Ikea Dirigera: A new hub to bring order to your connected home

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TL;DR

• The new Dirigera hub integrates the new Matter connected home standard.
• Ikea Home Smart app will give you better controls over your connected home.
• The new Dirigera hub and app aren't expected to be available until at least October 2022.

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While its Tradfri gateway was panned for its lack of practicality, Ikea has launched a new Dirigera hub and revamped its Home Smart app. The new Dirigera, which is a "hub" and not a gateway like the Tradfri it replaces which was launched in 2014, Dirigera incorporates the new Matter connected home standard.

Dirigera: A new hub ready for the next generation of connected products

In terms of dimensions, the new Dirigera hub measures a mere 2.7 cm high and 11.2 cm in diameter. This makes it almost half the height and slightly wider than the previous Trådfri gateway, which was 4.5 cm high and 11 cm in diameter. There is an Ethernet port and a USB-C port for power.

The Dirigera hub is designated "Matter-ready" by Ikea, as it does not yet have any official certification. For now, it remains unclear whether this new hub will be among the first batch of devices to offer the new connected home standard or whether it will have to wait until next year. However, what is certain is this: once launched, the Dirigera hub and the new Ikea Home Smart app will be compatible with all existing Ikea connected products as well as those from other Matter-compatible manufacturers.

Underneath the hood are radios for Wi-Fi, Zigbee, and Thread. Shortly after its launch, the Dirigera hub will receive an update to be able to connect to your Wi-Fi network via 2.4 GHz / 5 GHz Wi-Fi.

According to Rebecca Töreman, the Matter standard should allow the company to create a "more seamless experience" for customers and enhance interoperability in the connected home and between connected products.

Ikea has not revealed the list of its products that will be natively compatible with the Matter standard. Owners of the Trådfri gateway will not be able to use the new app when it is ready, and the gateway will not be updated to support Matter, which is a bummer for the early adopters. This is always a risk that early adopters have to embrace. However, the current gateway and Home Smart app will continue to be supported and receive security updates and patches for "at least three years," according to Rebecca Töreman.

In addition, Trådfri owners will need to purchase the Dirigera hub when it launches, but all Ikea Home Smart devices should remain compatible. The final price of the Dirigera hub remains a secret, but it is expected to be more expensive than the Trådfri gateway, which currently costs $39.99. "The new Hub will be more expensive, as it will have more capabilities and more features," says Töreman. But of course!

Promising new features for the Ikea Home Smart app

Ikea wants to make interactions with its new Dirigera hub more intuitive. The idea is to make it easier to group Ikea's connected objects in its ecosystem and control them individually, in pairs, or in groups using the new Ikea Home smart app.

This will allow you to create different scenes with predefined functions of your connected objects and personalize your smart home even more. Hopefully the connected home becomes easier to manage as time passes by instead of having to grapple with outdated standards and other niggling issues.

What do you think of the new Dirigera hub and the new Ikea Home smart app?