Over the previous eight years, IKEA has released a number of smart home goods, including blinds, lighting, and more, all of which are driven by its HomeKit-compatible TRDFRI gateway.
Image credit: you-betterknow | Twitter: @BetterknowYou
The company has now announced the release of an all-new smart home hub with Matter support, as well as a redesigned “Home” app.
Today, IKEA released the following statement:
The next step on the journey to enable a better everyday life for the many people and a smarter living is to launch the Matter ready hub for smart products DIRIGERA. With its new software, DIRIGERA is built to handle more product segments and onboard more products than the existing TRÅDFRI gateway. It also enables the new and more user-friendly IKEA Home smart app.
Matter-Ready Dirigera Hub
Image credit: IKEA_Deutschland | Twitter: @IKEA_Presse
Matter, a collaboration involving Apple, Amazon, Google, Samsung, the Connectivity Standards Alliance, and a number of other companies, including IKEA, has been delayed several times, with the most recent launch set for this fall.
Ikea refers to the hub as Matter-ready because it has not yet been officially certified. The Dirigera hub is anticipated to be among the first batch of official Matter-certified devices before the end of the year, although it’s unclear whether that includes it or if certification will be delayed until 2023.
The new Dirigera hub is 2.7cm tall and 11.2cm in diameter, about half the height and slightly wider than the original Trdfri gateway, which was 4.5cm tall and 11cm across. The new hub has an Ethernet port as well as a USB-C power jack.
The goal is to make it easy for customers to know that a smart home gadget will operate with their existing setup (cross-platform, including HomeKit), as well as to make them faster, more reliable, secure, and simple to use.
Thread is one of the core technologies used by Matter to enable this. Thread has already been adopted by a number of smart device companies, including Apple with the HomePod mini, Belkin, Nanoleaf, Eve, and others.
The new DIRIGERA Matter hub, according to IKEA, will make connecting smart devices “significantly easier” than the current TRDFRI hub.
In addition to the new Matter-supported hub, the company’s “Home” software will be updated. “The new IKEA Home smart app will be convenient, user-friendly, and easy to understand, lowering the barrier for anyone interested in setting up a smart home.”
The current IKEA smart home app and TRDFRI hub will continue to function, and DIRIGERA will be compatible with all existing IKEA smart home products when it becomes available.
The new DIRIGERA hub and upgraded smart home software, according to IKEA, will be available in October. “Many more” such smart home items are expected in the future, according to the firm.
IKEA released two new smart blind options in March, which are among the company’s most current smart home items.
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