IKEA has launched a number of smart home products over the last eight years including blinds, lights, and more powered by its HomeKit-compatible TRÅDFRI gateway. Now the company has announced it has an all-new smart home hub with Matter support plus a redesigned “Home” app on the way.
IKEA announced the news in a press release today:
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, a collaboration between Apple, Amazon, Google, Samsung, the Connectivity Standards Alliance, and many other companies including IKEA has seen multiple delays with the latest launch planned for this fall.
The goal is to make it seamless for customers to know a smart home device will work with their setup (cross-platform including HomeKit) and also make them faster, more reliable, secure, and easy to use. One of the underlying technologies Matter is using to enable that is Thread. We’ve already seen a number of smart device companies adopt Thread like Apple with HomePod mini, Belkin, Nanoleaf, Eve, and more.
IKEA says connecting smart devices to the new DIRIGERA Matter hub will be “significantly easier” than with the current TRÅDFRI hub.
Along with the new Matter-supported hub, the company’s “Home” app will be getting an overhaul. “The new IKEA Home smart app will be convenient, easy to navigate, and user-friendly to lower the threshold for people looking into setting up a smart home.”
The current IKEA smart home app and TRÅDFRI hub will continue to work and when available, DIRIGERA will work with all existing IKEA smart home devices.
IKEA says the new DIRIGERA hub and updated smart home app will be available in October this year. The company also teased “many more” new smart home products “to come in the future.”
As for the company’s most recent smart home products, IKEA launched two new smart blind options in March.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.