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submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[-] [email protected] 3 points 22 hours ago

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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[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

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?

[-] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

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.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 23 hours ago

Thanks. I'll look into it. Right now I have mainly lights and sockets, through a Lidl zigbee hub, a rebranded Tuya, I believe, but I'm looking into going a bit deeper.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

Hows that working software-wise in HA? One running in Z2M, the other ZHA?

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago

I'm not running Z2M and ZHA together though. Just ZHA and Matter. But I've read that running Z2M and ZHA with two dongles is no problem in HA you just have two separate networks

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

finally!! :D

[-] [email protected] 58 points 2 days ago

Man there are way too many IoT standards. What's the difference between these two? How do they each compare to Matter?

[-] [email protected] 61 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

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.

[-] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago

What kind of disaster specifically? I hear everyone discouraging from using WiFi for home devices, but never understood what the actual risks are.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 19 hours ago

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.

[-] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

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.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago
[-] [email protected] 3 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

Whoops! Fixed.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

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.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

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.

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[-] [email protected] 20 points 1 day ago

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/

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[-] [email protected] 27 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

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.

[-] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago

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.

[-] [email protected] 45 points 1 day ago

Zigbee does that too tho, right?

The wiki on zigbee says so at least

[-] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago

Pretty sure than an underlying feature of both zigbee and zwave.

[-] [email protected] 17 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

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.

[-] [email protected] 16 points 1 day ago

I exclusively use ZigBee. It automeshes.

[-] [email protected] 26 points 2 days ago

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/

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[-] [email protected] 31 points 2 days ago

I am pretty happy with zigbee so far. Is that a good thing? I haven‘t done anything with matter so far.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago
  1. Thread and Zigbee use the same physical layer and MAC layer (IEEE 802.15.4), so in most case it can use the same hardware and just with different firmware (if manufacturer want).
    There is even a project to run both Zigbee coordinator and Thread border router on the same chip. It works! Although it causes some issue so Home Assistant no longer recommand this "multiprotocol" way, but this is a strong demonstration of the interchangeability between Zigbee and Thread.
  2. Thread Group members is almost the same companies who found Connectivity Standards Alliance (former Zigbee Alliance). When Connected Home over IP (CHIP) project was renamd to Matter at 2019, they create Thread Group to unify the home connectivity: Only use one network layer named IPv6 and one application layer named Matter. Zigbee can't reach this target since it use its own network layer and application layer. So they invent Thread, which still based on IEEE 802.15.4, but with IPv6 as network layer and can transport Matter on it.
[-] [email protected] 24 points 2 days ago

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.

[-] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago

@[email protected] 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 👋

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[-] [email protected] 16 points 1 day ago

Crap. I use pretty much exclusively Ikea stuff with my Home Assistant

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

It's not like it'll stop working once this is introduced

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[-] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago

Isn't the HA cloud dongle able to do both because they're on the same 2.4 gigahertz or whatever?

[-] [email protected] 14 points 1 day ago

The dual stack firmware was deprecated because of issues, I believe.

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this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2025
241 points (99.6% liked)

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