Man there are way too many IoT standards. What’s the difference between these two? How do they each compare to Matter?
Thread works with matter, these devices will use Matter over Thread.
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.
Dishonest question, your following comments show you clearly know the common points of these discussions.
There’s no arguing that using WiFi for this purpose is an obstacle to widespread adoption and a security risk, no matter how well you yourself are handling it.
There’s also the technical advantage of those IoT networks being meshed by design, whereas expanding a WiFi network with mesh functionality often carries challenges.
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.
There are also performance implications (a Zigbee coordinator can easily handle 100 devices, while many routers would struggle with that amount of clients), power saving (especially for battery powered sensors) - some Zigbee sensors can last years on a single coin cell battery.
Let’s say your lightbulb(s) become comprised. A bad actor now has a toehold into your network.
Maybe they run a spam relay through the bulb. Maybe they attack your network by attacking the printer that hasn’t had a firmware update in years.
Point is, there’s someone with access to your network that isn’t you.
https://old.reddit.com/r/Ubiquiti/comments/1fjspoc/what_is_the_point_of_having_a_separate_devices/
Right, thanks. But this can be easily resolved by:
- Removing devices’ access to WAN, which also vastly reduces the external actor’s ability to compromise them in the first place.
- Isolating devices from each other with internal firewall rules, allowing them to only interact with the hub host. Is this correct, or am I missing something?
Sounds like an admin job I don’t want to do.
With a good router, it’s not that hard to do. But even then it took me a long time to get around to setting up the separate network, and I don’t think I’ve migrated all of my devices over to it still (some got moved, new ones go there, but there are some older devices still sitting on the original network). So, yeah, there’s definitely extra effort, and it’s not really fun like getting that new smart device integrated. I will say the stuff on that network works perfectly - I haven’t noticed any side effects.
Oh I did allow them access to the pool ntp server so they can pick up the correct time, and some require temporary access to the internet while setting up (the linknlink RF device needed it to download the Home assistant version of their firmware, for example).
ZigBee/Thread are just better for this, you’re protected without doing anything.
Requirements like the ones you listed above make widespread adoption impossible, short of forcing routers to have a separate IoT network and forcing devices to use only that, with all the issues that may prop up along the way.
Good luck explaining how to do any of this to my parents, for example. For someone with a technical background that’s feasible, for someone with an it background it’s even easy. For the other 90 or 95% of people who are actually supposed to buy and use these things, it isn’t. They don’t even know something like this can be done, let alone that it should be done.
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.
I exclusively use ZigBee. It automeshes.
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)
Crap. I use pretty much exclusively Ikea stuff with my Home Assistant
I am pretty happy with zigbee so far. Is that a good thing? I haven‘t done anything with matter so far.
It’s just a technological step forward. Thread was designed from the ground up as an IPv6 protocol. Honestly, this kind of move is coming later than would have been ideal, given the massive growth in IoT devices.
@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 👋
I agree, great name!
Tja
thanks lol
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.
I don’t see why you can’t keep your Zigbee network and start up a new Thread/Matter one. They should be fine to work together! Your Zigbee stuff will work in 20 years, besides component failure.
@bdonvr @aksdb One zigbee device replaced by a thread device means that one node is removed from the zigbee network, making it smaller. Since it’s a mesh network it will become less robust as a result. Likewise, the initial thread network will be very sparsely populated until a sufficient amount of devices has been added to it.
That’s fair, though you could leave a zigbee router plugged in to bridge things even if you don’t really need the device for example a smart plug.
The other disadvantage is that for a zigbee device to control a matter device it will have to route through your home assistant/smart home hub instead of being able to pair a switch directly to lights for example with zigbee.
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.
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.
