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That's awesome this is the first I am hearing of this. I wish Apple would produce their own home automation products. I trust them vastly more than logitech & co...

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I prefer to use ZigBee and not have to trust any corporate tech monster, but my smart home aspirations are pretty limited.

My home is currently all ZigBee/Z-Wave, but Thread/Matter is an open protocol that can be used entirely locally. I'm cautiously excited about the industry standardizing on it; hopefully this will mean that over time more and more mainstream smart-home devices will be compatible with my local-only HomeAssistant setup.

Is thread locked up compared to zigbee somehow?

(I honestly don't know and was thinking Matter and Thread were somehow related and the were both good and I hope someone can confirm or explain what I am missing.)

Thread is a radio protocol. It's basically next-generation Zigbee, using the same radio protocol (IEEE 802.15.4) but with higher performance, lower latency, IPv6 addressing and AES encryption.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thread_(network_protocol)

Matter is a network protocol which provides a standard API for how smart devices talk to home hubs. By making devices truly platform agnostic, it will end the dark "Best Viewed With Internet Explorer" direction which smart devices have been going down.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matter_(standard)

I'm not sure. ZigBee is available and works great. I heard negative rumblings about Thread/Matter but I'm not sure if the criticisms are valid, or just anti-change curmudgeonry.

Agree - I’ve been using a set of Eve (from memory) power plugs that are thread enabled - my understanding is it doesn’t connect directly to the internet (ie you don’t connect it to your wifi) but you connect to a border hub (ie an Apple TV, or maybe now an iPhone 15.)

So I guess if you trust apple, you can sorta trust these devices as their access to the outside world would be through an apple device.

I doubt Apple will enable the iPhone as a Matter hub, because it doesn’t stay at home.

The Apple TV 4k 3rd gen and the new HomePods can be Matter hubs (both have Thread hardware).

I suppose I can also always block internet access for those devices. Maybe I'll take a look Eve's products.

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