3 ms·

14 years is not long for things built into a home... Imho there should be some kind of electrical standard of how these things are controlled (specified in vol

14 years is not long for things built into a home... Imho there should be some kind of electrical standard of how these things are controlled (specified in voltages, relays, ... and not changing over the years nor between companies), and then have something that can be interchangeable that can be upgraded "with the times" to control all this.

apparent 1y ago
Some of these items were sold much more recently than that! Also, I paid a few hundred bucks to have the light switches installed in my home, so the wasted cost is perhaps double what I paid Belkin for the switches.
xp84 1y ago
Imho you're kinda describing how Zigbee and Z-wave work. The devices have various profiles like "Light bulb" or "button" or "temp sensor" and you can pair them with a Hub device. You could replace the hub with a new one, for instance, if say, Ethernet or TCP/IP became outdated. And new profiles are invented over time to allow new classes of devices. Matter is a new standard that is incredibly slowly rolling out, the problem with it is that it isn't the 'full picture' because it only specifies a protocol but not the physical medium. So you can have matter devices over TCP/IP that have to be connected to Wi-Fi, or matter devices over Thread radio (more akin to Zigbee). Wi-Fi will come with its own set of headaches since you have to have some dumb app or whatever to use, to get the correct credentials onto each individual IoT device.
- dare944 1y ago
  Thread is an IPv6 network stack. So if you're using Matter over Thread, you're using TCP/IP (or more specifically, UDP over IP). TCP/IP and its associated network and transport protocols are not going to be outdated in our lifetimes.
  - xp84 1y ago
    Thanks for the correction. My main point was that Matter over a normal Ethernet network is imho a different animal than Matter over Thread. Not that I've yet found any decent devices that don't cost a fortune that do anything with Thread, other than apparently a half dozen things I own are Thread Border Routers (hubs). I have all these hubs and nothing for them to speak to.
    - jeroenhd 1y ago
      Matter over ethernet, as designed, should work exactly like matter over wifi and matter over thread. The only exception is the Bluetooth LE pairing component, the rest is a mix of IPv6, mDNS, and other pretty much standard protocols for networking and discovery. Matter and Thread seem to be progressing rather slowly when it comes to hardware support. Zigbee seems to be the reigning champion still, though slowly companies seem to be moving towards Matter now. The super cheap AliExpress stuff will probably take years to move on. Matter is a western standard backed by western big tech, so unless you're mostly targeting the west you may as well stick to Zigbee for a while. The biggest advantage to Thread over Zigbee is probably that phones have Thread radios (iPhones and some Androids) so you can directly control light bulbs and such without any gateways or firewalls to care about. Now that esp32s are also gaining Thread support, things should start accelerating in a few product cycles.
      - xp84 1y ago
        > Matter over ethernet, as designed, should work exactly like matter over wifi and matter over thread. Sorry, I've again failed to explain properly. My main point: I dislike smarthome things where the individual endpoints are wi-fi, especially small things like switches and lights, because it means there has to be some usually cheesy way to pair it to the network (and also because I don't have Ubiquiti or anything so I don't have a separate IoT network, so it would clutter up my LAN and annoy me). I like Zigbee (and I suppose Zwave is cool, but don't personally have it) and will probably like Thread someday because they don't require me to get my network credentials into a lightbulb in the first place, which if I know manufacturers, will in practice mean some horrible iOS app is mandatory and that app's eventual retirement will someday brick the device. For that reason, I am rooting for Thread to hurry up and actually make an impact on the market, and not really interested in Matter-over-Wi-fi because in that sense, moving from Zigbee (or Caseta, my other major thing) to Matter-over-Wi-fi would be a big step backward in that way.

apparent 1y ago

Some of these items were sold much more recently than that! Also, I paid a few hundred bucks to have the light switches installed in my home, so the wasted cost is perhaps double what I paid Belkin for the switches.

xp84 1y ago

Imho you're kinda describing how Zigbee and Z-wave work. The devices have various profiles like "Light bulb" or "button" or "temp sensor" and you can pair them with a Hub device. You could replace the hub with a new one, for instance, if say, Ethernet or TCP/IP became outdated. And new profiles are invented over time to allow new classes of devices. Matter is a new standard that is incredibly slowly rolling out, the problem with it is that it isn't the 'full picture' because it only specifies a protocol but not the physical medium. So you can have matter devices over TCP/IP that have to be connected to Wi-Fi, or matter devices over Thread radio (more akin to Zigbee). Wi-Fi will come with its own set of headaches since you have to have some dumb app or whatever to use, to get the correct credentials onto each individual IoT device.

dare944 1y ago
Thread is an IPv6 network stack. So if you're using Matter over Thread, you're using TCP/IP (or more specifically, UDP over IP). TCP/IP and its associated network and transport protocols are not going to be outdated in our lifetimes.
- xp84 1y ago
  Thanks for the correction. My main point was that Matter over a normal Ethernet network is imho a different animal than Matter over Thread. Not that I've yet found any decent devices that don't cost a fortune that do anything with Thread, other than apparently a half dozen things I own are Thread Border Routers (hubs). I have all these hubs and nothing for them to speak to.
  - jeroenhd 1y ago
    Matter over ethernet, as designed, should work exactly like matter over wifi and matter over thread. The only exception is the Bluetooth LE pairing component, the rest is a mix of IPv6, mDNS, and other pretty much standard protocols for networking and discovery. Matter and Thread seem to be progressing rather slowly when it comes to hardware support. Zigbee seems to be the reigning champion still, though slowly companies seem to be moving towards Matter now. The super cheap AliExpress stuff will probably take years to move on. Matter is a western standard backed by western big tech, so unless you're mostly targeting the west you may as well stick to Zigbee for a while. The biggest advantage to Thread over Zigbee is probably that phones have Thread radios (iPhones and some Androids) so you can directly control light bulbs and such without any gateways or firewalls to care about. Now that esp32s are also gaining Thread support, things should start accelerating in a few product cycles.
    - xp84 1y ago
      > Matter over ethernet, as designed, should work exactly like matter over wifi and matter over thread. Sorry, I've again failed to explain properly. My main point: I dislike smarthome things where the individual endpoints are wi-fi, especially small things like switches and lights, because it means there has to be some usually cheesy way to pair it to the network (and also because I don't have Ubiquiti or anything so I don't have a separate IoT network, so it would clutter up my LAN and annoy me). I like Zigbee (and I suppose Zwave is cool, but don't personally have it) and will probably like Thread someday because they don't require me to get my network credentials into a lightbulb in the first place, which if I know manufacturers, will in practice mean some horrible iOS app is mandatory and that app's eventual retirement will someday brick the device. For that reason, I am rooting for Thread to hurry up and actually make an impact on the market, and not really interested in Matter-over-Wi-fi because in that sense, moving from Zigbee (or Caseta, my other major thing) to Matter-over-Wi-fi would be a big step backward in that way.