Ikea’s new Matter smart home devices are having connectivity issues

I’ve spent the past two weeks trying—and mostly failing—to test Ikea’s new “material over thread” gear. these The long-awaited smart home devices It includes programmable buttons, smart bulbs, plugs, and temperature and motion sensors — all of which should work with any smart home platform and start at just $6.

But I’ve hit a lot of walls trying to connect it to any smart home platform, and I’m not alone. the The subreddit is free of threads Full of IKEA customers sharing similar frustrations, and reviews about IKEA website Point out issues, colleagues in Edge I have also encountered problems.

Of the six devices I’ve tried to connect, so far only one has been successfully connected sidewalk Smart Bulb to Apple Home – after seven attempts – and one Albastoga IAQ Monitor To Home Assistant – after failing to pair with Apple Home.

A Smart button for road trip It was initially connected to Amazon Alexa, then dropped off the network and refused to re-pair. the Timmerflotte temperature sensor and Myggspray motion sensor He absolutely refused to contact anything, even Ikea Live axis.

Although many people didn’t encounter any issues, there were enough posts on user forums about not being able to connect new devices — or struggling through multiple resets before pairing — to suggest that my issues weren’t just a result of my problems. Quite a complex networkIt could be an indicator of a larger problem. One Reddit user I posted a particular example of an eyebrow raise: Of the 60 Ikea Bilresa buttons they tried to pair, only 31 connected, a success rate of 52 percent.

Additionally, after a few weeks in people’s homes, a few users are now reporting trouble keeping the devices connected once they’re finally paired. Edge David Pearce had this problem with the Bilresa smart button connected via Amazon Alexa, and a few users on IKEA Tradefree They had problems with Sidewalk light bulbs.

This is it The first IKEA product to use the material over threadrather than Zigbee, its communication protocol The previous Tradfri smart home line Depends on it. The main advantage of Matter is that devices should connect directly to any of the major platforms — Apple Home, Google Home, Amazon Alexa, and Samsung SmartThings — without the need for Ikea’s Dirigera hub or a cloud connection. You should also be able to connect to more than one platform through Matter’s multi-management feature. Now, I’ll agree to only be able to call one!

I contacted IKEA, and David Granath, IKEA’s smart home group manager, told me they are aware of the issues and are investigating them. “The launch of our Matter range has been highly anticipated, and for most customers, the products are working seamlessly, as intended,” he said. “However, we are aware that some customers are experiencing connectivity issues when setting up their devices in certain home environments, and we take this very seriously.

“We have a dedicated team to review the concerns raised and work closely with our ecosystem partners, the Communications Standards Alliance, to better understand the issues and improve the experience,” Granath continued, adding that the team will share more when it can. Meanwhile they offered Some troubleshooting tips.

Introducing new technology is often fraught with problems, as IKEA knows well. As Granath points out, the sheer variety of network settings and environments in a smart home can be difficult to anticipate. Only when products reach the real world do some problems become visible. But while connection and setup failures initially plagued Matter’s devices, A CSA-coordinated push Last year seems to have fixed most of them.

The difference here may be that this is one of the first large-scale deployments of Matter-over-Thread devices. As I did I mentioned previouslyThread’s network infrastructure is not only confusing for users, it is also the least robust, thanks in part to… Persistent lack of interoperability Between routers thread boundaries.

However, the fact that so many people are experiencing issues indicates a bigger problem than just users’ settings. What this issue is is still unclear. The reason could be how Ikea implements the Matter specification, an issue with how devices interact with certain platforms, or something in the Matter specification itself.

IKEA, the CSA, and the platform makers will have to figure this out quickly. The launch of Ikea’s inexpensive Matter appliances was supposed to be an event Smart home breakthrough moment – Proof that the standard is finally ready for the mass market. Instead, it feels like another reminder that the hardest part of a smart home is still getting things to work.