[hardwaresofton]

> thread and matter will, in my opinion, never matter for consumers. Why? It’s basically a walled garden.

I'd counter with the fact that walled gardens are incredibly popular, and in particular to consumers. Consumers don't care if the gate is locked or not, they care if the flowers are pretty and the tea at the garden party is nice.

> Thread also needs more expensive SOCs, with Zigbee you only need a tiny micro controller with a few MHz of clock speed and a few KB of RAM. Thread and matter on the other hand can require megabytes of RAM.

IMO prices of SOCs are going to zero. ESP32s are a great example of this. Once RISCV is more widely used and capable things will accelerate even faster.

> Vendors which nowadays sell HomeKit devices can reuse their SOCs for thread matter, keeping their 3-4 times higher prices compared to devices with the same functionality from Zigbee vendors.

I think we agree here...? I think that HomeKit device that is just a bit more open is going to win. But I think that HomeKit device gets adopted faster if it's just a router -- I can understand updating a router to get a smart home. What I don't want is confusion around whether I need a hub or not, or whether devices work together or not.

Buying a single router that acts as a hub + Wifi "repeaters" (IIRC that's what they're called) that can "extend" the signal (and along the way give other devices a point to connect to) makes perfect sense to me as a consumer. I already know what WiFi is, and I want better coverage, not worse. The smart home stuff just falls out of tech I am already familiar with, efficiency by damned.

[Asmod4n]

Thread is a WiFi replacement, the devices talk IP over thread.

And it has an encrypted pairing process to your vendor controlled hub. Said vendor can allow or disallow it which other vendors may speak with said hub.

Here is the landscape we have: HomeKit: fully closed, requires certification from Apple. Very expensive and limited functionality.

Zigbee: fully open, anyone can make Zigbee devices and sell them without any restriction. Operates on the same frequency all over the world. Devices are super cheap. You can expand the protocol however you like as a vendor.

Z-wave: fully closed, several incompatible frequencies, requires certification to sell devices.

Thread and matter: semi closed, same ieee standard as Zigbee for data transfer. Vendors can allow it to talk to devices of other vendors. Requires certification. Same price tag as HomeKit, aka 3-4 more expensive than Zigbee.

All of them require hubs. And only with Zigbee you are guaranteed to have interop between all vendors and all devices sold across the globe. Thanks to Home Assistant. With thread the vendor can simply disallow you to use your devices with HomeAssistant, which is unacceptable by me.

[hardwaresofton]

Thanks for all this context/explanation -- also the follow up. Automatic range extension (i.e. actually being a mesh and forwarding along messages) is an excellent feature.

> All of them require hubs. And only with Zigbee you are guaranteed to have interop between all vendors and all devices sold across the globe. Thanks to Home Assistant. With thread the vendor can simply disallow you to use your devices with HomeAssistant, which is unacceptable by me.

This is the one I want to push back on -- Thread over Wifi doesn't require a special Hub right? Taken with other info from this thread clearly in the real world it's not so simple to find the right hardware... but it's possible to just buy a thread device and use it over regular old wifi.

Sounds like Zigbee is closer to ideal than Thread or Thread/Wifi.

Maybe this is the startup someone needs to do -- some reasonably powered device to attack to a router/connect close to a router which supports Thread and Zigbee, has completely local management and call it a day. Is this just over-complicating a smart hub? Don't know.

[Asmod4n]

Thread is using the same protocol as Zigbee, which requires specialized hardware to talk to it. You can’t get around a centralized hub when wanting to use them on your WiFi network.

Thread just adds an IP layer above Zigbee. Zigbee is on the same protocol layer as Ethernet or WiFi.

[wlesieutre]

> Thread just adds an IP layer above Zigbee

To clarify this: Thread is not building on top of Zigbee, they are both independently built on 802.15.4

[Asmod4n]

Correct, this makes it possible for one chip to speak both protocols at the same time with one antenna.

The usb stick sold by nabu casa does that.

[wlesieutre]

Technically works but not well enough to move past “experimental”

> This experimental firmware has been available since December 2022. Through extensive testing, we have found that although it works in some circumstances, it has technical limitations that lead to a worse user experience. We now do not recommend using this firmware, and it will be experimental for the foreseeable future. Instead, we will focus on making sure the dedicated Zigbee and Thread firmwares for Home Assistant Connect ZBT-1 deliver the best experience to users.

https://www.home-assistant.io/connectzbt1/

[hardwaresofton]

> Thread is using the same protocol as Zigbee, which requires specialized hardware to talk to it. You can’t get around a centralized hub when wanting to use them on your WiFi network. > > Thread just adds an IP layer above Zigbee. Zigbee is on the same protocol layer as Ethernet or WiFi.

AH, I've just realized that I've been using the wrong terminology.

I've been meaning to say Matter over Thread vs Matter over Wifi!

Matter seems like a decent way forward, and it can work only over wifi which is what drew me in to focusing on Matter. IIRC Matter/Zigbee isn't a thing (though it technically should be possible, Zigbee is just a transport as far as Matter is concerned right?).

[EDIT] works -> can work, Thread/Zigbee -> Matter/Zigbee

[Asmod4n]

But here comes the tricky bit, when you buy either Zigbee or matter devices each vendor will add its own extensions.

In the Zigbee ecosystem vendors out right refuse to communicate with devices from other vendors even though Zigbee is an interoperable standard.

That lead to the birth of zigbee2mqtt, literally hundreds of years of development time went into it to have full feature support for every Zigbee device that exists.

For thread and matter devices each vendor would have to do the same. And that won’t happen, leading to a fragmented ecosystem.

[hardwaresofton]

Welp that's depressing.

Thanks again for laying this out -- I've been seeing zigbee2mqtt everywhere and this explains why someone would add mqtt to the mix. Sounds like this is another thing that needs to be run/managed on the software side to be robust.

This is an insane goal (and who knows when I'll actually get to work on this project), but what I want to build is an all in one something that "just works". So roughly:

1. Pick a good enough physical comms stack to hit most things

2. Write software to fill in the rest

It's going to be difficult but it feels like the setup for all these tools is just hard, when it doesn't have to be if you could pin down the hardware/install instructions, then write a really decent software layer to pull it all together without making people go homelab.

That said, that's probably what home assistant devs thought before they reached the current level of complexity, I'm probably preparing to attack a windmill here.

I think my secret sauce here will be WebAssembly -- if I can nail down the hardware below, build/convert a ton of adapters via WebAssembly, and then build a compelling/easy to add/install/manage/configure UI on top of that, I might have myself something worth posting to HN someday.

[Asmod4n]

Thread and Zigbee implement the same IEEE standard.

Matter would be correctly the application layer protocol of thread and could be spoken over any transport. Like HTTP

[Asmod4n]

Oh and, Zigbee has automatic range extension as part of its standard. Every device with a plug expands your network.