• kigmatzomat@alien.topB
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    1 year ago

    It is highly unlikely you will get such a device in less than 3 years for the simple reason that it has a constant power supply greater than 2 watts. In that scenario, it should either be wifi for the range or act as a wifi/thread bridge (aka border router) to augment the thread mesh without the homeowner needing to worry about their existing mesh*. In either case, control would happen over wifi.

    The CSA (Matter management group) needs to increase the number of wifi/thread bridges on the market to make battery-powered Thread-only devices viable. This is a greater priority than having mains-powered Matter devices that can only act as thread relays.

    *Thread relays have the same issue as zwave/zigbee relays: you have to daisy chain them across your home to extend the mesh contiguously. This means some people need to put relays in places they don’t need any functionality other than to be a range extender. With wifi/thread bridges you can use wifi’s orders of magnitude greater power budget to extend the Thread network in a non-contiguous fashion.