Since I have a lot of Ikea Trådfri devices (Zigbee) and Ikea is now shifting 100% to Matter/Thread for their new products, I thought maybe some precautions should be taken.
There have been signs that the new bulbs might support both Thread and Zigbee and that would of course be good for future compatibility with historical investments.
So, I bought this KAJPLATS LED ljuskälla E27 806 lumen, smart vitt spektrum/klar/globformad, 95 mm - IKEA Kajplats bulb to see if it would really do Zigbee.
I don’t have a thread adapter/border router for use with Home Assistant yet, so couldn’t test that.
But,
The bulb will NOT pair with my Skyconnect in Zigbee mode. It doesn’t show up in Home Assistant (ZHA).
The bulb DOES pair with my Ikea Styrbar remote by Touchlink (keeping the pairing button pressed with the remote within centimeters of the bulb).
So some conclusions then:
There is some zigbee support in the bulb, enough to use it with the remote.
To use the bulb with Home Assistant, a thread adapter is needed.
It might be a good idea to stock up on some Trådfri bulbs, before they are taken off the shelves.
Remaining question:
With the bulb paired with a Thread adapter in Home Assistant, will the remote-bulb pairing still work or will we need to use Home Assistant to control the bulb from the remote.
Remote-bulb pairing is a very nice feature, because the it works also if Home Assistant for some reason would go offline.
Thanks for the heads-up! I was planning to give this a shot too.
Regarding SHA, Zigbee2MQTT does support TouchLink as a way to connect.
I remember having a Philips filament bulb that wouldn’t connect to my Zigbee network until I held it up close to the stick and activated TouchLink.
Maybe this is worth a try? I’ll also try to get my hands on one of those bulbs to test, but I’ll only be near an IKEA late next week.
You mean the bulb would connect to the stick if I hold it close enough? Great if it works!
Won’t be to try it this week though (plus I’m on ZHA).
But I did realize the Nest Hub 2nd gen has a built-in thread border router so now I connected the bulb that way to home assistant which works fine. But then the remote won’t connect to the bulb…
The bulbs and all the other stuff is Thread only.
The remote use its own protocol, so it has nothing to do with Zigbee (or Thread for that matter).
The devices can not currently switch to Zigbee.
It requires another firmware.
Some vendors include it on the flash chip, so it can be easily switched, but Ikea does not.
Zigbee and Thread use the same frequencies, so the firmware is often enough to switch between the two and Ikea might provide a Zigbee firmware in the future, but I have not heard about it.
With z2m theres a separate Touchlink section in the UI where you can push a button to instruct the coordinator to Scan for touchlink devices. That’s different from just holding the lamp close to it.
Update: I got a Kajplats e14 to pair to zigbee2mqtt by power cycling it 12 instead of only 6 times. The bulb will flash cold white instead of warm white and then connect without any issues. Brand information is missing however all features seem to work thus far.
I read your post while being in ikea and after seeing the Matter Icon I was not sure. So I gave it a shot and voila… 12times switched to Zigbee Mode and HA found it immediately.
Checked with zigbee2mqtt and ZHA (yes I run two zigbee networks)
How are the white tones? Can you see the Kelvin range? Previously Tradfri would I my go up to 4000k and also had a slight green tint. They didn’t look ice as Philips Hue ones.
By naked eye i can observe a lower CRI and a tint shift towards green. The tradfri, with its slight magenta shift, feels more pleasent. Colors (RGB) in general render much nicer on Kajlats, but when it comes to whites, i could imagine they traded CRI for lm.
I like the new PWM rate. 5000 Hertz vs 1200 Hertz. I measured at 50% brightness and couldnt see any flickering on Kajplats. On tradfri its slightly noticeable when looking across the room.
CC on the Kajplats behaves very strange in the range of 2000K. It turns into this new yellowish Ikea Warmwhite Representation which i have seen on several Ikea LED bulbs nowadays. I seriously dislike this color, as it looks cheap. Around 1600K it turns into a soso balanced, but pleasent reddish. Ok, if you do not have too high expectations. I believe HUE does better here.
My personal opinion:
plus:
higher PWM rate
better looking RGB
OOB compatible with zigbee when power cycled 12x
minus:
Whites have lower CRI
RGB with strong color bleeding (diffuser cap and mixing chamber not as well designed as on tradfri)
I personally do not care that much about RGB quality. It is nice to have.
But i would have liked an outstanding CRI performance (2500 - 4000) and well balanced tint, combined with a high PWM rate. I wouldnt have traded CRI for lm / better energy rating.
IKEA LED bulbs have been my go to standard for many years now. The price / CRI ratio was really good. And even though the new series still performs OK, i start thinking about alternatives, as i consider high CRI values important for a pleasent feeling.
Please be aware, that my measuring setup is far from ideal. Also the CRI value i got on the tradfri appears to be slightly too high, but i remember that 91 - 94 is realistic for this series. The LUX measurement is irrelevant, as distance and situation were not equal.
I just bought the Kajplats E27 806 lm (variable white) and can’t get them into Zigbee mode.
Did you push the power button a total of 12 times or a total of 24 times (12 power cycles)? Pushing the button 12 times makes the lamp go into pairing mode but I suspect it’s still in Matter mode. Pushing the button 24 times does nothing.
Thank you for the amazing analysis. You can see on your screenshot that the upper bulb has a clear green tint which becomes even more apparent when you take the image and crank up the saturation.
Oh well, I guess back to Hue.
Since reading on Reddit that some of the new remotes can be put in zigbee mode by pushing a button 8 or 10 times, I’ve been trying everything from 1 to 24 power cycles.
Power cycling 15 times (pushing the power button 30 times) makes it chase (I think forever, I’ve left it for a few minutes) so it’s in some kind of mode but it’s still not showing up in ZHA.
After this I tried power cycling 12x (no reaction), 6x (usual reaction but no Zigbee), then from 1 to 24 times and it still only reacted to 6 (reset) and 15 (unknown).
I saw Mixam hi’s comment about the 15 times on off cycles and i have succesfully added the new Filament E27 Kajplats with Z2M. I clicked the touchlink feature dont know if this helped with connecting, i was just trying some things.
