What is Thread and how will it help your smart home?

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Connected devices built on Thread are starting to roll out as Matter gets closer to launch. Eve, Schlage, and Wemo have all released smart home gadgets in the last year. Why does thread matter?

I sat down with three Thread Group board members to find out how this new protocol will fix many of the smart home's biggest issues. I spoke with several people, including the president of the Thread Group and director of software engineering at Apple, the vice president of technology for Thread and the director of marketing for Thread.

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Matter’s plan to save the smart home

Thread is being developed by a group of companies that compete in the smart home industry. The thread started earlier than Matter. Several companies got together and identified a problem in the industry that they could work together to solve.

It was difficult to securely connect all the various devices in the consumer smart home. They came up with Thread, a wireless protocol that could be used to create a secure, robust, reliable, and simple-to-use network. Thread is run by a board of directors that includes representatives from many companies.

Why is thread important to Matter and the smart home?

The thread is a wireless protocol for the internet of things. It is designed to make them work faster, use less power, and communicate better with each other.

Thread is a low-power, low-bandwidth mesh networking protocol that uses a radio technology. It doesn't need a central hub. Thread devices can communicate with each other. Thread can be quicker if the middle man is cut out.

Thread is an internet protocol-based smart home protocol that can connect to any other internet-based device. It was built on intellectual property. The internet runs on the same protocol that we are bringing.

Image: Open Thread

If you add a Thread device to your home, it becomes an end device. A routers is a device that is plugged into power.

An end device is a battery operated device. The leader of the network is the firstRouter. One leader can be replaced by another.

Up to 250 devices can be supported by a thread network. Multiple Border Routers, which are always-powered devices with an internet connection, can be supported by it.

The thread has an application layer called Matter. There is no need for a single point of failure with Thread and Matter's support of both wi-fi and thread.

When Matter arrives later this year, Thread will be the protocol it uses for low-bandwidth devices, such as door locks and motion sensor, and high-bandwidth needs, such as streaming video from a security camera. It will be possible to connect devices to a Matter network.

Thread is a better smart home protocol than the ones we have.

Thread was designed from the beginning to be a low-power protocol for the internet of things. That's its purpose. The smart home's other technologies were designed to improve other applications. It was originally intended as a wire replacement. Thread was designed for devices that just want to sleep for a long time, wake up, send a single packet, and then go back to sleep and keep the battery alive.

Thread has a direct communication capability and is able to handle a large number of devices. The tests run by Silicon Labs show that Thread is very fast in testing.

The devices are looking for the best route to every other device in the network if a Thread mesh works as a routed mesh. As a result of this efficiency, power consumption is reduced as well as latency. Thread is a self-healing network, which means that if a router goes down, another one can pick up the slack.

Image: Thread Group

Does thread replace a hub or bridge?

The Thread network needs a border routers to connect to the internet. Siddha says it avoids having a different bridge. Any Thread device can be connected to any Thread border routers. Unlike a bridge or hub, a Thread border routers can't see the traffic it routes, as all communications in a Thread network are ciphers.

A thread border routers is not a dedicated device. A border router is a feature that can be integrated into any device that is powered all the time.

Is it necessary for you to have a border routers to use a Thread device?

You don't need a border device to talk to each other. If you want them to talk to other networks in the home or the internet, you need a border routers.

Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy

When the internet is down, will thread work?

The Thread devices will. If the internet goes down, a thread network won't go down. The network is self-managing. It's all done in the area.

Which products benefit from threading? It isn't designed for every product in the home.

It's not. Siddha says cameras are the biggest elephant in the room when it comes to bandwidth. It's not possible to use thread for high bandwidth use cases. The cameras are one of the few that need high bandwidth. Thread can be used for every other use case for a sensor.

Thread is designed for low-powered devices. These can be left untouched and unused for months or more, but need to spring into action when they're needed, and they need to not have run out of battery. Siddha says that it is designed for things like door locks, window shades, light bulbs, wall plugs, water valves, thermostats and alarm sirens.

There are a lot of versions of Thread. There is Matter over Thread, HomeKit over Thread, and so on.

The application layers running over Thread are not the same as the ones on the other side. One of the highlights of the importance of intellectual property is that. Multiple application layers can be supported by the same network technology. There is an application layer over Thread.

The new release of Thread allows them to interact with each other. Different ecosystems didn't have a good way to share Thread network credentials. The thing is changing.

The latest release of Thread, Thread 1.3.0, will allow users to have one unified Thread network in their homes, as a result of the new Thread credentials shared between different mobile apps.

If a home network has an Apple HomePod Mini, a Google Nest Hub, and an Eero wi-fi routers, they can all act as border routers in a single Thread network with 1. 3.0. We won't see all devices updated to Thread 1. 3.0 until closer to when Matter arrives this fall.

The first Nest Thermostat was the origin of Thread. It took so long for it to be adopted in the smart home. There are a lot of Thread products.

Siddha says thatThread had an "inflection point" two or three years ago when both Apple andGoogle came up with border routers. We saw Thread devices in action for the first time. It was just as good to turn on a smart light switch as it was to turn on a physical one. People didn't have that experience before.

With border routers entering the wild, companies like Eve and Wemo began to look at shifting from wireless to wired. They saw the issues with the other protocols and are now adopting Thread into their products and making a conscious switch from a different technology to Thread for the benefits of reliable, secure, instant control experiences.

There are only a few Thread devices available, and some of them won't work with Matter when the standard arrives. The Nest x Yale door lock is one example of a product that is based on an earlier implementation of Thread.

The fourth generation of Amazon's smart speaker will be updated to be a Thread border routers.

What about the past? Can all Zigbee devices be upgraded to Thread?

Thread and Zigbee both run on the same radio frequencies. Current products can be upgraded to Thread. Thread requires different resources like memory. It won't be upgradeable if a product isn't built with the right resources.

Image: Philips Hue

Can a product that uses a hub or bridge be upgraded to Thread through it? Would you have to change the individual bulbs?

Siddha says, "Do the accessories have enough memory to support Matter over Thread?" The product can't be upgraded to Thread via the hub if the accessories don't. Product manufacturers will have to think about those. People don't want to fix things if they're not broken.

The company has said that it will support Matter through its existing bridge, but that it won't replace its existing Zigbee-powered bulbs with Thread bulbs.

Siddha believes that products will undergo a natural evolution toThread in the future. He wants every company to bring Thread into their devices because it will speed up the smart home.

What will Thread and Matter do with HomeKit?

HomeKit will be an application that works on the apple platform. Siddha says that Matter is used underneath. HomeKit will be supported on our products. We have our own kind of user experience for HomeKit that is similar to the one that will be provided by GOOGLE. The innovation is expected to happen at the higher layer.

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge

The smart home will benefit from Matter and Thread.

"For years, companies in the consumer smart home were trying to differentiate based on the platform they use." Consumers aren't interested in that. They like the fun features. Reliability and power are things that need to be standardized. The product companies can focus on features that consumers care about.

Siddha says that the smart home is similar to the internet's early days. Legacy technologies weren't coming together to make everything work. There are more than one bridge and device you need. Thread's all-ip-backbone allows seamless access to the home network and makes home automation complete.

The smart home needs a reset. An attempt to rebuild a broken system and make it capable of fulfilling its initial promise is what they are attempting to do. They just have to show up.