CompactFlax comments on IKEA moves to Thread (and away from Zigbee)

How are the battery lives of your devices? I have motion sensors throughout my house connected via zwave, and I replace their button batteries about every 18 months. Does Matter run over a low energy technology?

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[–] paraphrand@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago* (5 children)

Thread is just as efficient based on the few battery operated motion sensors I have. That’s another reason Matter over Thread is better than Matter over WiFi.

I personally won’t buy another IoT device unless it’s Matter over Thread.

With that said, if you already use home assistant, and what you have works well enough. I wouldn’t rush to upgrade. But I would choose Matter + Thread over older technologies moving forward.

If you want to move to all HomeKit, then the upgrades are worth it.

In an ideal future world, Matter + Thread devices won’t need a vendor app to work. They just connect to your Amazon Voice assistant, or your Google Home, or your Apple HomeKit setup directly. (Or Home Assistant)

In the future we should see more vendors selling Matter compatible devices that don’t even offer an app. But this is down the road.

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[–] sxan@midwest.social 1 point 1 year ago (4 children)

So Thread is a low-power radio, and Matter is the protocol? Does it is the same frequency ranges - 2.4 and 5 GHz? Or does it have a different spectrum? One of the reasons I chose zwave initially was because the standard allows far more devices in the spectrum than ZigBee, and WiFi crowding is already an issue with only all of the phones, tablets, computers, and devices that I couldn't get in zwave.

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[–] paraphrand@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (3 children)

It’s still 2.4, but it meshes and extends itself with more devices.

If you have an exceptionally bad RF environment, maybe you will have issues.

But keep in mind that IOT devices are not usually broadcasting in the way WiFi is. The impact of 10 Thread devices is not the same as 10 old school 802.11 devices.

Thread is still better than 2.4ghz WiFi for IOT, and I would say this is true for the vast majority of people. But maybe there is a small percentage who have such an intense RF situation that they will need a different spectrum. But really, it sounds like you are possibly either an outlier, or are misunderstanding the shape of the situation. Lamenting that a phone or tablet can’t use zwave for networking is really strange.

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