Man there are way too many IoT standards. What's the difference between these two? How do they each compare to Matter?
Thread is a wireless standard meant to sit next to Bluetooth and WiFi.
Matter is a home automation protocol can that be used over Thread or WiFi. Ideal Matter devices use Thread instead of WiFi because running a bunch of home devices like light bulbs or switches on your WiFi is a recipe for disaster.
Matter is important because it provides native compatibility among different platforms.
What kind of disaster specifically? I hear everyone discouraging from using WiFi for home devices, but never understood what the actual risks are.
I see someone replied about security. But I was just taking about stability.
Most people don’t have super beefy wifi routers. Many have whatever shit their ISP sent them. These are fine for your average number of laptops and phones, etc. but if you then throw on 10 more 2.4GHz WiFi IOT devices, you are probally going to run into devices randomly dropping off the wifi, etc.
Additionally, wifi is usually chosen over other protocols by manufacturers due to the cost of hardware and development. So they are often lower quality. (This is only one reason)
But sure, if you have a super awesome 2.4GHz wifi setup and high quality wifi devices, maybe things will work out just fine. But my personal experience with WiFi tells me I shouldn’t clutter my WiFi.
Also, if you were curious, yes: almost all WiFi IOT devices are 2.4GHz only.
This sort of makes it sound like the advantage of Thread is merely that it's new, and therefore nobody will be affected by having a poor pre-existing Thread setup. If ISPs were sending people Zigbee hubs, it sure would be the cheapest shit available, which could very well translate to similarly terrible Zigbee performance.
I see your point, but there should be much more merit to the specialized IoT protocols than just that nobody has yet flooded the market with terrible Thread/Zigbee devices.
I'm not sure manufacturers choose WiFi because of hardware costs. There are often other reasons (some good, some terrible) for this choice, but I'm certain Zigbee support has to be cheaper; having disassembled plenty of such devices it's almost always a dedicated IC and a tiny PCB trace for an antenna. WiFi support requires a fairly complete TCP/IP stack implementation, basic certificate management etc. which will inevitably require a small SoC; and while prebuilt solutions are plentiful, Zigbee alternatives are an order of magnitude cheaper.
I can imagine software development costs being lower, though, given how every other programmer knows a fair deal about TCP/IP networking, while good comprehension of dedicated IoT protocols is a much rarer skill, there are also much less community resources and open-source solutions available etc.
Thread is the replacement for zigbee.
It's zigbee plus more features.
There is nothing zigbee does better than thread.
Lower power usage, ipv6, standard tls security, not proprietary, etc.
Thread is a bit more power efficient, which matters for battery powered devices that aren't connected to permanent power and don't need to transmit significant data, like door locks, temperature/humidity sensors, things like that. A full wifi networking chip would consume a lot more power for an always-on device.
An important difference between thread and zigbee/wi-fi I'm not seeing mentioned is that all thread devices automesh in a hub/spoke model as long as they're not battery powered. So your light bulbs, plugs, etc all become extenders and part of a self healing mesh network without a single point of failure. For me it works better than Zigbee for this reason.
Zigbee does that too tho, right?
The wiki on zigbee says so at least
Yes, Thread serves similar functionality to Zigbee, to the extent that some people describe it as Zigbee 2.0.
However it’s a new protocol for a new standard, that has backing from all the big names in home automation, including Apple, Amazon, Google.
Zigbee is a great protocol. Thread will bring better connectivity for the future (we hope)
Pretty sure than an underlying feature of both zigbee and zwave.
They're different in their implementation. Zigbee automesh is more of a centralized router-hub model with self healing relying on routing tables. This caused significant issues for me. Thread is true automesh with all devices acting as a hub in a hub/spoke model, so there's no centralized routing table to act as a single point of failure.
I exclusively use ZigBee. It automeshes.
Thread also works on the 2.4 GHz range but can utilize sub ranges of 868 in Europe and 915 in north America. The 868 and 915 GHz ranges are what LoRa operates on and provides a much greater range for low data rate transmissions.
In fact Meshtastic operates on LoRa on 915 here in the U.S. and I have a node in my second floor window with a 3db antenna and I have been able to message both ways up to 3 blocks away.
Long story short, utilizing 868 and 915 in these devices will make dead spots a thing of the past within a home, even with their lower gain internal antennas.
Thread is a network layer thing, comparable to WiFi or Bluetooth. Matter is an application later thing, comparable to HomeKit or Google home.
Zigbee is both network and application layer.
This article has a decent overview https://www.smarthomeperfected.com/zigbee-vs-thread/
Thread works with matter, these devices will use Matter over Thread.
I am pretty happy with zigbee so far. Is that a good thing? I haven‘t done anything with matter so far.
Yeah so far it doesn't matter because zigbee and zwave still work fine.
it doesn't matter
Hehe.
Anyway, I am also completely on Zigbee. While I like the concept of Matter over Thread, I wouldn't want to switch, because it will start with a too small network to cover a good distance and if I start replacing Zigbee devices, I effectively sabotage that network as well. So my only move would be to replace all Zigbee with Matter/Thread devices. And that seems insane. So I hope I keep getting new Zigbee devices for a while.
@arschflugkoerper@feddit.org I have nothing useful to contribute, but I fucking love your username. Thank you for the smirk you gave me, have a nice evening mein Genosse 👋
Tja
thanks lol
I agree, great name!
I am just getting started on this journey but zigbee seems great and I like that it works fine even if the wifi goes down. I'm not sure what the drawbacks are or the benefits of Matter.
matter and thread are different things fyi…
thread uses the same wireless communication as zigbee (zigbee has other stuff on top of it), so is a low power wireless protocol
matter is the data format that devices use to communicate on top of an IP-based network like wifi or thread. it’s meant to standardise all these competing “works with google” “works with alexa” “homekit compatible”: if it works with matter, it should work with any coordinator that has matter compatibility (which all the big ones do these days)
thread will work great if the wifi is down - same as zigbee!
matter also (afaik) forces local devices: your coordinator (a homepod, alexa, etc) talks directly to the device without going through the internet. again, same as zigbee
me either, why do we need yet another standard?
All of the major platform holders agreed to come together and interoperate with this one. And like others said, it supports IPv6.
Still yet another standard, but it’s one that’s not controlled by a single vendor. Its setup to be more like WiFi and Bluetooth than any other standard has been in the past. IMO.
and worth noting as well that thread is only kinda another standard: it uses the same wireless communication as zigbee does
Crap. I use pretty much exclusively Ikea stuff with my Home Assistant
xkcd 927 in action right there.
Zigbee works just fine, but needs a hub to share out devices eg internet access or HomeKit. But it is quick. How thread compares remains to be seen.
Remains to be seen? What other information are you waiting for?
I’ve been using Thread devices for ~5 years now.
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?
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.
Thread is basically the same thing, but with a different upper level layer (IP), lower lever is still 802.15.4
It makes sense. Hopefully it's more reliable than my Zigbee devices. I constantly have to power cycle devices made by a variety of manufacturers to get them to register again. And I've tried more than a few zigbee hubs. Can't say I'm a fan.
Check interference with wifi signals wifi on channel 1 and zigbee on channel 25 gives you the most separation. As long as a neighbor doesn't blast on wifi channel 11.
There is also software compatibility, I found hue to be the most stable for routers. Osram was terrible, recent firmware made it okay.
I'm in literally the middle of nowhere, the next nearest house is 4 miles away and I'm not even connected to the grid. If there's a wifi signal detectable, it'll be mine. So I've shifted frequencies around trying to get it to stabilize, with little luck. I've primarily been using Sonoff, Aqara, Ikea and SMLight, and hubs from each of them.
Honestly, I've been migrating to zwave since I don't seem to have issue with anything I use on that protocol.
Never had this with ZigBee, one hub lots of different devices. Had to switch hub to USB2 at beginning to reduce interference but after that smooth sailing.
Isn't the HA cloud dongle able to do both because they're on the same 2.4 gigahertz or whatever?
So, if I'm invested in zigbee, but want to future proof, I should consider threads/matter, and a hub that talks to both?
Can home assistant do that?
Yes if you have a Zigbee and a Thread antenna module connected to your HA instance you can run it as an Zigbee and Matter hub and connect Zigbee and Matter devices. A cheap antenna module is the Sonoff ZBDongle-E. You can flash the firmware of it and turn it into a Thread antenna module. It can also run as a Zigbee and Thread antenna simultaneously, but I never got that working properly. So I just bought two dongles. One for Zigbee and the other for Matter.
I’ve been using the OG tradfri devices since 2017/18 and have been very happy. Reliable, cheap to add a lightbulb or switch. Just works. Even integrated with home assistant v easily
finally!! :D
Kind of a lazy question, but are any of these protocols substantial over 802.11, especially if you just use p2p/adhoc/mesh modes?
I haven't touched mobile networks in a while so I've forgotten a lot, but iirc the main concern of mesh networks was efficient routing (which has been solved with some cool algorithms) and power efficiency for devices transmitting (again could have sworn 802.11 and even bluetooth can already achieve this).
Zigby particularly stood out as annoying to me as it includes its own 2.4ghz physical layer stack which uses the same range as WiFI, which is already overcrowded as hell and relies on some CSMA/CA magic to make even the most apartment crowded area of APs function decently.
Zigby particularly stood out as annoying to me as it includes its own 2.4ghz physical layer stack which uses the same range as WiFI, which is already overcrowded as hell and relies on some CSMA/CA magic to make even the most apartment crowded area of APs function decently.
I mean, there isn't really any other choices for unlicensed consumer use? 5GHz is dedicated to WiFi. The sub-GHz bands would be great, as there isn't a need for much bandwidth, but it's a huge mishmash of frequencies that would require many different SKUs per device:
Googling didn't reveal any useful answer, did anybody know it has an article about what's the advantage of matter vs mqtt?
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