Ikea HomeKit hub with Matter support set for November release

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• Reply 1 of 11

  macbootx Posts: 72member

  October 3, 2022 6:36PM

  I think Matter is a badly needed shot in the arm for not only HomeKit but for the whole Smart Home industry. 

  

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• Reply 2 of 11

  tobian Posts: 158member

  October 3, 2022 8:24PM

  According to IKEAs customer services folks it’s comming in December in Czech Republic as well. yupee!

  

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• Reply 3 of 11

  appleinsideruser Posts: 723member

  October 3, 2022 9:46PM

  Er, wasn’t one of the benefits of Matter that hubs weren’t needed?

  

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• Reply 4 of 11

  dewme Posts: 5,959member

  October 4, 2022 2:49AM

  appleinsideruser said:

  Er, wasn’t one of the benefits of Matter that hubs weren’t needed?

  This device isn’t really a “hub” in the traditional sense of a communication (e.g., Ethernet) hub. It’s more of a hub like you see with Thunderbolt “hubs” on the market that provide a single centralized device that incorporates connectivity to multiple other communication networks and buses like USB, HDMI, Ethernet. 

  
  

  Matter is an application layer protocol that runs on top of multiple communication layers, the most important are IP based ones being Thread and WiFi. If all of your Matter devices are WiFi based and your client is on WiFi and supports Matter, then yeah, you don’t need a separate “hub, router, gateway” type of device. 

  
  

  However, if you want to access Matter devices that use Thread from a WiFi client you need a border router to route between WiFi and Thread. It’s still IP based end to end, but the WiFi and Thread link layers, physical layers, and IP address spaces are not the same. 

  
  

  This “hub” device also supports Zigbee devices, which are not IP based. Going from WiFi to Zigbee requires a gateway because it’s bridging protocols. 

  
  

  Matter devices can also communicate via Bluetooth. 

  
  

  So this Matter “hub” is actually a border router and gateway that allows Matter compatible clients to communicate with wide range of Matter compatible devices as well as legacy Zigbee devices. 

  
  

  edited October 2022

  

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• Reply 5 of 11

  iosdevswe Posts: 29member

  October 4, 2022 5:11AM

  It’s not called “tradri” but “trådfri” where “tråd” is a wire and “fri” is free, hence “trådfri” means “wireless” in Swedish, nice name for a hub 😄
  

  

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• Reply 6 of 11

  appleinsideruser Posts: 723member

  October 4, 2022 7:44AM

  dewme said:

  appleinsideruser said:

  Er, wasn’t one of the benefits of Matter that hubs weren’t needed?

  This device isn’t really a “hub” in the traditional sense of a communication (e.g., Ethernet) hub. It’s more of a hub like you see with Thunderbolt “hubs” on the market that provide a single centralized device that incorporates connectivity to multiple other communication networks and buses like USB, HDMI, Ethernet. 

  
  

  Matter is an application layer protocol that runs on top of multiple communication layers, the most important are IP based ones being Thread and WiFi. If all of your Matter devices are WiFi based and your client is on WiFi and supports Matter, then yeah, you don’t need a separate “hub, router, gateway” type of device. 

  
  

  However, if you want to access Matter devices that use Thread from a WiFi client you need a border router to route between WiFi and Thread. It’s still IP based end to end, but the WiFi and Thread link layers, physical layers, and IP address spaces are not the same. 

  
  

  This “hub” device also supports Zigbee devices, which are not IP based. Going from WiFi to Zigbee requires a gateway because it’s bridging protocols. 

  
  

  Matter devices can also communicate via Bluetooth. 

  
  

  So this Matter “hub” is actually a border router and gateway that allows Matter compatible clients to communicate with wide range of Matter compatible devices as well as legacy Zigbee devices. 

  
  

  There's an old truism that simple is complication i.e. it's easy to make something that is hard to use, it's hard to make something easy to use.
  
  Thanks for that explanation of the issues @dewme — I hope all this effort does actually make things easy; but I've a nagging worry that this hidden complexity might leak out, creating confusion, obstacles and disappointment for users. 
  
  Fingers crossed this Matter/Thread lark works out well.

  

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• Reply 7 of 11

  dewme Posts: 5,959member

  October 4, 2022 12:29PM

  appleinsideruser said:

  dewme said:

  appleinsideruser said:

  Er, wasn’t one of the benefits of Matter that hubs weren’t needed?

  This device isn’t really a “hub” in the traditional sense of a communication (e.g., Ethernet) hub. It’s more of a hub like you see with Thunderbolt “hubs” on the market that provide a single centralized device that incorporates connectivity to multiple other communication networks and buses like USB, HDMI, Ethernet. 

  
  

  Matter is an application layer protocol that runs on top of multiple communication layers, the most important are IP based ones being Thread and WiFi. If all of your Matter devices are WiFi based and your client is on WiFi and supports Matter, then yeah, you don’t need a separate “hub, router, gateway” type of device. 

  
  

  However, if you want to access Matter devices that use Thread from a WiFi client you need a border router to route between WiFi and Thread. It’s still IP based end to end, but the WiFi and Thread link layers, physical layers, and IP address spaces are not the same. 

  
  

  This “hub” device also supports Zigbee devices, which are not IP based. Going from WiFi to Zigbee requires a gateway because it’s bridging protocols. 

  
  

  Matter devices can also communicate via Bluetooth. 

  
  

  So this Matter “hub” is actually a border router and gateway that allows Matter compatible clients to communicate with wide range of Matter compatible devices as well as legacy Zigbee devices. 

  
  

  There's an old truism that simple is complication i.e. it's easy to make something that is hard to use, it's hard to make something easy to use.
  
  Thanks for that explanation of the issues @dewme — I hope all this effort does actually make things easy; but I've a nagging worry that this hidden complexity might leak out, creating confusion, obstacles and disappointment for users. 
  
  Fingers crossed this Matter/Thread lark works out well.

  A certain amount of complexity is always going to be present whenever you bring out a new technology or standard that replaces (or tries to replace) existing technology that is already widely deployed. There are rarely opportunities to start with a totally clean slate. You can’t erase history. You can’t force everyone to turn in the things they’ve already payed for and pay again for something newer, even if it’s better.
  
  Matter and Thread are both very sound and well conceived approaches to solving the problems they are each trying to solve. Matter provides an application layer protocol standard that allows any client application from any vendor, like Apple’s HomeKit, and any device from any device maker, like IKEA, to interoperate over IP networks, which are the most prevalent networks in the world. Thread is a low bandwidth IP based mesh network for low powered devices, which allows the use of battery operated devices to last for years without recharging or changing batteries.
  
  The most compelling case for supporting Matter and Thread is that they provide technical innovation, which only results when something actually delivers value to people, without inventing anything new, other then the protocol itself, which is still derivative. The underlying technology bits are all standard off-the-shelf stuff, like WiFi (IEEE 802.11), 6LowWPAN (IEEE 802.15.4 - Thread), TCP/IP, UDP, IPV6 and Bluetooth LE. 
  
  Is this a lark? I don’t think so. But it isn’t all puppies and kittens either because there are already plenty of people who have invested in pre-Matter systems like Zigbee and Z-Wave/Z-Wave Plus. Some of these systems like Z-Wave Plus are very well engineered, modern, secure, and well supported solutions that already deliver many of the same qualities that Matter is promising to deliver, outside of being open and based on off-the-shelf infrastructure technology. Owners of these systems aren’t going to retire those systems when they have many years of service life remaining. They can however start augmenting those system with Matter devices by using a gateways to bring Matter devices into their existing system or vice versa, bring the devices from those other systems into a Matter based system. 

  

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• Reply 8 of 11

  appleinsideruser Posts: 723member

  October 4, 2022 12:42PM

  Thanks again @dewme. So as AppleTV supports Thread and Matter, what does this Ikea router add to the party? Or is it providing similar functionality, but for folks who don't want/have AppleTV?

  

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• Reply 9 of 11

  dewme Posts: 5,959member

  October 4, 2022 12:56PM

  appleinsideruser said:

  Thanks again @dewme. So as AppleTV supports Thread and Matter, what does this Ikea router add to the party? Or is it providing similar functionality, but for folks who don't want/have AppleTV?

  Support for Zigbee devices.

  
  

  Edit:
  

  
  

  Just noticed that both the latest Apple TV 4K and HomePod mini technical specs have the following exception noted: 
  

  
  

  "Not compatible with non‑HomeKit Thread devices."

  
  

  Hopefully this will be resolved once all the Thread spec is ratified and Apple issues a firmware update. If Apple doesn't add support for non-Homekit Thread devices I'd consider this a major failure on Apple's side.
  
  Hopefully the IKEA hub can support non-HomeKit Thread devices. 

  
  

  I really hope that when Apple rolls out support for Matter they update HomeKit and their Thread edge routers to support all Thread compatible devices, not just Thread devices that use HomeKit.
  
  I guess we will see what Apple’s real end game is whenever they roll out support for Matter. They can make their Home App a full fledged Matter client, they can stick their HomeKit application layer on top of a full Matter stack (like they’ve done with Thread in HomePod mini and ATV 4K), or the can run Matter and HomeKit side-by-side with the new Home App being an aggregation/integration layer.
  
  The Matter standard expects the connection endpoints to be talking Matter and Apple expects the connection endpoints to be talking HomeKit. I don’t foresee Apple giving up anything when it comes to HomeKit, so the better scenario for the most number of end users would be for the new Home App to be an aggregator/integrator so it can manage non-HomeKit devices as full fledged members of a home automation system along with its HomeKit devices.

  
  

  
  

  edited October 2022

  

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• Reply 10 of 11

  mknelson Posts: 1,162member

  October 4, 2022 9:21PM

  dewme said:

  appleinsideruser said:

  Thanks again @dewme. So as AppleTV supports Thread and Matter, what does this Ikea router add to the party? Or is it providing similar functionality, but for folks who don't want/have AppleTV?

  Support for Zigbee devices.

  
  

  Edit:
  

  
  

  Just noticed that both the latest Apple TV 4K and HomePod mini technical specs have the following exception noted: 
  

  
  

  "Not compatible with non‑HomeKit Thread devices."
  etc…

  
  

  That makes sense until Matter is released - a current AppleTV or Homepod only understands how to control Homekit devices.
  
  I have five Nanoleaf bulbs set up with Thread and Homekit - they work great together! Matter will just add many more options.

  

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• Reply 11 of 11

  libertyforall Posts: 1,418member

  December 18, 2022 2:31PM

  So Apple TV now supports Matter, since this is a standard, then I shouldn’t have to buy a separate IKEA hub now, correct?!  

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