In our last post we covered what Matter is — one common language for smart home gear, whichever app you run your house from. What we glossed over is that Matter devices can arrive on your network two different ways: over wifi, or over something called Thread. Same language, different roads.
Matter over Wifi is the simple one. The device joins the wifi network you already have, the same as your phone or telly. No extra hardware, no new network to think about. The catch? Wifi radios are thirsty. Staying connected takes a fair bit of power, which is no trouble at all when a device is wired into the mains — but it would flatten a coin battery in weeks.
Matter over Thread exists for exactly that reason. Thread is a separate low-power network built for small battery devices. A Thread gadget can have a proper snooze between jobs — waking for a fraction of a second to report the temperature or a bit of movement, then going straight back to sleep. That's how a sensor runs for a year or two on a battery the size of a ten-cent piece. The trade-off: Thread needs a border router in the house to bridge it to your network. You might own one already without knowing — an Apple TV 4K, a HomePod mini, and several of the newer Echo and Nest speakers all moonlight as one.
So which is which? Easy rule of thumb: if it's wired in, wifi; if it runs on a battery, Thread.
Light switches, power points, downlights and fan controllers are all wired into your home's power, so the wifi radio's appetite simply doesn't matter. That's why our whole Matter range is Matter over Wifi — you get the simplicity of the network you already have, with none of the downsides. Nothing new to buy: your electrician wires it in, your smart home app joins it to the wifi, done.
Temperature sensors, motion sensors, door and window sensors, smart buttons — the little battery-powered things you scatter around the house — are where Thread earns its keep. If you add some down the track, they'll need that border router, but here's the nice part: because it's all Matter, they'll sit in the same app, on the same dashboards and in the same automations as your iSwitch gear. A Thread motion sensor can happily turn on a wifi light switch. The whole point of Matter is that you never have to think about which road a device took to get there.
As always: the switches are your electrician's job, the network decisions are yours, and the batteries in the sensors — well, with Thread, at least you'll hardly ever change them.