Hello, at the beginning i want to summarize current status of my smart home situation:
In not so far future i will buy a new apartment, and i want to pimp it with all smart home stuff. However there is one big catch: Wife friendliness certificate. It has to work flawlessly, without glitches etc, otherwise my loved one will be mad.
I use lots of samsung stuff: phone, tv, fridge etc. That’s why i use SmartThings
Turns out my TV (S85d) have smartthings hub built-in, so i decided to buy some smart home stuff from IKEA. It’s quite cheap, works great and it is popular. But here problems began.
I would like to use SmartThings to sync everything, but compatibility is spotty.
Some things works great (Vallhorn motion sensor), some not so great (Styrbar Somrig buttons etc).
Most things can be solved by using custom community drivers, but it dosn’t work so flawlessly like Ikea (problems with bulb light temperature etc)
Didn’t try it but i heard it works great with Ikea hub (dirigera).
Did somebody tried it?
If i buy this, can it be all connected to one big smartthings ecosystem?
Can you recommend something for someone who is building smart home from scratch?
There are two ways: the official and the not official.
The only official way to integrate current IKEA devices in SmartThings is using the Dirigera as Matter bridge. If you plan to get a lot of IKEA products (or already have) it makes sense. An advantage is that the Dirigera can update the firmware of the devices and the app works locally.
Community drivers however usually offer a better integration or more features. For instance, custom drivers for lights will expose transitions and relative brightness, custom drivers for buttons have labels in the user interface, expose release actions and may offer perks like multi-tap or auto-repeat that are not available with the official Matter integration. The drawback of custom drivers is that the author could stop supporting the driver or new models may come with new incompatible firmwares.
My setup is mostly WiZ lights (Matter over WiFi), some Nanoleaf (Matter over Thread), lots of IKEA remotes (I happen to be the developer of the custom driver for styrbar, somrig, rodret, etc.) and Tapo sensors (they require a small Matter bridge called H100).
Well i knew i seen this nick somewhere, I also use your drivers, and they work perfectly 2b honest. Thanks for Your commitment.
Currently i have two problems, smaller and bigger:
Smaller is dimmer bar on ikea smart power plug (inspelning), it’s harmless but annoying.
Bigger is support for Tradfri bulbs. I’m using MC drivers and well they are not so polished.
Does comms between SmartThings hub (TV) and Dirigera will be kept via zigbee or at least offline (without going to outside world)?
It’s local, yes, the communication between Dirigera and SmartThings hub happens in your local network (Ethernet and/or WiFi) using Matter protocol.
Dirigera will create its own Zigbee network for the devices you connect to Dirigera. So you’ll end up with two zigbee networks, the one of SmartThings and the one of Dirigera.
It started with the temperature and humidity sensor which has a lovely e-ink screen. Then added more and a motion sensor that surprised me because it’s tiny and you can change the sensitivity up to 7 meters. They also have buttons but those are not yet compatible with SmartThings, maybe they’ll never be, who knows. Battery seems to last forever.
Got them before having a SmartThings hub though, would I get them again? If there were good Zigbee or Matter over Thread alternatives, maybe not, but they’re cheap and available even in my local supermarket. The H100 is so small that I forget it’s there.
They are awesome. I’m a Matter over Thread fanboy and I wanted to replace them with Thread devices as soon as possible. But I think I’ll keep the Tapo sensors.
They are tiny, stylish, battery lasts two years, they use the 868 MHz radio frequency which goes through concrete walls like a hot knife through butter. Not a single issue in years.
Well my dirigera arrived and I have to say, i’m dissapointed big time.
I don’t know if it made more new problems, than elminnated old ones.
Connected everything, bridged etc and so far:
Tradfri bulb now works like it suppose to do with Styrbar (more on it later)
Vallhorn works good on both hubs.
Somrig also works fine minus benefits coming from @mocelet custom drivers.
Inspelning works worse, it does not show power consumption on ST at all.
Styrbar is mystery. it does not show up at all! I can connect Styrbar to Tradifi via Ikea app, but it is shit.
And Ikea smart home app is shit also. It is limited in every way. You can not customize anything.
I’m considering getting rid of dirigera and tradifi bulbs, and trying to find another solution.
Do you know some good and tested lighting solution?
Thanks for Your commitment.