I'll be covering several topics but will have a separate entry for each; please forgive my relative ignorance.
I am moving into a new place in a few weeks, and am planning on getting some items from IKEA. They have some lamps that operate through their DIRIGERA hub, and these lamps are - apparently - Matter. As Matter is still a bit complicated on Hubitat, is there a way to bridge in a DIRIGERA hub to Hubitat? Or, use the Matter built into my Alexa stuff, then control things through Hubitat? I have some automations in mind.
Forgot to add this. It is from a long bunch of paragraphs about the Dirigera hub. (emphasis mine)
"DIRIGERA hub is a Matter bridge, this means that the smart products connected to the DIRIGERA hub are compatible with any smart home platforms that use the Matter standard."
Pilskott lamps also use Zigbee, I found the name in the z2m supported devices list. They should work directly connected to Hubitat, even with in-built drivers (if you're uneasy to load community code).
The other option to control IKEA products is to use DIRIGERA as a matter bridge: devices talk to DIRIGERA using Zigbee, and DIRIGERA talks to Hubitat using Matter via LAN.
Just because you can, doesn't necessarily mean you should. You may not find it as simple in the beginning, but if you invest time and dollars toward adding HA instead of an IKEA DIRIGERA hub, you'll not only be able to add everything IKEA and Matter, but you'll be able to add a massive amount of other manufacturer's devices in the future, regardless of what radio or communicaiton protocol they use. I've found that between HA and Hubitat, there's nothing I cannot add to my smart home.
The connection from HA to Hubitat is via Home Assistant Device Bridge and if you need to go the other direction, there's a Hubitat to HA integration too. I use both for various scenarios. I have not found a single worthwhile hub, bridge or device that cannot be intigrated with relative ease. It's pretty darn powerful if you're willing to learn how.
Keep in mind that Matter lets you connect devices, but one manufacturer will limit what is exposed to another via Matter so that they can keep you in their app/ecosystem to control your experience and keep harvesting your data. It's worth a lot of money to them. If you connect via Hubitat or HA, the experience is typically unlimited and completely private, unless a Cloud API is required for connection to the device (i.e. My Yolink hub).
If you're currious, my setup looks something like this.
The Hue Bridge has direct local links to both Hubitat and HA, and the Yolink hub has cloud links to both Hubitat and HA. In other words, either can control them and get status. All others are linked either via Hub Mesh (between my two active Hubitat hubs) or one of the two HA integrations. It would likely be very confusing at first if you looked at how things communicate back and forth between my various hubs and bridges, but over time I've come to know instinctually which direction or integration is needed for a particular task or device.
Your reply has been VERY helpful and is giving me some ideas. It also is giving me the urge to the the propellor repaired on my geek beanie and do some experimenting.
