IKEA's Zigbee devices have been some of the more stable smart devices I owned. I wasn't running their hub, opting to run with deCONZ in the past and moving to Zigbee2MQTT in recent years.
I do wish the new range would include blinds; the previous generation (FYRTUR) is out of production, and it doesn't seem like there's a replacement yet.
I have quite different observations. IKEA's Zigbee devices are the least stable devices I own and with smaller feature set.
For example, I have more than a dozen Zigbee smart outlet around my home, and the IKEA one is the only one that ever hang and became uncontrollable, yet its also the only one without a physical button to toggle and without power monitoring.
One of IKEA's Zigbee remote controls I have also regularly drops connection and I have to remove its battery to reset it from time to time.
The ones I bought from AliExpress of unknown brands are, unfortunately, much cheaper, have more functionalities, and more reliable.
Don't have any particular brand recommendation. I have been mostly looking for products marketed as compatible with Tuya Zigbee. It seems they are manufactured under many different brands, and usually at the cheaper end, but they work well in general with ZHA.
The FYRTUR blinds were kinda crap, constantly had issues with them losing their minds and having to redo the setup. I also have the later Tredansen cellular shades, and those have been good ... but I just checked and those seem to be discontinued as well.
Perils of being early adopter, but kind of soured on the whole smart home concept unless you are wealthy enough to redo all of your home lighting and window treatments every 10 years. Apart from the effort, it creates yet more e-waste. I have 30+ year old manual window shades and lamps and they all still work.
> constantly had issues with them losing their minds and having to redo the setup
I forked out for SmartWings blinds. You can choose between either Zigbee/Matter or Z-Wave (or neither I think?). The first-party hub is completely optional (that's important to look out for with Zigbee, which can be vendor-locked). They are drastically simpler than the average motorized blinds I've seen around, so I haven't had any of the mechanical failure nightmares. Pretty happy overall; though I haven't had them for 10 years.
I do use them as a kind of alarm clock as I am absolutely horrific with mornings, so manual ones wouldn't really work out for me.
Huh, I have the entire second story of my house outfitted with FYRTUR shades and the only one that sometimes gives me problems is the one that crashed to the floor when the 3M tape holding it up failed. (Don't get me started on Andersen windows having no way to secure inside-mount shades without voiding your warranty.) That one seems to eat through its battery far more quickly that the others. All the rest of the ten or so shades work flawlessly with ZHA in Home Assistant.
Word on reddit is they discontinued the blinds due to reliability problems. I have 3 and 1 failed so makes sense to me. They want to bring them back, but it's a complete redesign, not just normal planned product lifecycle iteration.
Using the blinds with a second gen hub now for about four years. No problems at all. Dreading the day they fail as they’re non-negotiable during the summer.
FWIW I bought some Zigbee blinds from Amazon and they’ve been great. My windows weren’t the right size for the IKEA ones and the sellers on Amazon will custom make them for you to within 1/8 inch or something like that.
I went through the whole blind research rabbit hole and ended up with Smartwings via Amazon. I had looked into a lot of other providers and nothing had a similar combination of reliability, cost, and customer service.
I remember seeing that, though iirc it was a lot more surgery than I wanted to do on my blinds (which already had a shaky wife-acceptance-factor due to spotty zigbee connections). Thanks for the reminder, though.
I installed some IKEA bulbs and switches with the IKEA dirigera hub, and had a terrible time. For example a LED strip lost connection a few times, and wouldn't connect on its own without unplugging/plugging.
I replaced the hub with a Home Assistant Green with ZHA, and I haven't had any issues since.
So in my experience each of the devices seem fine over Zigbee, but the hub doesn't seem verify good.
Yeah, I have a Dirigera hub, motion sensors and lights running pretty stably. I connect them into HomeKit via HomeBridge and it's been solid.
I was also somewhat impressed, and happy, that the Dirigera supported the older (I think discontinued now) Tradfri devices rather than making you replace things.
I do wish the new range would include blinds; the previous generation (FYRTUR) is out of production, and it doesn't seem like there's a replacement yet.