Hooray... the end for Trådfri is nigh
Let’s face it, while it’s all pretty cheap and looks pretty nice…Ikea’s Trådfri smart home system is, well… a bit crap.
Luckily, there’s good news on the horizon as Ikea’s Matter-ready smart home hub has broken rank – promising a long overdue retirement for the Trådfri Gateway and cross-brand compatibility.
- Explainer: What is Matter for the smart home
The Ikea Dirigera hub – Swedish for ‘conducting’ in case you were wondering – has been revealed to the guys at The Verge, and is set to go live in October alongside a new Ikea Home Smart App.
There’s no word on pricing as of yet, other than it will be “a little bit more expensive” than the $29 Trådfri Gateway, but that’s because it’s a much more complete smart home hub.
Aside from the headline grabbing “Matter-ready” tag (Matter certification is still to come), we know that the Dirigera hub will also pack in Zigbee and Wi-Fi.
Crucially, the Dirigera hub and new Home Smart app will not only be compatible with the existing Ikea Home Smart products, but Matter certified devices from other brands. The Verge article confirms that it can act as a Thread border router.
- Guide: What is Thread
Initially for launch you’ll need to wire the new Ikea hub to your router using Ethernet but 2.4GHz and 5GHz Wi-Fi communication to it will come with a software update.
Powered by USB-C, the Ikea Dirigera hub is a puck-shaped device, measuring in at 2.7cm high and an 11.2cm diameter.
The new Home Smart app will only work with the new hub, not the current Gateway; but your Ikea smart home devices should transfer over just fine.
It’s not yet clear if the existing Ikea devices will be updated to be Matter compliant, or whether you’ll need to invest in the hub to get those devices singing and dancing with other Matter devices from different companies.
All will become clearer closer to launch we guess; Ikea’s new smart home system and Matter are set to launch around the same time.
