All these new standards looking to become the successor to WiFi/Zigbee IoT devices, yet every single one makes the same mistake - they think that because they find ways to force certification, take away end user control and extract licensing fees, that they’re somehow going to convince people to buy it as the next big thing.
I was cautiously optimistic when Matter/Thread was in its early days, but predictably as with most of these industry backed standards it’s turned into another pay to play walled garden. The CSA seems to be particularly bad at this.
Cant wait to see in subsequent years all the additional e-waste when manufacturers consider devices obsolete, and no one can repurpose them because of Matter spec mandating secure boot.
To succeed, consumers need to be able to rely on standards conformance.
Certification is an obvious way and that costs money.
Is there a way without certification that results in high conformance that consumers can rely on?
The standards side of things is true, however this can be largely solved by providing a reference implementation, given that no device manufacturer is going to implement the stack from scratch. Automated testing of firmware would also work. As for high conformance... WiFi and BT devices manage to work well enough by simply buying a tested chipset and building on that, no external testing/fees necessary.
I understand the certification if a manufacturer wants to sell a product commercially as 'Matter Certified'. For hobbyists or smaller players, pulling the reference implementation, loading it onto a cheap MCU, and calling it 'Works with Matter' would suffice.
As it stands, the latter isn't an option, because of the codesigning they've shoehorned into the spec. And for all the noise made about security, once connected to the hub the manufacturer can run whatever they like on it and send data back to their servers with very little visibility to the user.
Thread is arguably the interesting part for low power devices, and doesn't force certification. Matter is little more than a protocol spec, at the tradeoff of locked down devices and annual fees. For Matter over WiFi, I can't see any point whatsoever in using it. And for the costs of Doing Matter/Thread certification most smaller hardware startups will balk at the hundreds of thousands required to do so, and stick with WiFi/BT/Zigbee/Thread + roll their own protocol/app.
Having been in the business of creating standards compliant equipment in the past, the problem is not as simple as you state. You can provide all of the reference implementations you want and you still will get variances.
The state-of-the-art solution is to put a bunch of people on planes and burn a bunch of jet fuel to attend a "test fest". You can't issue interoperability until you do this. This costs money that needs to be paid by someone.
> ou can provide all of the reference implementations you want and you still will get variances.
A proper reference implementation should first and foremost come with an extensive battery of regression tests, something many a vaunted "standard" utterly fails to provide, being instead tomes upon tomes of impossible to decipher specifications, written - of all things - in human language.
Such a battery of regression tests, if properly design ought to take care of your "variations" in fairly short order.
Certification is desirable to me, so long as it doesn't mandate taking away the freedom of the owners of devices for local control and the ability to install whatever software they want on those devices.
I had no idea that Matter/Thread mandates secure boot. Presumably that's secure boot without end user freedom to load their own keys. That's no good.
> Is there a way without certification that results in high conformance that consumers can rely on?
Open source a reference implementation and a conformance test suite. Open, transparent, and low cost. Also, don't lock out devices that aren't blessed.
Why not have it be like the law profession? 100% open source with licensing.
The model seems to work. Is there precedent for the alternative working out well?
Working well for device manufacturers who want users to forklift out gear every few years?
I have been avoiding "IoT" in my home because I want stable 20+ year lifetimes for protocols and standards. I want to know that the outlets I hard-wire today will be controllable with whatever software I choose in 5, 10, 15 years. I want my thermostat to continue to have all its "smart" features for the lifetime of my HVAC system. I don't want separate "apps" for my washer, dishwasher, automatic water shut off, etc. I don't want Internet connectivity to servers that may be turned off at a manufacturer's whim to gatekeep features (or worse, basic functionality). The market is dysfunctional.
You’re in luck! That’s Zigbee.
(Not IoT)
> The model seems to work.
It "works" in the sense that it excels at separating implementors from their money and locking up end users in a cage, sure.
Does a device that provides an interface via a HTTP server need to pass any kind of TCP or HTTP certification?
Maybe I'm making some category error here but I can think of dozens of protocols that do not require certification.
As much as I dislike mandatory certification, I can understand the need for it in wireless battery powered devices: a malfunctioning decide can talk the battery life if everything within range, and most consumers aren't equipped to realize that this is happening much less identify the device that's causing the problem
Perhaps the solution is to make the spec open but make using the trademark contingent on certification (much like USB, for example)
FWIW, the "Suzi" thing they're talking about seems like an attempt to compete with LoRa, which while technically an open standard is entirely dominated by Semtech.
It's not clear to me why the manufacturers aren't just making LoRa radios. This feels like an xkcd 927 situation to me.
No thanks. Quite happy with my ConBee II and small collection of open hackable ZigBee devices thanks.
Why would I want yet-another-standard with self-updating devices, using more power (strong cryptography), and closed to certified devices only.
And Suzi sounds like it is going to stomp all over Lora? Hard to tell from that marketing fluff.
Yeah this all just seems objectively worse for end users, like me, who are spoiled with cheap reliable and completely isolated from the internet devices.
I don't understand people criticizing this. Didn't they read the article? The new Suzi stuff doesn't want to replace Zigbee, and the new zigbee version is backwards compatible.
What is the pain there?
I would assume, yet _another_ standard. There are a bunch of them, and product builders are taking a long long time to properly implement, and often buggy. And they often result in the consumer need to buy yet another gateway/router, and learn the ins/outs and quirks of another protocol that won't work properly in years, all the while two new competing standards have been introduced. An example - how long has Matter existed? Yet, it hasn't had a profile for smart plugs with energy monitoring (eg the 12$ IKEA one). Such a basic use case...
And all this so Samsung et al can siphon off more user data and show more ads.
I fully understand the consumer viewpoint.
But, it's great news imo with sub-GHz (Suzi)!
> An example - how long has Matter existed? Yet, it hasn't had a profile for smart plugs with energy monitoring (eg the 12$ IKEA one). Such a basic use case...
That was added with version 1.3 of Matter, released in the middle of this year. You just need to wait for your smart home ecosystem to support it and for IKEA to release a firmware update.
As far as ecosystems go, Home Assistant (HA) fully supports it, as does Samsung SmartThings. Google has a public beta, from what I've read. Amazon and Apple are in the on the way stage.
As far as device goes, all my energy monitoring smart plugs are Tp-link Tapo, and they have been quick to update firmware. I'm using several Tp-Link Tapo P110M Matter smart plugs [1] and a Tapo P316M Matter smart power strip [2] with HA.
The P316M, purchased in the middle of October, came with firmware that supported Matter 1.3 out of the box. I simply added it to HA using the "Add device" button on the HA screen and it worked.
The P110Ms, purchased at the start of this month, came with older firmware so they did not show energy use out of the box in HA. A quick trip to the Tapo app to add them to it during which it checks for and installs the latest firmware, brought them up to the latest firmware. After that the energy monitoring information showed up in HA.
So this will compete with Z-wave, that already operate in the 800-900 MHz space?
It's very confusing with a new Zigbee standard when I thought it was being replaced with Thread
It's very confusing with a new Zigbee standard when I thought it was being replaced with Thread
And from the same organization that co-designed and promotes Matter.
Personally, I'm very happy that Zigbee continues to be developed. I am not very enthusiastic about everything being IP addressable (even if it is just ULA) and the convoluted Thread flow where a bunch of border routers require you to initiate the pairing with a phone over BLE to hand it over to the router. I have an Eve Energy Thread + Matter plug and it requires many takes to pair it correctly. Most Zigbee devices are just a matter of permitting join on your coordinator and holding/pressing the pairing button on the device.
I wish that Apple and Google would just add a Zigbee coordinator (or just leave home automation to others) and put some effort into supporting a wide variety of devices rather than trying to disrupt a perfectly working standard. They often cannot even bother implementing the latest Matter spec timely.
As someone who's run (and continues to run) both ZWave and Zigbee networks for over 10 years I find the direction of Zigbee rather frustrating. They used to be the antithesis of Zwave with it's frustrating "licensing" and now seems to be as though they're towing that line. Most likely because they got in bed with Google, Apple and the garbage that is Matter.
What’s wrong with Matter?
It didn't solve any of the issues it proclaimed to. And, if you look across open platforms (e.g. HomeAssistant) it has, comparatively, low uptake on available integrations because Matter is a vehicle for proclaimed interop by walled garden experts (e.g. Apple, Google, etc).
Could you be more specific?
I've got several Matter smart plugs and a couple Matter smart bulbs.
They all were quick and easy to set up with their first Matter controller (an RPi4 running Home Assistant or an iPad with Apple Home), and quick and easy to add to whichever controller I didn't use as the first controller.
They all worked then without requiring me to get their manufacturer's proprietary app or make an account or anything like that.
Some needed a firmware update to support Matter 1.3, and so I had to use the manufacturer's app for that. Some also have proprietary functions and options (for example one of bulbs supports some kind of presence detection if you have at least two of those bulbs in the same room) so I might get the manufacturers app if I decide I want to use those functions.
Adding them to the manufacturer's app does not interfere with their use as Matter devices so if I do decide I want to use some of the proprietary stuff it doesn't break things.
1) If you have to use a manufacturers app for updates that's already falling into my point. 2) There are plenty of threads out there discussing manufacturers that leverage Matter but they force their own controller to be able to be used. A lot of these are together at builders as another revenue stream for them.
Finally... This [0] does a better job of explaining the issues with Matter. But, Matter is ultimately a joke. It was promoted as a standard by vendors nobody should trust for interoperability at this point.
[0] https://community.home-assistant.io/t/if-matter-is-a-suppose...
Pairing worked flawlessly with my Tado X thermostats, to add another anecdotal data point.
I thought Threads was already the next generation of zigbee.
I hope Zigbee stays. It’s widely used and works really well. Matter may be even better but it also makes it really hard for manufacturers to actually make products that can be sold cheaply. Zigbee is just good enough and I believe the push to replace it has ulterior motives.
Yeah, same. Zigbee hits the sweet spot of offline and just interoperable enough. Matter has added so many features that I might as well just use WiFi devices, and it doesn't sound like the consortium has the customer's best interests in mind.
Yeah, I can just not wrap my brain around the Thread and Matter push. Zigbee works great, devices are affordable, there are many devices out there already. Also people who already have Zigbee will have to build an additional Thread mesh. This all seems so pointless unless there is another motive.
Zigbee is indeed good enough. The issue is that it solves the problem well enough and doesn't allow for maximizing how much customers are milked for. So customers will always choose Zigbee over any other option that also solves the problem plus some useless features, less control, and increased security surface area.
There is a very clear signal that is easy to pick up: either you support zigbee in your IoT device or you are trying to undermine the customer. No customer wants to be undermined. This should make Zigbee support a very easy choice for companies operating in a competitive space. Simply succeeding in the market should be enough and if it isn't that is the company's existential challenge.
IMO Thread has one major benefit over Zigbee: the Thread mesh can extend over Ethernet (via TREL). Zigbee ought to be able to do this too, but I’m not aware of anyone actually doing it.
There are a couple of in-progress implementations of Zigbee on a regular computer using Thread radios and the Thread RCP protocol. Maybe one of them will add the ability to use multiple radios.
The good thing is that at least for a somewhat technical crowd, there is absolutely no need to buy into any of this, as there have been proper solutions available since at least 2018.
Just buy Hue, maybe Aqara sensors, use zigbee2mqtt with Home Assistant and be happy while observing the shitshow that is this market from a safe distance.
Oh cool it's not just me doing exactly this.
Sticking to pure zigbee devices with zigbee2mqtt and slae.sh's excellent USB coordinator. A couple weeks ago I bought a bunch of spare IKEA zigbee devices before they go out of stock. Around 2030 I'll take a look if thread/matter is anywhere near mature and has settled.
Are the ikea zigbee devices going to stop being sold? Massive shame if so, they are extremely reliable and easy to use.
IKEA's whole smart home ecosystem is presently being overhauled from Zigbee to Thread/Matter, with a product availability gap in the meantime.
https://www.ikea.com/global/en/newsroom/retail/the-new-smart...
What gap though? Our local IKEA has plenty of lights, smart plugs, etc. available still.
Oooh, thank you for sharing! New product lineup looks interesting, but I echo other concerns here about it thread maybe eventually requiring internet.
I just bought some spare pieces (remotes, bulbs) just in case
Personally, I find their contact sensors (the tall-ish thin ones) to be quite unreliable. I live in a modest home with plenty of zigbee devices as repeaters nearby and the contact sensors often stop reporting at random. I’ll pop it off the door, click repair on my coordinator and then hit the reset switch on the sensor; back online.
I like them because they can use rechargeable AAA batteries but if I still have to touch them every few weeks to repair, I’d rather switch to a different brand that is more reliable and uses less ideal battery formats.
That said, the newish Inspelling plugs in the EU market are fantastic. They report reliably, can handle larger loads, and cost about €10. For that price, it’s hard to complain that they are a bit larger than other options.
Side question but where would one learn how to do this that way? Any guides, reddit? The home automation market seems such a mess every time I check it out.
Easiest way is to put HAOS (Home Assistant OS) on a Raspberry Pi, Home Assistant Green, or some NUC:
https://www.home-assistant.io/installation/
Then get a coordinator recommended for zigbee2mqtt:
https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/guide/adapters/
Then install and start the following add-ons in Home Assistant:
- Mosquitto - zigbee2mqtt: https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/guide/installation/03_ha_addon.ht... - MQTT
And that's pretty much it, you can add devices through the MQTT add-on page. They will also become available as entities in the rest of Home Assistant, and you can make graphs, dashboards, actions, etc.
You can also run + install zigbee2mqtt and Mosquitto on a Linux machine, but HAOS give you more of an integrated solution with dashboards, graphs, backups, cloud access, etc.
Feed that comment into an ai (claude suggested). Let it know what you have, and just work out a "numbered list roadmap". Love ais for that!
> Just buy Hue, maybe Aqara sensors, use zigbee2mqtt with Home Assistant and be happy while observing the shitshow that is this market from a safe distance.
The only worry is if manufacturers stop developing Zigbee products. Ikea for example made cheap and good Zigbee devices but they've said they're moving away from Zigbee.
> Threads
You mean "Thread"? Or "Matter over Thread", which some vendors also just call "Matter" (which technically can also stand on it's own, but in many cases implies a Thread requirement). I'm wondering if that muddiness in bad communication will be a significant factor in hindering consumer adoption.
"Matter" can in practice also mean "Matter over Wi-Fi", and lots of vendors use it that way.
That’s my issue with it: iot devices shouldn’t have access to the internet by default. With Matter it’s possible. No one is going to create outbound firewall rules for these things.
I think it's only a matter of time before it's the same for Thread + Matter. Currently they get an ULA IPv6 address on (most?) border routers and you can ping the devices on the local network. It will be too attractive extend the standard to permit phoning home for 'analytics to improve the product' (I don't think this is possible yet with the current standard? But hard to tell.).
More power usage though.
Any particular advantage to Suzi over Thread? Why didn't they adopt an IP based standard that is interoperable with ... all major networks since ~1995 (if not before)?
Multiple reasons like not enough v4 IPs, devices being able to sleep most of the time to conserve power, security cameras and IoT devices getting hacked and faling prey to by botnet operators etc.
Don't use IPv4 and NAT < firewall.
Why would IP based routing be inherently more power hungry?
> not enough v4 IPs
No one is giving their IoT devices public IPv4 addresses. They would be behind a NAT. RFC 1918 provides 17,891,322 usable IP addresses for each private network. If we want to be a little more adventurous, RFC 6598 provides an additional 4,194,302 usable addresses and 240.0.0.0/4 is another 268,435,454 usable addresses "reserved for future use" since 1989, but still sitting unused so we can use them as internal addresses inside a NAT anyway (for example, AWS uses this range internally).
Show me a network that is using all 290,521,078 addresses and I'll show you a network managed by a team of network engineers who can just set up IPv6.
You still have to manage those and assign them through DHCP every time the device wakes up and turns the radio on. Maybe WiFi 7 will address that with the low power mode? Also, I don't want a 100 sensor mesh network on my LAN. That's why Thread uses a IPv6 6LoWPAN. One should use that if they want to bridge to IP.
Thread uses IPv6.
Exactly, over over IEEE 802.15.4. Easy to bridge to IP using the appropriate border router or whatever they are called.
Linked on the same page is the announcement for matter 1.5
In Case you missed it, https://csa-iot.org/newsroom/matter-1-5-introduces-cameras-c...
> Matter 1.5 introduces one of the most anticipated additions to the specification: cameras. Developers can now build and certify cameras that interoperate directly with Matter-enabled ecosystems, without the need for custom APIs or integrations.
> Matter cameras support live video and audio streaming using established WebRTC technology, enabling two-way communication and both local and remote access via standard STUN and TURN protocols. The specification also defines support for multi-stream configurations, pan-tilt-zoom controls, detection and privacy zones, and flexible storage options, including continuous or event-based recording to local or cloud destinations.
You might as well put a pause on any new IP camera purchase for now until these hit the market.
I have to say that the Matter Cast standard sounded good, but ended up being an abomination, imo. Instead of ther being a boradly available platform for casting, my crude understanding is that to have Matter Cast work, there has to be some out of band way for an app that wants to cast to have a reciprocal app available on the target device. There's nothing provided to help facilitate this.
Where-as with DIAL and for the first decade of Google Cast, the device being cast to was basically a web browser & could run any url. It made it so any device could be cast to from any app. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_and_Launch
It's been incredibly disappointing seeing Matter build a standard that completely fails to offer a usable path. I really want to be wrong here, but it sure seems like Matter Cast requires every device to have its own unique bespoke partnership & install already loaded, for everything that will be able to cast to it. It standardizes some protocols for how to communicate, but there's such an anti-standard vendor-controlled limited anti-ecosystem basis.
I really really want Matter to be a good better world. I hope Matter Cameras can bring some unity to streaming camera systems. But man I can not see how Matter Cast could be worse designed, more hostile to the freedom to cast that we've enjoyed, and I really worry for this ecosystem as a whole if this is what Matter is willing to ship.
I'd also really like to see affirmations that Matter is usable sans any big network, sans Google Apple and whomever else. That it really is something we can run ourselves. But I haven't seen validation that Matter really is as liberatory as it's promises, haven't seen evidence that folks really can undo the Internet of Shit damage with Matter. I hope it's just all us being extremely slow on the uptake, but I have heard just so little about running our own provisioning/control networks on Matter. I want so much to believe but my vibe is that we've been rug pulled again.
> I'd also really like to see affirmations that Matter is usable sans any big network, sans Google Apple and whomever else. That it really is something we can run ourselves.
I'm using Matter (over Thread, mostly) with Home Assistant – in addition to using it with Apple HomeKit, but I could have done it exclusively HA. My devices get an IPv6 ULA from the border router, HA can directly talk to them without any internet or cloud involved. Does this qualify?
It's true that certain non-standardized features are only available through "extensions" ie. the device vendor app. But both Thread and Matter get new revisions, and the devices get firmware updates in a standard way (again, installable via Home Assistant) to take advantage of new features and stability updates. All of this has gotten better with time.
But the best thing about Matter is that I'm not locked into a specific ecosystem or dependent on an app from the device vendor. So, in my view it has been a slow start but with steady improvement. And the right direction IMHO.
I hope Matter becomes the "the facto" standard... now we have several more "standars"
What I really don't like about thread/matter is that it is becoming the de-facto standard that thread border routers are connected to the internet.
This will in time result in IoT devices that actually mandate this connection (it was already stipulated in a recent version of the protocol). The end result will be that a new protocol was created, but rather than devices being able to run on their own, we end up with beds in heating mode, ie. the garbage we were trying to avoid in the first place.
So for me, zigbee it is!
A lot of zigbee infrastructure also expect an internet connection.
These border routers also double as admins, and people want their smart home stuff to be available while they are outside their home network.
Thread devices can mandate internet connectivity the same way Wifi devices can.
Matter defines profiles and does certification that says your light bulbs cannot require an internet connection. The admin your water leak detector connects into can (and arguably should) alert you even when you are away from home, but the leak detector _itself_ cannot do that and be certified.
> A lot of zigbee infrastructure also expect an internet connection.
Like what. I have several hundred zigbee devices of almost all category you can think of, and I have never come across such a requirement. I don't understand how that would even work.
> the facto *de facto
Any reason you prefer Matter rather than Zigbee? Zigbee has been a thing far longer than Matter, so I don't think the "one more standard" criticism is valid here.
It is supposedly an open source standard that do not requires internet connection to work, and can use regular wifi (2,4ghz) networks as a means to connect devices so you do not need to buy a hub for them. You can create your own hub with a mini pc for instance with a regular wifi card. No need for specific hardware
All of this can be done with ZigBee. It is open and local mesh over 2.4ghz.
No need for specific hardware
Meet zigbee2mqtt and ZHA. You only need a cheap USB adapter as a Zigbee coordinator and you are ready to go.
For matter over thread you do need a hub and you need more certifications for matter, so for manufacturers it is less open.
The standardization is a plus though.
I mean you can already do exactly that with zigbee after buying a zigbee usb connector which are extremely cheap.
I know because that’s what I have been doing for the past five years.
But to be fair my setup is now mostly IKEA so I guess I could go back to a bridge and stop having to maintain my stuff at some point.