IKEA has debuted three affordable smart home sensors

Ikea’s push to democratize the smart home continues with the introduction of three new Zigbee sensors that won’t break the bank. There is the awning, door and window sensor; Valhorn, motion sensor; And padring the water leakage sensor. They will all be priced under $10 when they go on sale globally in the first half of next year.

Parasoll is a modular window and door sensor that can be installed separately to trigger automation when an open/close event is detected. It can also be paired directly with an Ikea light bulb right out of the box without having to purchase and configure the Ikea Home smart hub. It’s priced at €9.99 in Europe, but the exact US price for it or any of the three new Ikea sensors has not been confirmed.

The Vallhorn motion sensor can be used indoors and outdoors (with IP44 rain protection) to activate lights or other automations when motion is detected. It’s powered by three AAA batteries and can be paired to directly control up to 10 IKEA smart bulbs right out of the box. It costs only €7.99 and can sense a larger area of ​​a room than Ikea’s $14.99/€12.99 motion sensor which is smaller but is only usable indoors and needs to replace its coin cell battery more frequently.

The Badring Water Sensor has a built-in siren (60 dB at 1 meter) that can alert you when it senses a leak. It can also trigger a mobile notification in the Ikea Home smart app for homes with the Ikea Dirigera Hub ($69.99) installed. These sensors can save homeowners a lot of money before water leaks have a chance to do real damage. It will cost 9.99 euros.

Among the three, there are Parasol and Pedring sensors no Compatible with older Trådfri Home smart gates from Ikea. They all support the latest Dirigera hub, of course, which fully integrates the sensors into Ikea’s burgeoning range of smart home products and the Home Smart app. The hub also allows Ikea devices to interact with smart home ecosystems from Google, Amazon and Apple when you’re home or away.

Even though support for Matter was only “a few months away” over a year ago, the company still doesn’t support it. Ikea plans to eventually enable Matter by running a Thread radio inside the Dirigera hub to connect existing Zigbee-based Ikea devices to next-generation smart home standards. In a statement sent to the edgeIKEA’s digital product area manager, Jonas Söderqvist, says the company has “decided to delay this functionality” and will provide an update “when the time comes.” The continued delay is understandable since Ikea’s products already integrate well with other platforms, and the company is focused on keeping things as simple as possible for anyone diving into the smart home on a whim while shopping for a new bookcase. And when you consider the hurdles required to get everything running on Matter’s networks during this transition period, IKEA’s delay is more than justified.

Vallhorn will be available in select countries including the US starting in January 2024. That’s the same month that Parasoll launches internationally, but its US rollout won’t happen until April. Badring is scheduled to begin retail sales in April in some countries but won’t arrive in the US until July. It’s puzzling, but these sporadic releases are a byproduct of the IKEA franchise’s retail system.