A happier one this time.
In the early but far-too-recent Wild West days of the smart home, manufacturers used a wide variety of protocols and platforms, most of which were proprietary, and largely none of which were inter-operational. As time moved on, the devices landed on being at least minimally operational with the bigger platforms that arose: Amazon, Google, and, to a much lesser extent, Apple. Some required Internet service, some required a (proprietary of course) hub, while a few allowed local control absent an external device or phone home. Meanwhile, a few standard protocols started being adopted (even if they were often branded as proprietary protocols—Philips Hue is Zigbee, for example), eventually narrowing to WiFi, Z-Wave, and Zigbee. You may have never heard of the last two, but smart home aficionados have epic forum fights about which is better (nobody likes WiFi, and Apple HomeKit may as well not exist for the sake of this argument).
It’s messy, but it’s getting a little less messy. Setting standards was a step in the right direction, and Z-Wave and Zigbee are good protocols that work on mesh networks, far better than a thousand different protocols all using your WiFi to work through a distant company-owned server that the company could shut off at any time. The next step, however, is of course one standard protocol (please don’t notice this XKCD comic). The idea being one protocol that can be used by any device so it can talk to any smart home system. A lightbulb from America Corp. that can be used on a Google Home hub. A sensor from Cheap Products Co. that can be used with your Alexa whatever thing. So, in 2019, the big players in the industry put their heads together and developed Matter.
Matter, as mentioned, is a protocol that is meant above all to be universal and inter-operational. It doesn’t include all the features of every manufacturers’ products (yet), but serves as a basis for basic operation of smart home devices in any environment. In the past few years, more and more devices have become Matter compatible, even as results have varied. As of 2026, it’s one of those basically it’s there but needs work.
One thing to note is that Matter is just a language, not the method of transporting instructions. Matter instructions can be officially sent over WiFi (or Ethernet), or can be (largely unofficially) used over Zigbee, Z-Wave, or the other transmission protocols that require hubs or cloud servers. It’s a way of making things compatible. So we’re just barely half-way there. What we now need is a universal transmission protocol.
That’s where Thread comes in. Thread, also developed by the big smart home players over the past few years, is a universal low-power mesh network protocol (similar in concept to Zigbee or Z-Wave) that transmits smart home instructions. It doesn’t necessarily only work with Matter, but just about every device that uses Thread also uses Matter. Matter and Thread are basically meant to work together, with the (obvious) nomenclature “Matter Over Thread.”
As I mentioned in the close of our last episode of this podcastblog, I was waiting to add some new devices to my smart home system to write more, and, well, that’s arrived. In thinking of how I wanted to expand my smart home, I had to decide which protocols I wanted to target along with what devices and needs I wanted to meet. The light switches I added previously are Matter over WiFi, which is fine, but I did want to start also building out a mesh network. As you may be able to piece together, a mesh network works better when there are more devices on it—by virtue of being mesh, each device becomes a repeater and strengthens the overall mesh and coverage. Did I want to go with Zigbee or Z-Wayve, which both have a huge catalog of well reviewed devices already? Or did I want to think of future standards and plan ahead?
It was a tough decision, but I eventually landed on the future. So, I bought a Nabu Casa ZBT-2, which is an antenna-looking device that functions as either a Zigbee hub or a Thread border router (which is largely the same thing as a hub but with different branding). I opted to install it as a Thread border router. The installation was extremely easy and quick (after I passed through the USB device in Proxmox). Within seconds I had a Thread network up and running. What helped land me on this decision was Ikea’s recent unveiling of extremely inexpensive Thread devices, of which I ordered (I am not going to use their Ikea names because I am sane) a temperature/humidity sensor, a air quality sensor, a motion sensor, and finally, five water leak sensors. You see, I am a homeowner, and as a homeowner, I am absolutely paranoid about water. Water kills houses. So now I have one under every source of water in the house.
All the devices were a cinch to add to Home Assistant just by scanning the little QR codes on the devices themselves. At the prompt I edited their names to show where they will be located. I put the devices where they should be. I cannot emphasize how easy this all was. Matter Over Thread just worked.
People on the smart home forums argue about Zigbee and Z-Wave, but you will also see them lambast Thread for some reason. I think mostly because they all have Zigbee and Z-Wave devices and don’t want to change. Nobody wants to change. Change is scary. But Matter Over Thread isn’t.
Previously:
