, so you can put them practically anywhere you can reach using an Ethernet cable.
Thanks. I'll look into it. Right now I have mainly lights and sockets, through a Lidl zigbee hub, a rebranded Tuya, I believe, but I'm looking into going a bit deeper.
Googling didn't reveal any useful answer, did anybody know it has an article about what's the advantage of matter vs mqtt?
Do you mean Matter vs Zigbee? Matter and MQTT are totally separate things.
Ok, now I'm completely out. From the phrasing "matter over threads" I concluded that matter is the protocol and threads the RF Standart?!
finally!! :D
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
Kind of a lazy question, but are any of these protocols substantial over 802.11, especially if you just use p2p/adhoc/mesh modes?
I haven't touched mobile networks in a while so I've forgotten a lot, but iirc the main concern of mesh networks was efficient routing (which has been solved with some cool algorithms) and power efficiency for devices transmitting (again could have sworn 802.11 and even bluetooth can already achieve this).
Zigby particularly stood out as annoying to me as it includes its own 2.4ghz physical layer stack which uses the same range as WiFI, which is already overcrowded as hell and relies on some CSMA/CA magic to make even the most apartment crowded area of APs function decently.
Zigby particularly stood out as annoying to me as it includes its own 2.4ghz physical layer stack which uses the same range as WiFI, which is already overcrowded as hell and relies on some CSMA/CA magic to make even the most apartment crowded area of APs function decently.
I mean, there isn't really any other choices for unlicensed consumer use? 5GHz is dedicated to WiFi. The sub-GHz bands would be great, as there isn't a need for much bandwidth, but it's a huge mishmash of frequencies that would require many different SKUs per device:
I am pretty happy with zigbee so far. Is that a good thing? I haven‘t done anything with matter so far.
@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 👋
Tja
thanks lol
I agree, great name!
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.
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
- 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. - 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.
- 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).
Yeah so far it doesn't matter because zigbee and zwave still work fine.
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.
me either, why do we need yet another standard?
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.
