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 better. Dirigera is the new switchboard that Ikea has presented, and that seeks to be something like the only ring of connection bridges for home automation .
IKEA’s new hub seeks to be compatible with the latest standard
Have you ever wondered why there are smart devices that can be interconnected and others that cannot? Well, typically, that’s down to wireless interoperability . Getting a system to be 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 everything they can to make things easier for each other.
Until mid-2021, the communication standard for home automation was that set by the Zigbee Alliance . However, last year the new Matter standard was approved, which also has brands such as Apple, Google, Amazon, Samsung and the Zigbee Alliance itself behind it. Ikea wanted to catch this wave in time, and Dirigera will be its first hub compatible with this new system.
Directera, 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 an Ethernet port of our router. In this case, we will supply power with a USB type C cable.
Ikea’s new smart hub will offer full backward compatibility with the brand’s home automation products that we already have at home, as it supports both Zigbee and Thread, as well as the new Matter standard. The ultimate goal is that this product ends up replacing the Tradfri bridge at some point.
This new Dirigera center will also be accompanied by a completely redesigned new Ikea Home application . 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 do. manage with the current app —especially, the connection of new devices—.
it will be in October
The new hub can be purchased 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 even from outside the home . With the current application, doing this operation is only possible if we integrate our Tradfri control unit 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.