Swedish self-assembly furniture giant IKEA has made an additional name for itself through its growing range of budget-priced smart home devices. But if you were thinking of picking up some of its new Matter-over-Thread products, you may want to wait a little while.
There have been a number of frustrated posts from people experiencing connectivity problems with Apple Home and other smart home ecosystems, and IKEA has acknowledged the issues …
The Verge’s Jennifer Tuohy is one of those affected.
I’ve spent the last couple of weeks trying — and mostly failing — to test Ikea’s new Matter-over-Thread gear […] I’ve hit several walls trying to connect them to any smart home platform, and I’m not alone. The Tradfri subreddit is filled with Ikea customers sharing similar frustrations, reviews on Ikea’s website point to issues, and colleagues at The Verge have also been having problems. Of the six devices I’ve tried to connect, I’ve so far successfully onboarded just one Kajplats smart lightbulb to Apple Home — after seven attempts — and one Alpstuga IAQ monitor to Home Assistant — after failing to pair with Apple Home.
The biggest problem reported is getting IKEA’s devices to show up in their smart home ecosystem, be it Apple Home, Amazon, Google, or Home Assistant. One frustrated buyer said that literally half of the devices he attempted to pair had failed. But even after successful initial connection, users are reporting that devices subsequently disappear from the network.
The company’s smart home product manager, David Granath, says IKEA is investigating.
“We are aware that some customers are experiencing connection issues when setting up their devices in certain home environments, and we take that very seriously. We have a dedicated team reviewing the raised concerns and working closely with our ecosystem partners, and the Connectivity Standards Alliance, to better understand the issues and improve the experience.”
If you’re experiencing these problems yourself, the company has posted some troubleshooting tips. One particular thing to draw attention to is that IKEA smart home products automatically go into pairing mode for 15 minutes after first being powered on before dropping out of this mode. Manual reactivation of pairing is then required.
Image: 9to5Mac/IKEA