Agreed. I initially tried a multi-platform setup, starting with Alexa, but I couldn’t get it to work reliably.
All of my Thread devices (9 routers + 12 endpoints) are paired with my HomePod and have been running perfectly. Since version 60.12, I’ve shared all of them with SmartThings—except the Alpstuga, which is shared with Alexa instead—where I run my routines. Several are also shared with eWeLink (iHost) for integration with Node-RED.
My impression at the moment is that this mesh is faster and more reliable than Zigbee.
I don’t really have enough on my beta hub to comment on any changes the firmware may have made, but on my production hubs the connection paths are increasingly weird all round. It’s like the mobile app is at least a step or two behind in understanding, though still way ahead of me.
The app still shows broken paths with both direct connections to the hub and routed devices.
At the API level the routing that was showing unknown IDs that began with lots of zeroes remains. I wanted to put that down to routing Thread over Ethernet though I seem to have one more device than I would perhaps expect for that. It does seem to correspond with the devices not connected to the hub icon in the app.
I am now seeing other unknown (to me) IDs that look more complete though currently I can only confidently say that this is on Zigbee. So I have Zigbee buttons and contacts routing through unknown devices that in the app show as a different known device (which would be a plausible router) connected directly to the hub with the button or contact not mentioned.
Finally got a kajplats colour/white spectrum 1055 lumen e27 bulb from Ikea today.
I updated it to latest firmware and compared it to my Nanoleaf bulbs. I find the white seems colder for a given colour temp. While the colour seems brighter on the Ikea bulb I found the red much less saturated (more toward orange than red) on the Ikea bulb compared to the Nanoleaf.
Since I use the red in my home cinema setup and prefer the deeper red than the orangey tone I’m inclined to stick with the Nanoleaf, for now at any rate
Also it seems 1.0.26 firmware has been released for Alpstuga, although I’ve not received it yet despite polling in AWA and a hub reboot for good measure.
If you don’t plan to shop in the Belfast ikea store then you can probably ignore the rest of this post, but if you’re nosy you can read on
according to the Ikea uk website there were no kajplats bulbs of any type in the Belfast store but when I got there I found some varieties in stock. I was after the 1055 lumen e27 white spectrum plus colour bulbs but they always seem to be out of stock. I was in the shop on Monday and did some investigating and spoke to a member of staff.
So here’s a thing….
Looks like a good chunk of the smart home devices come via Dublin and they have eu product codes which are different to uk ones. Example above is the varmblixt smart lamp , they have 55 of these in stock in Belfast with the eu code of 206.135.22, yet the uk website only lists 906.231.60 product code for the varmblixt smart lamp and says it is out of stock in Belfast, which it is with that code despite plenty of stock on the eu code. I think the same applies to a number of devices, but not all. I have a feeling the battery devices may use the same codes in eu, but I’ve not checked.
Thought this may be of interest to some who are chasing stock levels online at Belfast.
