The current Ikea catalog already has enough products to turn any house into a smart home. Ikea products offer decent compatibility with third-party products, however Ikea officials know that compatibility could be improved. direct is new switchboard that Ikea has presented, and that seeks to be something like the single ring of connection bridges for home automation.
The new Ikea hub seeks to be compatible with the latest standard
Have you ever wondered why some smart devices can be interconnected and others cannot? Well, normally, that is due to the wireless interoperability. Making a system fully compatible with another from a third party is only possible if a standard is created, and for that, many manufacturers have to sit down at a table and do their best to make things easier for each other.
Until mid-2021, the communication standard for home automation was the one established by the Zigbee Alliance. However, last year the new Matter standard, which is also behind brands such as Apple, Google, Amazon, Samsung and the Zigbee Alliance itself. Ikea wanted to catch this wave on time, and direct It will be your first hub compatible with this new system.
Dirigera, the definitive all-in-one from Ikea
Dirigera will be much smaller than the Zigbee bridge that they currently have for sale, measuring just 11 centimeters in diameter and 2,7 centimeters in height. Like the Tradfri, Dirigera will be connected directly to a port Ethernet from our router. The power in this case will be done with a USB type C cable.
Ikea's new smart hub will offer backward compatibility Total with the home automation products and the brand that we already have at home, since it supports both Zigbee and Thread, as well as the new Matter standard. The ultimate goal is for this product to end up replacing the Tradfri bridge at some point. Of course, remember that for connect IKEA bulbs to HomeKit and control them from the outside you need a HomePod or an Apple TV.
This new Dirigera center will also come accompanied by a new Ikea Home app totally redesigned. According to those responsible for this new product, we will now be able to connect devices to our home automation network in a much simpler and more intuitive way, controlling the devices individually, creating groups and establishing our own scenes, something that we recognize is still a bit tedious to manage with the current app —especially, the connection of new devices.
It will be in October
The new hub will be available for purchase next October, and will be accompanied by the launch of the new mobile application. During the first half of 2023, the entire Ikea Home ecosystem will experience an update that will allow us to control our Ikea devices as well. from outside the house. With the current application, doing this operation is only possible if we integrate our Tradfri switchboard with an intelligent voice assistant such as Google Assistant or Alexa. However, the Swedes are taking the home automation sector very seriously, and they want to offer their users a completely complete experience regardless of whether we have this type of assistant at home.