I am probably a bit later to the party with this post but I love IKEA Zigbee products - the are cheap, work fantastically and I happen to live pretty close to one.
I wanted to buy a few more switches and smart plugs but have just noted, from their website, that they are only supporting matter, now.
What should I do (and what are others doing)?
I will either have to start buying Zigbee products from AliExpress again (which can still be more than expensive than the Ikea equivalents).
Or, is it worth adding a matter USB stick to my Home Assistant server as well?
I’ve been making a point over the past few months of buying multiple quantities of Ikea’s Zigbee-based devices whenever I’ve seen them on clearance. Totally agreed that they were that rare combination of cheap and actually good, and it’s unfortunate that they’re moving from Zigbee to Matter.
You might want to see what my experience with adding Matter support to HA has been like over the past couple of weeks. I’m reasonably certain that the issues I’ve been having will ultimately be resolved, but I’m not exactly impressed with how it’s gone so far. Note that this is with Ikea devices as my starter Matter items, so similar experience may be had.
(Note that I’m not bashing HA or the people working on Matter support in HA by saying that - I really do not see this as being their fault.)
Some do, but not all. I can confirm that the E12-base Kajplats light bulb (Ikea model no. 106.114.96) can be placed into Zigbee mode, but doing so disables Matter support. Related, the Timmerflotte temperature / humidity sensor (model no. 506.189.57) seems to be Matter-only - or, at least, there’s no way known at this time to enable a Zigbee compatibility mode.
Yes, the link shows what devices are currently confirmed to support Zigbee. Be aware that there is no guarantee that this will not be removed in future firmware.
I happend to have Ikea Zigbee Hub & Devices before i started with HA, i did manage to be a few more, when they announced they were going over to Matter, which they released their current Hub for. And Yes Money Talks ", So when they found that alot people started to by more Zigbee Devices, they Removed All from their Stores, within a week. Forcing People over to their New Hub ( Which supports both Matter an Zigbee )
Anyhow, My Hub & current Devices live their “own” life , in a"dedicated" area of my House, and i can basically disable these while im " Away " as they control , motion/ light’s etc., which is only used when someone’s Home. And the Automations related to these i can either disable, or keep running.
Some Devices are also controlled by other Motion-Sensors (another brand) , but it really doesn’t matter, If Im Not home.
So from i.e a security perspective Ikea Zigbee, is out of the ordinary equation
Yes the BILRESA devices have a Zigbee compatibility mode you can put them into, and for the two button very reliable. Very limited functions on the scroll wheel, I have those as Matter. There are instructions to do this if you look here, it’s usually clicking the pair button 8 times.
If you have a recent-ish (4th gen or above?) Echo/ Echo Dot you can use that as a Thread Border Router for Matter and share it with HA, it works fine but you might need a few goes to get the scroll function working properly. Update your devices FIRST before fiddling with that, cos the update will knock them off the network and need to re-add to Echo / reshare etc.
(Google Home hubs and Apple TV I think can do the same Matter sharing thing, so try them if you have one of those? it’s part of the standard so you don’t have to have one device connected to many things, just connected to one TBT then shared amongst other third party devices)
My dual button BILRESA works wonderfully in Zigbee mode. No issues. I wish I had gotten the Zigbee only versions cos it seems more solid than Matter which is a bit flaky - I mean having to push buttons every few seconds to get Matter to update? Ugh.
One Scroll BILRESA on Matter has been wonderful, totally solid. The second I bought keeps dropping off, and I have to take the batteries out and back in which fixes it. Totally random.
I have also a Matter based motion detector MYGGSPRAY and that seems to work fairly well - chomps through batteries though. It does seem Zigbee mode is more battery efficient? Not sure if I can switch that one to ZIgbee, not tried.
So if you can find the Zigbee devices - get them. Matter ones are more of a pain, and might need an extra dongle. I could see myself going that way eventually, but I don’t want to have TWO Sonoff dongles! But I suspect it would be more reliable than sharing via Alexa.
Also bit beyond this thread, but if you do want to use the BILRESA Scroll with Matter, see my thread about it - it seems the Blueprints don’t work (for me anyway) but it’s easy to roll your own sutomation adding ‘above: 0’ to the Scroll sensor value directly in the YAML editor for the scroll triggers.
HA Automation UI hates it, and removes it when you switch back (so leave it in YAML editing) but it works.
I would not recommend using Echos as a TBR. They are limited to Thread v1.1. if you have multiple echos on the same lan, sometimes they will all participate into one thread network, sometimes not. Sometimes they partition themselves for no reason. Lastly any TBR (at least as a primary) I believe should be connected via Ethernet. Not Wi-Fi.
I went down the road thinking they would be an option as at least a secondary TBR. Abandoned that quickly.
It works for me, it’s not great but I don’t have the extra money for getting TBTs or Matter hubs or any of that..so I’d rather use what I have.
I dunno if I want to adopt Matter further, even with ONE device it was flaky, and I’m not sure that’s just the Echo’s fault…like the poor battery life? I doubt that’s anything to do with Amazon. It’s a bleeding edge technology that I feel hasn’t matured yet. Zigbee seems more reliable generally.
I think people forget with all this GAS (Gear Acquirement Syndrome) which is common in home automation communities that some of us don’t have the $$$s or extra space for Matter hubs or time to buy and flash another dongle..anyway I’m out of USB slots on my HA server!
I would have liked to use them as well, but unfortunately they are not a great option.
And thats my point, basing Matter/Thread experience with using an Echo as a TBR wouldn’t be recommended for others. My response was to not recommend this path for other readers, not suggesting you should buy other equipment.
Matter and Thread have plenty of other issues and I agree that Zigbee is still a good option. I’m only using Thread in a low capacity phase at this point - A few devices along side a full Zwave and Zigbee network as well. My point was as far as TBR’s go, a 4th gen Echo is not a good option.
Thanks, everyone - really appreciate your comments.
Having read everything, I am going to have to accept that IKEA’s new range just won’t work for me. I cannot risk that the few things that currently work with Zigbee might not do so in the future.
I would rather spend a bit more money on items that are guaranteed to work.
Virtually everything (other than a Shelley Relay) on my network is based upon Zigbee and it works fantastically. I think it would be shortsighted of me to try and another network to the mix - i.e. a second Matter network is another point of failure.
If I were starting from scratch, maybe I would go down the Matter route but I think I am too reliant on Zigbee. Hopefully, reasonably priced Zigbee devices will continue to be made for the foreseeable future.
The hidden Zigbee mode is not officially supported by IKEA. It exists mainly to keep backwards compatibility via Touchlink.
As a result, the Zigbee firmware is stripped-down to the essentials, and could even be removed in OTA updates.
EDIT:
I have been using a couple of Sonoff ZigBee plugs and just ordered two more. So far so good.
I’d like a source for a ZigBee NoRelay UK plug if anyone knows of one, or better has tried one. For now I’m going to try these with washing machine and tumble drier, always on.
There are claims on here that so long as you don’t switch the relay they should be ok, so I’ll be testing that!
It’s not officially supported, true - but it’s a compatibility thing, and I don’t know why they would remove support when the Touchlink (I guess for their older hubs) exist. People keep saying ‘this might be removed’ but I don’t see why they would?
But even if they do, adding a Matter dongle/TBR isn’t the worst thing in the world.
But I am willing to bet they won’t remove it, and for a few quid, it’s not a massive gamble. And it’s WAY more stable and battery efficient currently than the Matter.
It is true the support is limited - so don’t expect the BILRESA Scroll wheel to work on Zigbee fully, the 3 different buttons/modes don’t work for instance, it only really works for one thing (I forget if the scroll worked properly but the scroll button functions do), but for simple things like the Bilresa two button it works great.
Also I’m not sure why you’d even want to OTA update it often, especially in Zigbee mode? And I’ve not had another update since the first one months ago (for the devices which are still using Matter).
Updating is a nightmare via Matter on these devices for a start, but Zigbee/radio devices don’t have the same network/infiltration security issues as Wifi based devices. Update it when you get it, and leave it unless you have an issue…(in my experience tinkering with Zigbee devices just leads to heartbreak. Leave them be).
I really love the IKEA matter over thread stuff - excellent value for money.
I’ve been using some of the new Matter over Thread gadgets from IKEA in conjunction with a ZBT-2 stick ---- absolutely flawless for about 3 months now.
Recently I threw a bunch of Heiman Matter over Thread Smoke detectors into the mix - same result - it just works.
Doesn’t affect my Zigbee operation at all.
So basically it is an extra 50.- for the ZBT-2 and you are off to the races.
My experience with Matter over Thread (once you got it all running for the first time) is very positive.
To add a new gadget literally takes 30 seconds, OTA firmware updates are no problem whatoever, battery use is in the same league as my Zigbee stuff and I’ve yet to have a single item drop of the net or the need for a restart.
Not to mention that better is often the enemy of good enough. Matter offers some interesting potential capabilities, but the Matter devices out there at this time do pretty much the same things as Zigbee, Z-Wave, and even X10 stuff that’s been around for decades, so those capabilities are largely nice-to-haves that most people won’t use (if they’re even aware of or care about them to begin with).
Starting a Matter network for experimentation makes sense, and for someone creating a completely new home automation installation, basing it around Matter is understandable. But it’s really no different to basing it around any of the other established protocols, at least at a consumer level.
That is the one selling point the Matter devices have right now: their pricing.
But the pricing of the Matter devices largely matches the pricing of the Zigbee devices they replaced, so there’s no compelling reason to replace (or supplement) existing Zigbee or other devices with Matter devices.
Note that I’m not anti-Matter (pun intended), or anyone using it. It just seems to be answering questions that weren’t being asked, at least not at the consumer end of things.
I’m more than open to being shown where my opinions may be off-base, but from what I’m seeing both here and elsewhere on teh Intarwebs that seems to pretty much be the common theme surrounding Matter - people want to like it, but it doesn’t really offer anything to make it compelling.
This is good to know…if I get more Matter devices I will think about getting another dongle cos I can maybe use one of my USB splitters for other stuff, or ditch the wifi dongle cos it really doesn’t get used on my server.
For now, the Amazon TBT isn’t perfect - had another case of the BILRESA scrolls having to be powered down recently cos they were lit up but lagging or not working - but can’t really justify it when it’s only 3 devices.
Very much this. I think it has a lot of promise and stuff like OTA seems to work better - my Zigbee devices not even going to try and update them, OTA at least on ZHA never works for those, and Z2MQTT gives me issues with some of my devices, But it also seems to more of a battery hog, that might be cos I’m using an Amazon TBT over wireless, maybe…but I suspect not with the IPv6 stuff flying around. That’s what they don’t tell you - you need to enable IPV6 on your router, a lot of people fall over on that,
Zigbee’s a lot simpler, and doesn’t need a TCP/IP network. That also has issues (needing routers/repeaters and radio links - I have a sensor in the bathroom that keeps dropping off, but it would be screwed if it was wifi based as well cos wifi doesn’t reach there very well either) - but it’s simplicity means it generally just works.
Matter over Thread is the shiny new thing, technically on paper is better but the reality differs - the jury is out on stability etc - maturity will come but as it’s a fairly new thing, that takes time.
Like with the wars over ZHA vs Z2MQTT, people have their favourite platform and even will get shouty about it, but yes, I do feel it’s apples or oranges at this point. What works for you, works for you…and although the received wisdom is ‘this is best’ it often is GAS or fashion.
