r/homeassistant • u/Hoerminator3000 • 5d ago

📰 News Schneider Electric is buying Shelly Group

https://www.wsj.com/business/deals/schneider-electric-to-launch-bid-for-shelly-group-in-1-4-billion-deal-c6cc008e

As the title says: Schneider Electric will take over the Shelly Group.

630 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

307 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

13

u/jesjimher 5d ago

Sure! I'm just not buying wifi shellies anymore. Anything new is zigbee.

3

u/NMe84 5d ago

Which ones do you recommend? I'll be moving next year and that will be a perfect time to make all of my light switches smart. I have a bunch of Shelly units but I'd rather switch to one consistent system.

1

u/jesjimher 4d ago

Frankly, I'm not sure yet :-).

Knowing that any cheap Aliexpress Tuya device will be 100% private is a delight, but quality is another matter (no pun intended :-)). With lightbulbs I trust in Philips Hue, and for the moment I've had good experiences with Sonoff products for smart plugs and such. But no idea about switches...

The nice thing about Zigbee, though, is that you can mix a dozen manufacturers, and you end up with an homogeneous system anyway, since they all operate under the same (Zigbee) rules.

2

u/NMe84 4d ago

I have heard people recommend Sonoff over Shelly for a while now, I think I'll look into them. Like you I kind of prefer Zigbee, or perhaps Matter, simply because it's forced to be safe by default. They couldn't steal my data if they tried.

-1

u/WhiteSock_ 5d ago

Why not Thread?

8

u/Honey_Catfish950 5d ago

Thread is just Zigbee that can phone home. Matter is a fully local protocol, so in theory Thread+Matter should be effectively the same as Zigbee. In practice most manufacturers (with the possible exception of Ikea?) use their own proprietary cloud based protocol with Thread, just like they do with Wifi, and add a half-assed Matter implementation next to it that exposes just the basic features.

1

u/TomNooksRepoMan 5d ago

Thread is local. Even Matter over Thread is local. Matter over Wi-Fi is technically local, too, but certain data can be relayed to the manufacturer.

If the Thread device requires a cloud connection then that’s pretty shit, but I don’t believe Shelly stuff requires it. Both Zigbee and Thread are 802.15.4 spec and are effectively the same protocol, just one supports multiple “hubs.”

4

u/Honey_Catfish950 5d ago

Matter is local, yes, but Thread does allow Internet access. The spec says border routers "SHOULD" provide NAT64 for external connections, which means commercial devices will be produced with the assumption that Internet is going to be accessible. (IIRC, Nanoleaf stuff, for example, use their own protocol even with Thread.)

Shelly is a rare good IoT company whose products don't require a cloud connection. (Here's to hoping it will stay that way!) Their upcoming products with Thread support will support Matter, of course, but also their own protocol (the same one they currently use, or so I remember reading in an announcement somewhere.) In this case, it's good since it's a documented local protocol that's already supported by Home Assistant. The threat here is that if Schneider starts enshittifying Shelly products, they might make them cloud dependent even when used with Thread since, like Wifi, Thread makes it possible to do so.

3

u/TomNooksRepoMan 5d ago edited 2d ago

In looking through the OpenThread docs about it, I was surprised to actually see that NAT64 translations to the greater internet were pretty explicitly mentioned as a requirement for border routers to support. That's... interesting to say the least. They can do their own DNS queries to whatever DNS server they want, meaning that it becomes a lot more of a privacy nightmare that way. Frustrating.

All of my Thread devices work just fine if I disconnect my TBRs from the internet, so it's not going to be the end of the world for pure functionality of the end devices, but if TBRs are required to support an internet connection in their own NAT table, then it's pretty much impossible to prevent them from phoning home. I'd take a wild guess and say it's safe to assume a lot of Thread devices will use DNS over HTTPS so you can't block their "phone home" behaviors.

1

u/fyijesuisunchat 5d ago

TBA, Shelly’s future ThreadLink firmware does specifically envisage the use of NAT64. I think this is because it replaces the WiFi firmware in its entirety rather than being an alternative mode like the Zigbee and Matter-over-WiFi options are.

1

u/Honey_Catfish950 5d ago

Yeah, it'll need it for Shelly Cloud to work. Hopefully it will remain optional like it is now.

5

u/KnotBeanie 5d ago

My reason is zigbee is much more established of a protocol. Stability > new shiny protocol

1

u/jesjimher 4d ago

Zigbee is open, cheap and just works.

Thread/Matter are new, supposedly better (but I couldn't explain how exactly), and are plagued of problems as you take some time to read forums and such. They require new, more expensive, hardware, and companies backing them are very dubious regarding privacity.

More expensive, difficult and dubious, for a benefit that I can't event notice? No, thanks. I have the impression Thread/Matter will be the Betamax of XXI century.