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Wireless Networking

IKEA Ditches Zigbee For Thread Going All In On Matter Smart Homes (theverge.com) 36

IKEA is relaunching its smart home line with over 20 new Matter-over-Thread devices that will work across ecosystems such as Apple Home and Amazon Alexa, with or without IKEA's own hub. This marks a major shift toward openness, affordability, and interoperability, and positions IKEA as one of the first major retailers to bring Matter to the mainstream while maintaining backward compatibility with Zigbee products. The Verge reports: We don't have a lot of details on the over 20 new devices coming next year, but [David Granath of IKEA of Sweden] confirmed that they are replacing existing functions. So, new smart bulbs, plugs, sensors, remotes, buttons, and air-quality devices, including temperature and humidity monitors. They will also come with a new design. Although "not necessarily what's been leaked," says Granath, referring to images of the Bilresa Dual Button that appeared earlier this year. He did confirm that some new product categories will arrive in January, with more to follow in April and beyond, including potentially Matter-over-Wi-Fi products. Pricing will be comparable to or lower than that of previous products, which start under $10. "Affordability remains a key priority for us."
"The premium to make a product smart is not that high anymore, so you can expect new product types and form factors coming," he says. "Matter unlocks interoperability, ease of use, and affordability for us. The standardization process means more companies are sharing the workload of developing for this." Despite the move away from Zigbee, IKEA is keeping Zigbee's Touchlink functionality. This point-to-point protocol allows devices to be paired directly to each other and work together out of the box, without an app or hub -- such as the bulb and remote bundles IKEA sells. This means older Zigbee remotes can control the newer Thread bulbs and vice versa, retaining backward compatibility with its Tradfri line. "Touchlink and Matter will coexist in new products," says Granath. "It's still very important for IKEA -- not everyone wants an app or hub."

Interestingly, IKEA's new Matter-over-Thread products will also work without the IKEA hub or app, as they can be set up directly in any compatible Matter smart home ecosystem, such as Apple Home, Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Samsung SmartThings, Home Assistant, and others.

IKEA Ditches Zigbee For Thread Going All In On Matter Smart Homes

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  • by ugen ( 93902 )

    The answer is still - *no*

    • Not necessarily. "Smart" IKEA whatnots can be a cheap source of electronic modules, in that buying the whatnot, extracting the electronics, and throwing the rest away can be cheaper than buying just the electronics.
  • ...Unlikely. I don't want Putin controlling my massage chair, Thank You.

    • It's generally pretty good, especially if you want Zigbee devices from a company you've heard of. I've had a couple things not work quite right, but their newer products have been getting better.
    • by quenda ( 644621 )

      ...Unlikely. I don't want Putin controlling my massage chair, Thank You.

      So don't connect it to the internet! It is right above in the summary - these things can talk directly to one another.
      You can even run a server at home, making it easy to add smarts, all isolated from the internet if you like.
      Unlike wifi devices such as Tuya which generally require an internet connection and remote server to work.

      Perhaps we need to rename in LANoT for you?

  • Thread good (Score:5, Interesting)

    by kqs ( 1038910 ) on Wednesday July 09, 2025 @07:52PM (#65508650)

    Sounds good. Thread is available for anyone and is a mesh, so the more you deploy, the healthier the network becomes. Matter gives actual security, not "you can't easily get to the network so we assume it's safe". And it all works locally, without needing to talk outside your house. Plus, matter + thread controllers/routers are available in all Amazon/Apple/Google controllers, so you don't need Yet More Random Devices to make things work.

    If you don't want smart devices in your house, no worries. Please stop moaning and whining every time they are mentioned; we know. And the world has so many real problems that we don't have the bandwidth to listen to problems solved by "well, I won't install any and I'll shut the fuck up." But if you do want convenient control over your house, and are willing to trade off some security for some functionality, this is an improvement.

  • I have mixed reviews of Zigbee. It sorta works, but doesn't like stucco walls. But at least it's not Internet addressable. Once you've moved to something running IPv6, you might as well just throw things on WiFi.

    T

    • I know it doesn't taste the same as the wall candy from your childhood, but maybe you should have gone with the lead-free stucco.

      • by Temkin ( 112574 )

        I know it doesn't taste the same as the wall candy from your childhood, but maybe you should have gone with the lead-free stucco.

        Wall candy nothing... I'm so old my wooden crib was painted with lead paint. That stuff was everywhere around the SF Bay. Heck CP/M-86 probably failed because of lead neurotoxicity. How do you think we got M$-DOh$...

        But seriously... I didn't expect to have to be on the lookout for lead paints in my kids toys. But 20 years ago they shipped a bunch of wooden toy trains in with red paint containing lead. Big recall... It was hard to explain to a 2 year old. So if you ever manage to kiss a girl and she ta

    • by Bert64 ( 520050 )

      Addressable does not mean accessible.
      IPv6 has link-local addresses which are unroutable outside of the local segment. Plus firewalls and VLANs exist so you can limit access however you want.

      This is a _LOT_ better than the typical device that connects to someone else's hosted server that you have absolutely no control over.

  • I remember reading that apple devices already have a thread radio built in to them just not activated yet. Maybe now is the time for Tim Apple to activate the borg within.
  • All this "smart home" tech has nowhere even remotely the lifetime of an average house.

    • by mccalli ( 323026 )
      And no-one has ever replaced a light bulb in their house before. No, not ever in the history of the universe.
      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        To be fair they probably meant the protocol, but even then many houses have been rewired for phone, then ethernet, and maybe fibre now. In the UK a lot of homes had central heating retrofitted.

        With Matter and Threads, since they are open protocols you can expect very long term support. Even if Google and all the other companies drop it, open source implementations already exist.

      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        With a completely different system?

        • by mccalli ( 323026 )
          Although the literal answer to that is "yes" since people have definitely rewired houses before, the more relevant one is - this isn't a completely different system. Your light bulb remains a light bulb. It screws into the same sockets as the last ones did, and is operated by the same switches.

          In terms of protocols, I've already got several protocols running in my house and they mix and match without issue. Gradually switching over to emphasises one of them (Matter/Thread) more than the others won't affe
    • by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Thursday July 10, 2025 @04:42AM (#65509190)

      Who cares. Nothing in the house has the lifetime of a house. People are constantly renovating and rebuilding, repainting, replacing lightbulbs, changing fittings, replacing entire bathrooms and kitchens every decade or two.

      No one is expecting any of this stuff to last the lifetime of the structure. The only part of a house that is expected to last the lifetime of an average house is the external walls and supporting internal walls. Yes I didn't mention the roof for a reason, that also has a limited lifetime compared to the average house.

      Stop being unreasonable.

      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Who cares. Nothing in the house has the lifetime of a house. People are constantly renovating and rebuilding, repainting, replacing lightbulbs, changing fittings, replacing entire bathrooms and kitchens every decade or two.

        Only if you do a shoddy job in the first place. But maybe that is your preferred approach?

    • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      Neither does a water heater, or a light bulb. Dead end technologies all.

  • by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Thursday July 10, 2025 @04:38AM (#65509186)

    What the heck is "interestingly" about the devices not requiring an IKEA hub. That was THE WHOLE POINT OF MATTER AND THREADS! Being device and vendor agnostic is the whole purpose Matter and Threads exists. This isn't an interesting feature, it's an essential minimum requirement for adopting the standard.

    • by mccalli ( 323026 )
      Many aren't doing Matter properly unfortunately. Take Switchbot [switch-bot.com] for instance - it uses a hub to expose its devices over Matter. Aqara did too, though not sure if their latest stuff needs it.

      Many people did Matter as "take our Zigbee kit, run it through yet another hub, and we'll push it out the other side as Matter". Not ideal.
  • Having built two primarily zigbee based home automation networks over the last 10 years, ikea had become indispensable. Their devices were at a reasonable price point and worked really well. You did not need to use their hub either and just had to use any zigbee hub that offered drivers or so form of generic implementation for the device type.

    While matter and thread have been around for a couple of years now, I would deem that they are still in their infancy. It is likely that problems that were previous

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