You know Herman, I was walking through the hallway this morning and I almost tripped over that box of old bridge hubs we have sitting in the corner. It is a literal graveyard of dead protocols. We have the original Hue bridge, that old SmartThings hub from ten years ago, and even a couple of those proprietary Bluetooth gateways that never really worked. It made me realize how much of a mess the smart home has been for a long time. It is like looking at a timeline of broken promises, all tangled in white plastic and proprietary power bricks.
Herman Poppleberry here, and you are absolutely right, Corn. It is a graveyard of good intentions and proprietary silos. But that is exactly why the prompt Daniel sent us today is so timely. He has been looking at the hardware from SM Light, specifically how they are handling the transition to Matter, and he is asking the big questions about where all this is heading. He is looking at this landscape of Zigbee, Matter, Bluetooth, LoRa, and WiFi, and wondering what the actual backbone is going to look like as we move through twenty-six. We are at a crossroads where the "old ways" of the hobbyist are meeting the "new standards" of the industry, and Daniel wants to know if the tools we love are going to survive the collision.
It is a great question because for a long time, the advice was just "buy whatever works with your phone," but now that we are deeper into this, people like Daniel are looking for real stability. SM Light has become such a darling in the community because they actually seem to understand that the hardware needs to be as open as the software. They are moving into Matter coordinators, and it is forcing a lot of us to re-evaluate our entire stack. So, Herman, let us start with the basics of what Daniel was asking. He mentioned the difference between Zigbee as a radio and MQTT as a lightweight layer. I think a lot of people get those confused or think they are competing technologies. Can we clear that up first? Because if we do not get the definitions right, the rest of this twenty-five-minute deep dive is going to be very confusing.
I would love to, because this is where the magic happens. Think of it like a postal service. Zigbee is the physical vehicle. It is the truck or the bicycle that actually travels the distance between your light switch and your hub. It operates on a specific radio frequency, usually two point four gigahertz, and it creates a mesh network where every plugged-in device acts as a repeater. Now, MQTT, which stands for Message Queuing Telemetry Transport, is the language written on the letter inside the envelope. It is a protocol for moving data, but it does not care how that data gets there. It could go over WiFi, Ethernet, or Zigbee. It is a "publish and subscribe" model, which means a sensor "publishes" its temperature, and anything else on the network can "subscribe" to that information.
Okay, so if Zigbee is the truck and MQTT is the letter, why do we talk about them in the same breath so often? Is it just because of tools like Zigbee-to-MQTT? It seems like they have become inseparable in the minds of the Home Assistant crowd.
Exactly. In the enthusiast world, particularly with platforms like Home Assistant, we use a piece of software called Zigbee-to-MQTT. Its job is to take those Zigbee radio signals coming from your sensors and "translate" them into MQTT messages. Once they are in that MQTT format, they become universal. Any other device or software on your network that speaks MQTT can read that message. It breaks the device out of its proprietary shell. If you have a Philips Hue bulb and an IKEA motion sensor, Zigbee-to-MQTT lets them talk to each other through a common language that you, the user, can actually see and manipulate. It is about taking the "black box" of Zigbee and turning it into a transparent stream of data.
So when Daniel asks if MQTT will remain the backbone for moving networking packets, he is really asking if we are still going to need that translation layer. With Matter becoming the standard, does the "letter" inside the envelope change? Are we moving toward a world where the "truck" and the "letter" are designed by the same committee?
That is the multi-billion dollar question. Matter is essentially trying to do what MQTT did for enthusiasts, but at a corporate, standardized level. Matter uses something called the eXtensible Data Model. It is built to run over IP, which means it works natively over WiFi and Thread. Thread, for those who do not know, is very similar to Zigbee at the radio level—it uses the same IEEE eight-zero-two-dot-fifteen-dot-four standard—but it is "IP-aware." This means every Thread device has its own I-P address, just like your laptop. So, in a perfect Matter world, you do not need an MQTT broker to translate things because everything is already speaking the same language over the same type of network. Matter is trying to be both the truck and the letter.
But we do not live in a perfect world, Herman. We are sitting here in February of twenty-six, and while Matter has made huge strides, I still see people struggling with commissioning and "fabric" limitations. Do you think MQTT is actually going to go away? I feel like I see more MQTT usage now than I did three years ago, especially with the rise of custom E-S-P-Home devices.
I do not think it is going anywhere for the power user. Here is why: MQTT is incredibly lightweight and "stateless" in a way that makes it perfect for low-power devices and custom integrations. If you are building a custom sensor with an E-S-P-thirty-two chip, writing a small MQTT client is much easier than implementing a full Matter stack. Matter is heavy. It has a lot of overhead for security, certificates, and commissioning. For a giant like Apple or Google, that is fine. But for a hobbyist or a small manufacturer making a specialized sensor, MQTT is still the king of efficiency. It is also much easier to debug. If an MQTT message fails, I can see exactly where it stopped in the broker logs. If a Matter "fabric" fails, you are often left staring at a spinning wheel on your phone.
That makes sense. It is like the difference between a massive legal contract and a quick text message. Matter is the contract that ensures everyone is legally bound to work together, but MQTT is the text message that just gets the info across instantly. But let us talk about the hardware Daniel mentioned. SM Light. They are famous for their Ethernet-based coordinators, like the S-L-Z-B-zero-six. Why is that such a big deal compared to just plugging a USB stick into your server? I mean, a USB stick costs twenty bucks, and these Ethernet coordinators are significantly more.
Oh, this is a hill I will die on. If you are serious about your smart home in twenty-six, you need to move away from USB coordinators if your server is hidden in a closet. USB sticks are subject to massive amounts of interference. If you plug a Zigbee or Thread stick directly into a Raspberry Pi or a NUC, the USB three-dot-zero ports, the Bluetooth radios, and the WiFi radios on that computer create a "noise floor" that can drown out the low-power signals from your sensors. It is like trying to have a whisper-quiet conversation next to a jet engine.
Right, I remember when we set up the Zigbee mesh in the kitchen, we had to use a three-foot extension cable just to get the stick away from the server chassis. It felt like a total hack, and it still dropped off occasionally when the microwave was running.
It is a hack! And even then, you are limited by where your server is located. If your server is in the basement, but your sensors are on the second floor, your "truck" has to drive through three layers of concrete just to start its route. SM Light’s brilliance is that their coordinators connect via Ethernet. You can place the coordinator in the dead center of your house, power it over Ethernet—what we call P-o-E—and suddenly your mesh network has a massive head start. It is no longer tethered to your server's physical location. You can put the radio where the devices actually are. That single change reduces latency and increases reliability more than any software tweak ever could.
And that brings us to the consolidation point. Daniel asked about a coordinator that supports as many protocols as possible without adding unnecessary radios. In twenty-six, we are seeing chips that can do it all. The Silicon Labs E-F-R-thirty-two-M-G-twenty-four, for example. That chip is a beast. It can run Zigbee and Thread simultaneously. Is that the "one ring to rule them all" for the smart home?
That chip is really the heart of this transition. It allows a single device to act as a Zigbee coordinator and a Thread Border Router at the same time. This is the "consolidation" Daniel is talking about. You do not need a separate box for your old Zigbee lights and a new box for your Matter-over-Thread blinds. You just need one high-quality, Ethernet-connected radio that can handle both stacks. The M-G-twenty-four has enough memory and processing power to manage the routing tables for both protocols without breaking a sweat. This is what SM Light is doing with their newer "M" series devices. They are giving you a path to the future without forcing you to throw away your past.
But wait, what about the other protocols he mentioned? Bluetooth Low Energy and LoRa. Do we really want those in our main coordinator too? I feel like adding more radios just adds more potential for interference. If I have five different radios all screaming inside a small plastic box, isn't that just recreating the "noise floor" problem we were trying to solve by moving away from the server?
It is a delicate balance. Bluetooth is mostly used for "commissioning" now. When you buy a new Matter device, your phone uses Bluetooth to tell the device "here is the WiFi password" or "here is the Thread credentials." Once the device is joined to the network, the Bluetooth radio usually goes dormant. So, having Bluetooth in the coordinator is helpful for setup, but it is not really a "data backbone." It is more like the handshake at the beginning of a meeting. You need it to start, but you do not need to keep shaking hands for the next hour.
Now LoRa is the interesting one. Daniel specifically mentioned its importance for alarming and safety. For those who are not familiar, LoRa stands for Long Range. We are talking kilometers, not meters. But it is very slow. You cannot stream video over it, but you can send a "the garage door is open" signal from a mile away. Herman, is LoRa the "secret weapon" for the smart home of twenty-six?
I think it is. And this is where I think Daniel has a really sharp insight. If you have a large property, or if you want a sensor in a mailbox that is at the end of a long driveway, Zigbee and Thread are going to fail you. They just do not have the punch to get through that much air and obstacles. LoRa operates on a much lower frequency, usually around nine hundred and fifteen megahertz in the US or eight hundred and sixty-eight in Europe. This allows it to penetrate walls and travel huge distances on tiny amounts of power. In twenty-six, we are seeing more "safety-first" devices using LoRa because it is so much harder to jam or disrupt than two point four gigahertz signals.
So, would you want LoRa in your main smart home coordinator? Or is that a bridge too far? If I am Daniel, and I am looking for the ultimate twenty-six coordinator, am I looking for an S-L-Z-B-zero-six that also has a LoRa antenna sticking out of it?
Personally, I think it is a separate beast. If I were targeting the "perfect" setup for twenty-six, I would want my primary coordinator to be a "dual-stack" Ethernet device. It should handle Zigbee and Thread because those are your high-density, "inside the house" mesh networks. But LoRa? LoRa is usually handled better by a dedicated gateway, like something from the Helium network or a private LoRa-W-A-N setup. The interference patterns are so different that putting them in the same small plastic box as your two point four gigahertz radios is just asking for trouble. Plus, the antenna requirements for nine hundred megahertz are physically different. You want a big, tuned antenna for LoRa, not a tiny internal trace.
That is a good point about the physics of it. But let us look at the "safety and alarming" aspect Daniel brought up. Why is LoRa better for that than, say, a WiFi sensor or even a Zigbee one? Is it just the range, or is there something about the protocol itself that makes it more reliable in an emergency?
Reliability in a crisis. If your power goes out, your WiFi router probably goes down unless you have it on a serious U-P-S. Your Zigbee mesh might stay up if your devices are battery-powered, but the range is still limited and the "parent" nodes—the plugged-in bulbs—will be dead. LoRa is designed to be "fire and forget." A LoRa smoke detector or a leak sensor can send a high-priority packet that is much more likely to reach a gateway even in poor conditions. It is basically the "emergency flare" of the networking world. In twenty-six, we are seeing "hybrid" alarms that use Thread for the day-to-day stuff but have a LoRa radio as a backup for when things go south.
So if we are looking at the smart home of twenty-six, and we want to follow Daniel's lead on choosing a coordinator, what is the actual hardware recommendation? If you were buying today, what are the specs you are looking for? Give us the "Herman Poppleberry Approved" list.
Okay, here is my "Gold Standard" list for twenty-six. First, it must be Ethernet-based. No more USB dongles. Second, it needs to use a modern radio chip like the Silicon Labs M-G-twenty-four I mentioned earlier. That chip gives you the headroom for the Matter-over-Thread transition while still supporting your legacy Zigbee devices. Third, it needs to support "multiprotocol" firmware. This is something SM Light is doing well. You want the ability to update the firmware to change how the radio allocates its resources—maybe sixty percent Zigbee and forty percent Thread today, but moving to one hundred percent Thread in three years.
And what about the software side? Daniel was asking about MQTT staying the backbone. If I buy this fancy new coordinator, am I still going to be looking at a dashboard full of MQTT topics? Or is the goal to eventually hide all that behind a pretty Matter interface?
If you are using Home Assistant, yes, you will still see MQTT. And honestly, I think that is a good thing. MQTT gives you a level of transparency that Matter actually hides. With Matter, a lot of the communication is "under the hood." It just works, which is great for most people. But if something goes wrong, it is much harder to debug. With MQTT, I can open a "listener" and see exactly what the light bulb is saying. I can see the latency, I can see the battery percentage in plain text. For the "weird prompts" crowd, that visibility is worth its weight in gold. Matter is for the "set it and forget it" crowd; MQTT is for the "I want to know why it works" crowd.
It is the "open hood" policy. I like that. But here is a thought—if Matter eventually wins, and everything is just I-P-based, does the concept of a "coordinator" even exist anymore? In a pure Thread world, you just have "Border Routers," which could be your Apple TV, your HomePod, or your Amazon Echo. Are we moving toward a world where specialized hardware like SM Light is obsolete because my toaster is a Border Router?
That is the fear, right? That the big tech companies will just absorb the "hub" into the TV or the speaker. But here is the thing: those devices are often terrible coordinators. They are often locked down, they do not give you access to the raw radio data, and they change their A-P-Is whenever they feel like it. A dedicated coordinator like the ones Daniel is looking at is "infrastructure." It is like your network switch. You want your infrastructure to be dumb, fast, and reliable. You do not want your light switches to stop working because your TV is doing a software update or because a cloud server in Virginia went offline.
That is a huge point. The "appliance-ification" of the smart home is a double-edged sword. It makes it easier to set up, but it makes it harder to maintain long-term. If my SM Light coordinator is just sitting there doing one job—routing packets—it is going to outlast three generations of "smart" TVs. It is about decoupling the "smarts" from the "radio."
Exactly. And let us talk about that consolidation Daniel mentioned. He listed Zigbee, Matter, Bluetooth, LoRa, and WiFi. In twenty-six, the real consolidation is happening at the "network layer." We are moving toward a world where almost everything is an I-P device. Thread is just "I-P over a slow radio." WiFi is "I-P over a fast radio." Matter is the language that runs on top of both. This is why MQTT is so resilient. MQTT is also an I-P-based protocol. It fits perfectly into this new world. It is the "glue" that can connect a Matter-over-Thread light bulb to an old WiFi-based custom sensor. It is the universal translator that does not care about the physical medium.
So, to answer Daniel's question directly: Yes, MQTT remains the backbone, but not because it has to, but because it is the most flexible tool we have for "gluing" different generations of tech together. It is the universal translator. It is the bridge between the "graveyard of hubs" and the "unified future."
Spot on. And for the "useful protocols" part of his question—I would say target a device that does Zigbee and Thread flawlessly. Do not worry about a "one box fits all" for LoRa or high-bandwidth WiFi. Keep those separate. Your smart home "brain" should have a direct, high-speed connection to your radios, and right now, an Ethernet-linked M-G-twenty-four coordinator is the peak of that pyramid. If you try to put LoRa in there, you are just adding complexity that ninety-nine percent of your devices do not need.
You know, it is interesting that we are even having this conversation in twenty-six. Five years ago, we thought everything would be WiFi by now. We thought "energy is cheap, just put WiFi in everything." But the "mesh" has proven to be so much more resilient for low-power stuff. The physics of battery life haven't changed, even if the protocols have.
WiFi is a power hog. If you want a door sensor to last three years on a coin cell battery, WiFi is not the answer. That is why Zigbee and Thread are winning the "battery game." And that is also why Daniel is right to focus on the coordinator. The coordinator is the "captain" of that battery-powered army. If the captain is weak or stuck in a noisy closet, the army fails. A good coordinator like the S-L-Z-B-zero-six-M manages those battery-powered devices with surgical precision, making sure they only wake up when they absolutely have to.
I also want to touch on the "SM Light" factor. Why do you think they specifically have captured the community's imagination? There are other companies making coordinators—Sonoff, SkyConnect, even the big tech players. What makes SM Light the "darling" of twenty-six?
It is the transparency. They use open-source firmware like E-S-P-Home or Zigbee-to-MQTT compatible stacks. They provide clear pinout diagrams. They use high-quality external antennas instead of cheap internal ones. In a world where most smart home gear is a "black box" that phones home to a server in another country, SM Light feels like "our" hardware. It is built by people who actually use the stuff. When you see a company integrating Matter support into their existing coordinators via a firmware update, it shows they aren't just trying to sell you a new box every year—they are trying to give you a platform that evolves.
That is a rare quality in tech these days. Usually, "Matter support" is an excuse to launch a "Version Two" and leave the "Version One" owners in the dust. So, Herman, if someone is listening to this and they are currently using a cheap USB Zigbee stick plugged into the back of their server, what is the "aha" moment they are going to have when they switch to an Ethernet coordinator? Is it just speed, or is it something more?
The "aha" moment is the first time they look at their network map and see all green lines. No more "dropped" devices. No more "the kitchen light takes four seconds to turn on." When you move the radio out of the "noise" and into the center of the house, the latency drops from hundreds of milliseconds to almost zero. It feels like the house is actually "smart" rather than just "connected." It is the difference between a light that turns on as you walk into a room and a light that turns on after you have already tripped over the dog.
It is the difference between a conversation and a series of shouted commands. I think that is what we are all striving for. A home that just "knows" what to do without the lag. And Daniel's focus on the networking backbone is the only way to get there. You can have the best automations in the world, but if the packet doesn't reach the bulb, it doesn't matter.
And that is the beauty of Daniel’s prompt. He is looking for the "invisible" part of the smart home. Most people focus on the buttons and the lights. Daniel is focusing on the "nerves." If the nervous system is solid, the rest of the body works. If you have a fragmented nervous system where the "Zigbee hand" cannot talk to the "Matter foot," you have a clumsy house. And nobody wants to live in a clumsy house in twenty-six.
A clumsy house! I love that. We have all lived in a clumsy house at some point. I remember when we had that one light that would only turn on if the "bridge" was rebooted every Tuesday at three in the morning. We called it the "Tuesday Ritual."
Oh, the Tuesday Reboot! That was a classic of the twenty-twenty era. We have come a long way since then. But it is only because of hardware like what SM Light is doing. They are taking the "jank" out of the equation. By giving us a stable, Ethernet-backed radio that can speak multiple languages, they are letting us focus on the actual automation rather than the troubleshooting. We are finally moving from "How do I make this work?" to "What do I want this to do?"
So, looking forward to the rest of twenty-six and into twenty-seven, do you think we will see a "Matter-only" world? Or will Zigbee still be kicking around? Daniel asked about consolidation, but sometimes consolidation takes a lot longer than the marketing departments want us to believe.
Zigbee is the "C-O-B-O-L" of the smart home. It is so deeply embedded in millions of existing devices—bulbs, sensors, switches—that it will be here for another decade at least. This is why Daniel’s question about consolidation is so vital. You cannot just "wait for Matter" to solve everything. You need a bridge. You need a way to let your legacy Zigbee devices live alongside your new Matter-over-Thread devices. That is the reality of the smart home. It is an archaeological site. You are always building on top of older layers. A coordinator that handles both is the only sane way forward.
That is a great metaphor. You are the archaeologist of the Poppleberry household, Herman. I am just the guy trying not to trip over the old hubs. But I think I am finally ready to clean out that box in the hallway. If I can get one SM Light coordinator to replace four different bridges, my hallway—and my network—will be much cleaner.
And I appreciate your sacrifice, Corn. But seriously, if you look at the evolution, we are getting closer to that "Single Pane of Glass" where the protocol doesn't matter to the user. Whether it is LoRa for the gate, Zigbee for the lamps, or Thread for the thermostat, the "backbone"—whether it is MQTT or a unified Matter controller—is finally becoming invisible. That is the ultimate goal: a home that works so well you forget it is "smart."
It is an exciting time. I feel like we are finally moving past the "hobbyist" phase where you had to be a network engineer just to get a motion sensor to work. We are entering the "infrastructure" phase.
We are getting there. But as Daniel pointed out, the choice of coordinator is still the most important decision you can make. It is the foundation. You do not build a skyscraper on sand, and you do not build a smart home on a cheap USB stick in a basement. You build it on a dedicated, Ethernet-connected radio that can speak the languages of today and tomorrow.
Well, I think we have given Daniel a lot to chew on. To recap: MQTT is the language, Zigbee and Thread are the trucks, and an Ethernet-based, multi-radio coordinator like the SM Light M-series is the central station you need to keep everything moving. And if you want long-range safety, keep a separate LoRa gateway in your back pocket for those "emergency flare" moments.
Exactly. It is about using the right tool for the job. Do not try to make one radio do everything if it compromises the stability of the whole system. Focus on that high-quality "core" and expand outwards. And keep an eye on those M-G-twenty-four chips—they are the unsung heroes of twenty-six.
This has been a fascinating deep dive. It is amazing how much "weirdness" is hidden in the walls of our homes. If you are listening and you have been struggling with a "clumsy house," maybe it is time to look at your coordinator. It might just be the nervous system upgrade you need.
And hey, if you found this technical breakdown helpful, or if you have your own "weird prompts" about the guts of the smart home, we would love to hear from you. Also, a quick rating or review on Spotify or your favorite podcast app really helps the show reach new listeners who might be tripping over their own old bridges. We are trying to clear the hallways of the world, one hub at a time.
It really does help. We love seeing this community grow. You can find all our past episodes—all six hundred and forty-five of them—at my-weird-prompts-dot-com. We have covered everything from A-I ethics to the physics of espresso, so there is plenty to explore while you are waiting for your new coordinator to arrive in the mail.
Thanks to Daniel for the prompt. It is always fun to geek out on the hardware that keeps our houses running. It reminds me why we started this show in the first place.
Definitely. This has been My Weird Prompts. I am Corn.
And I am Herman Poppleberry.
We will see you next time. Goodbye!
Goodbye!
