On our latest IoT Podcast episode, we take a question that Ron left on our IoT Voicemail Hotline. Ron has used various smart home technologies for 30 years; the latest platform in his home is Insteon. With Insteon effectively shutting down its cloud operations, Ron is switching his phone from Android to iOS and is wondering what he should transition: Apple HomeKit, Zigbee, Z-Wave, or something else.
Having made several smart home platform transitions myself, I would recommend Ron to strongly consider HomeKit. That’s my current platform of choice, mainly because of its simplicity, speed, usability, and strict controls around data privacy. Given that Ron is moving his phone to iOS, this is also a fairly logical choice. Had he been staying with Android, my recommendation would be different since HomeKit doesn’t natively work with Android.
Since Ron is replacing most, if not all, of his smart home hardware and devices, I would also suggest he buy only the HomeKit-compatible devices he needs right now. Why? Because we know that the first devices with Matter certification are due out in the fall.
Matter is expected to bring cross-platform compatibility at the application layer to smart home devices. Until that happens, however, only HomeKit devices will work on a HomeKit system. In the near future, however, devices that use radio protocols other than Wi-Fi and Thread will also work with HomeKit. Those will either need a firmware upgrade where possible, or a bridge device to translate Zigbee, Z-Wave or some other wireless protocol to Wi-Fi and/or Thread.
Rather than take a chance on what devices will or won’t be certified, it makes financial sense at this point to stick with HomeKit products for now. And then as other smart lights, locks, doorbells, switches, and sensors gain Matter certification, they can be added to the HomeKit environment.
There have been a few brands that announced Matter support for current and future hardware, so there’s less of a risk in buying those now. Aside from that, I wouldn’t recommend that Ron, or anyone else, make any large investments in smart home gear on the hopes of Matter certification.
To hear Ron’s question, as well as our discussion in full, tune in to the IoT Podcast below:
I have been pleading for weeks now for help without a single response maybe you can help or point me in the right direction.
I went Home Assistant after first trying HOOBS and HomeSeer, both didn’t work for me, probably because I am too much of novice. Home Assistant did work for 39 of 60 devices, they work fine, however I have the address number of the other 21 devices, I have been trying to find out if they can be installed manually on HA and if so how do you go about it.
For this kind of detailed question i’d recommend either the Insteon sub Reddit or the Home Assistant forums. People in either place should be able to help you and it’s much easier to handle these kind of conversations in a threaded forum.
https://www.reddit.com/r/insteon/
https://community.home-assistant.io/t/hey-insteon-users/413461
Thanks so much Kevin for that detailed answer. I have been leaning toward Homekit and you have now taken the question out of the equation. Best!
Insteon servers randomly came back online today… full functionality returned
Based on reports on the Insteon Reddit and elsewhere, It’s only partial functionality. For example, a number of people have reported they are not getting notifications from sensors.
Without an official notification from the company, we can’t really tell what’s going on. For example, since it’s in bankruptcy, they might’ve just turned it on to see how many active hubs there are as part of valuing the assets for sale.
Until there’s an official announcement, I would say use it at your own risk.
I have a long post on resources for this kind of transition under the original post on this podcast episode:
https://staceyoniot.com/podcast-peekaboo-offers-privacy-for-the-smart-home/
There are 100s of choices, It, like all things, relies on what your need, what you want, and what you skill level is. Suggesting that “Hoob/Homekit/Home Assistant/ISY/…/…/…/…/…” is “right” is dumb. It is a knee-jerk reaction without an understanding of the person’s skill level to build and maintain a system.
As in … I know software, fairly experienced in many things (well, at leat as it comes to the Internet/Cloud/JSON/XML).
My time to go from “OMG Insteon is down!!!!!” to “It’s all back and I even have Alexa control of everything” took me a whopping 20 minutes.
I am sure my experience would have been close to the same with many other integrations like Homekit. But why? Not for me. Too simple, it is not for me. Maybe you, not me. That would be like asking a Ferrari owner to buy a Pinto.
It will get me from point A to point B … but I would not be caught dead in a Pinto.
I am still using X10 because it works. I am waiting to use matter compatible stuff but this just keeps getting pushed out. Hopefully I can move to matter compatible LoRA stuff soon. Any idea how long it will take for matter to take off? And why is it called matter anyway?
It’s called Matter because that’s what the CSA decided to call it. It was originally called Project CHiP, which wasn’t much bette4 but at least was easier to Google.
The following is just a joke, but I like it:
What the major partners contributed to Matter:
Amazon: we brought everyone together.
CSA/Zigbee: we provided the messaging architecture.
Apple: We contributed the bridging architecture and the privacy models.
Google: We picked the name.
😉
As to your other question:
Remember I said the original name was “Project CHiP”?
That’s because the Matter messaging format assumes the underlying network protocol uses IP addressing to define the endpoints. So WiFi, Bluetooth, and Thread are a good fit. Zigbee also works well with a bridge device, which is how Ikea, Hue, and Aqara will bring their end devices into Matter. Zwave is left out for now, because although there is a variation that uses IP addresses, there are no hubs currently using that one.
There are existing LoRa gateways that can use IP addressing to connect to the Internet, but they aren’t universal.
So maybe LoRa to Matter eventually, but bridging devices will likely be required, which pushes out the probable delivery date and adds to the cost. I haven’t seen any projects of this type announced yet, but maybe I missed them.