IKEA has spent the last decade flogging its TRADFRI gateway. But IKEA is a member of the Connectivity Standards Alliance, and Matter is the CSA’s pet project. Then Matter happened, and suddenly IKEA’s new smart home looked a lot more interesting. Could the DIRIGERA bridge Matter in your home?
IKEA is not new to the smart home arena, but has spent the last decade flogging its TRADFRI gateway. But IKEA is a member of the Connectivity Standards Alliance, and Matter is the CSA’s pet project.
It was, some might say, just a matter of time before IKEA decided to get on board with Matter. After an initial confirmation that Matter would be supported on the new DIRIGERA hub, things went quiet. Then Matter happened, and suddenly IKEA’s new smart home looked a lot more interesting. Could the DIRIGERA bridge Matter in your home?
DIRIGERA Design
IKEA’s DIRIGERA is relatively compact, roughly the diameter of an espresso saucer, and resembles a white puck. It features two ports, one Ethernet and one USB type-C for power input. You can place the device on a table or shelf, or on a wall - it has a screw slot and fixings are included.
Measuring 4 3/8” (diamete
Expert's Rating
Pros
- Inexpensive
- Easy to use
- Supports Amazon Alexa, Apple Home, and Google Home
- Matter support in the works
Cons
- Device support limited to Ikea’s own smart home products for now
- Must be hardwired to your router
- Limited feature set
Our Verdict
The Ikea Dirigera smart home hub offers an easy and affordable onramp to the smart home, provided you don’t mind being limited to Ikea’s own broad collection of smart home products or you’re willing to experiment with third-party devices Zigbee devices that won’t be officially supported until Ikea releases a firmware that will render this hub Matter compatible.
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The Ikea Dirigera is a small hub that, together with the Ikea Home Smart app, lets you control all the gadgets in your smart home. Or at least, some of the gadgets in your smart home.
Because unlike some competing product, such as the Aeotec Smart Home Hub, the Ikea Dirigera and the Ikea Home Smart app are primarily intended to be used with Ikea’s own smart home products.
However, I
works well so farMathewSet up was easy enough. Just a simple walk through with the app and press of a button got everything going. Its appearance is best described as unoffensive nor interesting; just a plain white puck. A black version would've been a nice option. I like it's powered by USB which allows better flexibility. The app is ok, wish it showed detailed power use graphs and faster outlet power monitoring with decimal values for the wattage, but it all gets the job done.4
Tough to keep goingSteveWas tough to connect but overall not bad. 4
Not cool at all yoTheodoreIt's nothing but a common ZigBee hub. Ikea is playing gatekeeper with it using software. You shouldn't even need to buy this if you already have a ZigBee hub, but they've designed it to be less than user friendly if you don't buy this. So, you see, it's really not cool for a company to do this kind of thing, but here we are. I am a computer science college graduate, so I can easily use custom software to defeat this, but a lot of people cannot. I feel like it's predatory.1
Great! Even worked with some older lightsJoshuaThe setup was giving me a bit of trouble at first
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