IKEA's Zigbee devices have been some of the more stable smart devices I owned. I wasn't running their hub, opting to run with deCONZ in the past and moving to Zigbee2MQTT in recent years.
I do wish the new range would include blinds; the previous generation (FYRTUR) is out of production, and it doesn't seem like there's a replacement yet.
I have quite different observations. IKEA's Zigbee devices are the least stable devices I own and with smaller feature set.
For example, I have more than a dozen Zigbee smart outlet around my home, and the IKEA one is the only one that ever hang and became uncontrollable, yet its also the only one without a physical button to toggle and without power monitoring.
One of IKEA's Zigbee remote controls I have also regularly drops connection and I have to remove its battery to reset it from time to time.
The ones I bought from AliExpress of unknown brands are, unfortunately, much cheaper, have more functionalities, and more reliable.
Don't have any particular brand recommendation. I have been mostly looking for products marketed as compatible with Tuya Zigbee. It seems they are manufactured under many different brands, and usually at the cheaper end, but they work well in general with ZHA.
Does this mean they're abandoning Zigbee compatibility? In my experience, Ikea was making the most reliable Zigbee devices considering the price (as someone who just uses Zigbee and no Ikea hubs, just HA+Zigbee), and would be a shame to lose that, but maybe it's a clear sign I should investigate starting to use Matter more instead?
Is there an article that has the US pricing anywhere? It doesn't look like any of these are on the US site yet so I am curious what these will actually cost.
I keep hoping that Ikea would come up with something that can go over a switch to manually control it. Seems like it would be very much within Ikea's target market (renters). There are devices like this on Amazon but having used them in the past they are finicky at best.
Tangential but I was wondering if anyone knows of a thermostat that can work with a security system for the most simple and accurate location sensing possible- when I press away on the alarm it turns the HVAC to eco type settings to save energy. I used to get this with Google Nest and location sensing from my phone but Google as always is killing my generation of Nest thermostat. I think I’d like to get away from location sensing entirely. Every time I leave the house I do the alarm, so that is all I need.
Their new smart plugs finally seem reasonably sized.
I love IKEA’s smart home products, but their smart plugs (and many of their device power plugs) are comically sized in the US. Their original US version of the TRÅDFRI plugs wouldn’t even allow for two to be plugged into the same (standard size) dual wall outlet. Their more recent TRETAKT is much better, but still larger than competitors.
I've never really got the smart home thing, and the shit being pulled with the likes of "smart" TVs and cars has really put me off any sort of network connected device I can't control.
How would you use this and ensure privacy and security? Without investing time in becoming an amateur network engineer?
Although I have been trying to only buy 'needs' not 'wants' recently, I did stockpile a few IKEA ZigBee gadgets before they retired them. One of the few product lines their MBA's hadn't destroyed.
I was working on some Golang code, talking to them via the very open ConBee II ZigBee gateway. Great fun, and very fast once I got subscribe vs polling working. So now I get an SMS for door access, but kinda hopefully never for a water leak.
No interest in yet another 'standard', especially since Matter seems to mandate PKI device attestation. ZigBee just feels more open to me, and I have enough eWaste devices with expired certificates.
Will zigbee2mqtt be able to talk to these? Or are they in a fully different type of network? If not, any other software that can do MQTT bridging with these?
I find pairing my IKEA bulbs and switches and whatnot to my Conbee 2 stick sometimes hard to do.
I'm thinking about buying a Dirigera hub instead, using that for the IKEA devices and using the Conbee stick only for non-IKEA products.
Does that work flawlessly when being controlled via HA or are there other issues to be expected?
edit: Maybe even ditch the Conbee stick after all, build some ESPHome devices as replacements (temperature/humidty - or wait for the IKEA version of that).
I just bought an AirGradient sensor and set up home assistant. What an absolute joy, both experiences (though I had issues building AirGradient's firmware due to some issues on their end, to their credit their dev team told me they're going to adopt my recommendations) are streamlined and professional and super easy to set up for a techie. I've already got in the habit of opening the window to the office as the sensor detects elevated CO2 (happens faster and more often than expected, very glad I invested).
However, I also bought a 3 SCD41 sensors and ESP32 C3 Superminis from the most reputable sellers on AliExpress, that's been an abject failure. I wanted additional sensors in other rooms less at risk, and wanted to try using ESPHome and putting together my own soldered little devices. Got counterfeit sensors (no laser engraving on the side as Sensiron indicates is without reception the case in genuine parts) and either counterfeit or defective microcontrollers (cannot connect to wifi, even 2.4GHz WPA2, a common enough problem from my research with ). The spread from reputable sellers in NA was absolutely ridiculous and worse then buying premade pieces by a large margin.
All to say, as fun as DIY is, I'm grateful to have trustworthy products available affordably. I'll still block internet access and leave them on a dedicated IoT VLAN, but I can at least not worry it's going to incorrectly label the air quality for a child's bedroom. I'll probably pick up 3 of the CO2 sensors from IKEA, if reviews look good.
That is my approach. It requires quite a few components to work:
* Multiple VLANs - segregate devices - I usually have two for IoT devices: "THINGS" and "SEWER"
* Router/firewall segregation
* Home Assistant
* etc
So my doorbell has a camera and I run the likes of Frigate or Zoneminder. It is PoE and also has a chime relay. It will still ring if the network goes down.
I am gradually migrating my home light switches to zwave ones. They will still work, regardless of HA being up.
My car (EV) and utility provider (Octopus) and so on are getting complicated and have multiple apps. I have a single Home Assistant box that manages all of that lot.
All of that is quite complicated. I'm an IT consultant with 30 years experience but a novice can go quite far already and it will get better.
I really wish wall switches and dimmers were included in the first drop. I've long been in the market for affordable Matter over Thread switches with a matte white finish from a reliable vendor.
They need to cover all the categories too (single, multi-pole, dimmer, and maybe fan speed) so I know I won't end up with a hodge podge of brands and looks.
Is anyone aware of or working on an equivalent to zigbee2mqtt but for both Matter-over-WiFi and Matter-over-Thread devices?
It’s so darn convenient to have MQTT in the picture for home automation and my #1 challenge in imagining a future world past my 400+ ZigBee devices is what replaces zigbee2mqtt and has a similar “owner experience”.
Do any of these devices alert when the electricity is cut? I never hear talk about this but I had this happen -- power went out while I was on vacation and I didn't figure it out until much later when I tried to cook some of the food from the freezer.
Still looking for a good "smart stove" for the mother-in-law who is showing early stages of Alzheimer's/dementia, but in complete denial and will not seek medical advice. So, I need something to be able to monitor it, turn it off, etc. LG or Samsung seem to be the only games in-town - I have also looked at a smart-plug capable of 220v, but - that "all-or-nothing" may be overkill.
For the power user, I don't see much that Matter/Thread offers over Zigbee. The "unified command protocol" is not much of a problem with attentive device selection (and for chinese products there is Tuya) and as for Thread, it's not dramatically better. There were debates around this 4+ years ago, and will be 4+ years from now. The standard is out forever, search any marketplace, you will find that Zigbee/Wifi outnumber Matter devices 10:1.
So what's the skinny with Matter devices? I was potentially looking into one so that I could plug my Moccamaster into a smart timer (wonderful coffee maker, but the lack of programmable functionality has my wife constantly wanting to pull out our old Ninja), and I liked what I read about Matter. But it would be my first Matter device and I started to get discouraged when the documentation said I would need to purchase a Matter "hub" or something to act as the controller, so I held off.
You may already have a Matter controller. For WiFi Matter devices you may be able to use your smartphone.
For iPhones (and iPads) just make sure you have OS version 18. They actually added Matter controller functionality in 16.1 but many people found it very flakey. Before 18 when I tried it I got my smart plug (Tapo TP15) connected and it worked fine for something like a day and then disappeared, and then I was never able to get it connected again. Even after telling the phone to forget the device and doing a factory reset on the plug I could not get the phone to see it. 18 on other hand has been fine.
For Android phones you need at least Android 8.1 and Google Play services 22.48.14 or later and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) 4.2 or later. That's what the net tells me--I do not have any direct experience with Android. The net is also telling me that you really want Android 12 because Matter support was not as stable in earlier versions.
From the name Matter controller and the diagrams in many explanations of how Matter works people tend to get the impression that a Matter controller is kind of like the WiFi router on your WiFi network: some dedicated device which you generally only have one of.
To see why that is not the case it is helpful to look at what a Matter controller actually does. (The general idea is right in what follows, but I'm sure I've botched some details that don't affect the overall points).
When you start out with a brand new Matter device and power it up the device will come up ready to be paired with its first controller. The controller and the device communicate using BLE, but the device will only talk to a controller that has a code that is hardwired into the device. That's what is in the QR code that is usually printed on the device or its packaging or a slip of paper in the package.
The controller and the device use that code to establish a secure communications channel over BLE. The controller gives the device WiFi connection information and gives it a certificate that can be used to verify that future communication over WiFi is with that controller. The device can actually remember several of these controller certificates, allow the device to work with several controllers.
Later, when things want to communicate with the device over WiFi it will only talk to things that can prove they have the private keys for a controller certificate the device has.
There is nothing that requires those private keys to only be in one place. If you set up a new Matter device using your iPad, for example, it will store the keys in Keychain and they will be shared with your other Apple devices, such as your iPhone and your Mac. Your iPhone and Mac can then authenticate to the device and it will accept commands from them. As far as the device is concerned they are all the controller that set it up.
There are some advantages of getting a controller that is not your phone/tablet/computer, such as a HomePod or Apple TV. Those support remote control through the cloud. If you just use your phone/tablet/computer you can only control the device locally.
Suppose that you set up the device first using an iPhone as the controller. Later you want to also be able to control it from an Android phone. What you do is go to Apple Home, find the device and open its settings, and somewhere in there there will be an option to put the device in pairing mode.
Select that and Home will generate a one-time pairing code, give that to the device, and put the device in pairing mode. It will also tell you that code.
You then go to your Android phone and go through its process for setting up a Matter device, except you use the code you got from Apple Home instead of the code that came with the device. The code that comes with the device is only used to set it up with the first controller (initially or after a factory reset).
That gets the certificate for your Android phone onto the device. It doesn't disturb the certificate from the iPhone so now the device will recog...
I hope these new IKEA light bulbs finally reproduce deep greens. Some cyan shades were also nearly white. Blue and red shades were fine. (Not so coincidentally green shades are always missing from IKEA's product photos.)
I really like the idea of an open, local standard for this stuff. I have been a little annoyed at the matter standards immaturity still. Two things I’ve noticed is that there’s not good support for very low power devices that use WiFi. What you’d like to do, for example for a battery powered sensor, is to go into deep sleep and disconnect from the WiFi and then wake up periodically and report the sensor reading. Unfortunately as far as I can tell, you can’t really tell a matter hub that you’re going to disconnect from wifi and when you expect to reconnect and not have matter mark the device as missing. There are some things you can do with certain WiFi routers, but they’re not universally supported and they have time limits.
The device type catalog is also somewhat limited, for example there’s no garage door device type.
Matter is nice because of its mesh and low power wakeup. but esh networks are hard to get right. Matter is better than BLE mesh but still not perfect. If you like to build yourself better to use MQTT (deal with a little latency when you turn on your light) on esp32 (nice and low power modes) and Wi-Fi repeaters around the house.
Coming as a very disgruntled and burned Philips Hue owner. Only four bulbs, but Philips is a name which leaves behind bile when spoken.
Ikea's Tradfri line was very refreshing for being entirely configurable with the wireless remote it comes with. You can connect multiple bulbs to one remote, without ever tinkering with an app or a hub or Home Assistant, etc.
Crucially, old TRADFRI communicated from the remote control to the bulb directly, so Ikea couldn't burn me the way Philips did. I'm hoping the new KAJPLATS end up working the same way.
38 comments
[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 68.7 ms ] threadI do wish the new range would include blinds; the previous generation (FYRTUR) is out of production, and it doesn't seem like there's a replacement yet.
For example, I have more than a dozen Zigbee smart outlet around my home, and the IKEA one is the only one that ever hang and became uncontrollable, yet its also the only one without a physical button to toggle and without power monitoring.
One of IKEA's Zigbee remote controls I have also regularly drops connection and I have to remove its battery to reset it from time to time.
The ones I bought from AliExpress of unknown brands are, unfortunately, much cheaper, have more functionalities, and more reliable.
I keep hoping that Ikea would come up with something that can go over a switch to manually control it. Seems like it would be very much within Ikea's target market (renters). There are devices like this on Amazon but having used them in the past they are finicky at best.
I currently use Home Assistant but want to shift to something more “mass market” as I’m bored of being family tech support.
I have some Thread/Matter smart bulbs, and they work well, but Ikea joining in shows that it's finally ready for the mass market.
How would you use this and ensure privacy and security? Without investing time in becoming an amateur network engineer?
I was working on some Golang code, talking to them via the very open ConBee II ZigBee gateway. Great fun, and very fast once I got subscribe vs polling working. So now I get an SMS for door access, but kinda hopefully never for a water leak.
No interest in yet another 'standard', especially since Matter seems to mandate PKI device attestation. ZigBee just feels more open to me, and I have enough eWaste devices with expired certificates.
I'm thinking about buying a Dirigera hub instead, using that for the IKEA devices and using the Conbee stick only for non-IKEA products.
Does that work flawlessly when being controlled via HA or are there other issues to be expected?
edit: Maybe even ditch the Conbee stick after all, build some ESPHome devices as replacements (temperature/humidty - or wait for the IKEA version of that).
However, I also bought a 3 SCD41 sensors and ESP32 C3 Superminis from the most reputable sellers on AliExpress, that's been an abject failure. I wanted additional sensors in other rooms less at risk, and wanted to try using ESPHome and putting together my own soldered little devices. Got counterfeit sensors (no laser engraving on the side as Sensiron indicates is without reception the case in genuine parts) and either counterfeit or defective microcontrollers (cannot connect to wifi, even 2.4GHz WPA2, a common enough problem from my research with ). The spread from reputable sellers in NA was absolutely ridiculous and worse then buying premade pieces by a large margin.
All to say, as fun as DIY is, I'm grateful to have trustworthy products available affordably. I'll still block internet access and leave them on a dedicated IoT VLAN, but I can at least not worry it's going to incorrectly label the air quality for a child's bedroom. I'll probably pick up 3 of the CO2 sensors from IKEA, if reviews look good.
* I can fully control them without the cloud on a non-internet connected network
* I can either pay for updates, or they have free updates for at least 12 years, ideally 15
If a hurricane or tornado strikes, or some dictator tries to tell me what I can and can't do, my devices need to remain under my command.
* Multiple VLANs - segregate devices - I usually have two for IoT devices: "THINGS" and "SEWER" * Router/firewall segregation * Home Assistant * etc
So my doorbell has a camera and I run the likes of Frigate or Zoneminder. It is PoE and also has a chime relay. It will still ring if the network goes down.
I am gradually migrating my home light switches to zwave ones. They will still work, regardless of HA being up.
My car (EV) and utility provider (Octopus) and so on are getting complicated and have multiple apps. I have a single Home Assistant box that manages all of that lot.
All of that is quite complicated. I'm an IT consultant with 30 years experience but a novice can go quite far already and it will get better.
They need to cover all the categories too (single, multi-pole, dimmer, and maybe fan speed) so I know I won't end up with a hodge podge of brands and looks.
I'll keep holding out.
It’s so darn convenient to have MQTT in the picture for home automation and my #1 challenge in imagining a future world past my 400+ ZigBee devices is what replaces zigbee2mqtt and has a similar “owner experience”.
For iPhones (and iPads) just make sure you have OS version 18. They actually added Matter controller functionality in 16.1 but many people found it very flakey. Before 18 when I tried it I got my smart plug (Tapo TP15) connected and it worked fine for something like a day and then disappeared, and then I was never able to get it connected again. Even after telling the phone to forget the device and doing a factory reset on the plug I could not get the phone to see it. 18 on other hand has been fine.
For Android phones you need at least Android 8.1 and Google Play services 22.48.14 or later and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) 4.2 or later. That's what the net tells me--I do not have any direct experience with Android. The net is also telling me that you really want Android 12 because Matter support was not as stable in earlier versions.
From the name Matter controller and the diagrams in many explanations of how Matter works people tend to get the impression that a Matter controller is kind of like the WiFi router on your WiFi network: some dedicated device which you generally only have one of.
To see why that is not the case it is helpful to look at what a Matter controller actually does. (The general idea is right in what follows, but I'm sure I've botched some details that don't affect the overall points).
When you start out with a brand new Matter device and power it up the device will come up ready to be paired with its first controller. The controller and the device communicate using BLE, but the device will only talk to a controller that has a code that is hardwired into the device. That's what is in the QR code that is usually printed on the device or its packaging or a slip of paper in the package.
The controller and the device use that code to establish a secure communications channel over BLE. The controller gives the device WiFi connection information and gives it a certificate that can be used to verify that future communication over WiFi is with that controller. The device can actually remember several of these controller certificates, allow the device to work with several controllers.
Later, when things want to communicate with the device over WiFi it will only talk to things that can prove they have the private keys for a controller certificate the device has.
There is nothing that requires those private keys to only be in one place. If you set up a new Matter device using your iPad, for example, it will store the keys in Keychain and they will be shared with your other Apple devices, such as your iPhone and your Mac. Your iPhone and Mac can then authenticate to the device and it will accept commands from them. As far as the device is concerned they are all the controller that set it up.
There are some advantages of getting a controller that is not your phone/tablet/computer, such as a HomePod or Apple TV. Those support remote control through the cloud. If you just use your phone/tablet/computer you can only control the device locally.
Suppose that you set up the device first using an iPhone as the controller. Later you want to also be able to control it from an Android phone. What you do is go to Apple Home, find the device and open its settings, and somewhere in there there will be an option to put the device in pairing mode.
Select that and Home will generate a one-time pairing code, give that to the device, and put the device in pairing mode. It will also tell you that code.
You then go to your Android phone and go through its process for setting up a Matter device, except you use the code you got from Apple Home instead of the code that came with the device. The code that comes with the device is only used to set it up with the first controller (initially or after a factory reset).
That gets the certificate for your Android phone onto the device. It doesn't disturb the certificate from the iPhone so now the device will recog...
The device type catalog is also somewhat limited, for example there’s no garage door device type.
Was looking for this one: ALPSTUGA air quality sensor: £25 (~$33 USD)
Ikea's Tradfri line was very refreshing for being entirely configurable with the wireless remote it comes with. You can connect multiple bulbs to one remote, without ever tinkering with an app or a hub or Home Assistant, etc.
Crucially, old TRADFRI communicated from the remote control to the bulb directly, so Ikea couldn't burn me the way Philips did. I'm hoping the new KAJPLATS end up working the same way.