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How AI broke the smart home in 2025 (www.theverge.com)
submitted 10 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 33 points 10 months ago (8 children)

The real issue with smart home adoption has been proprietary formats all vying for dominance and fragmenting the market. I don't think AI has changed much.

Matter (and Thread) are a huge change to the SmartHome landscape because they're open protocols and have well-documented standards - and they've finally begun appearing in big manufacturer's line-ups such as IKEA.

Once their availability spreads I suspect a lot more people will get into running their own local (eg HomeAssistant) smart home because they won't have to do the 'ok do I need z-wave or ZigBee or HomeKit or IFTTT or Hue or Tuya or.... you know what, fuck this'. It'll all be the same protocol and communications and config & debug will be much easier.

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  • [–] 14 points 10 months ago (3 children)
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  • [–] 10 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    There's an xkcd for everything, isn't there.

    Its not wrong, but the major attraction to Matter is it must allow devices to operate locally (not tying them to cloud services that die every internet outrage, or permanently when the service retires), and it's an application-layer protocol. Meaning it can operate over WiFi, Ethernet, or Thread.

    Many existing smart home hubs have been able to program support for Matter and simply send out an OTA update to add certified Matter support.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago

    Don’t forget device profiles! It’s not enough for a device to be on the network but also that it must operate like expected and with the same calls.

    Instead of making up what constitutes “on” for a light switch and require vendor specific drivers, the device profile defines “on” and all light switches must support that!

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  • [–] 9 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    I suspect the average smart home is not based on home assistant, but on an ikea hub with their app, or similar.

    If you are willing to selfhost a home assistant, then it is not a barrier to add various antennas to it.

    So this step to standardization might help mixing different manufacturer products easier. We will see how standard their implementations will be. We had zigbee as shared standard in theory what only worked properly with the manufacturers hub.

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  • [–] 4 points 10 months ago

    For sure. IKEA is a great place to start (or stay), as it's a cheap ecosystem and their app/implementation doesnt require permanent internet access - functions fine during an internet outrage, and quite privacy-respecting.

    HomeAssistant is not anywhere near as hard to set up as it used to be. If you have an old mini-PC retired from work sitting around there are HA images for PCs now, and it's pretty simple to set up to use your IKEA hub (or whatever you have already), while adding a huge swath of optional features.

    I agree it's still not something your average Joe will set up, but the continual lowering of barriers will get more people into running a self-hosted local config is a great thing for privacy and expanding the hobby.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

    Most smart homers i have assisted run a ikea hub or similar like Hue and really just want it to be plug and play, after that they find out what happens when the network shut down and can't access their home. Then they reach out to support people that can install Lan assist.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago

    It's why I live so much commercial stuff and things like bacnet.

    Everything basically is just basic I/O with either analog or digital signal wires. Well documented. But it typically requires lots of actual wires running back to a controller.

    I hate how consumer stuff is all different connections in so many different ways and they don't care if they deprecate a feature or something. What works today can be fucked up because they have unilateral control to change how their shit works in "updates."

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