Home Assistant has revealed that SkyConnect is going to be released to the General Public, soon. When we say ‘soon’, we mean, by end of November (although we have a feeling that this will be closer to mid December, rather than end of November). What is SkyConnect? It’s a USB stick that will give you the ability to use Zigbee, Thread and Matter. These are all communication protocols which we will cover in a later blog but in the mean time, you can already dive in our previous blog where we explain what is Matter.
The USB dongle is based on *holds breath* Silicon Labs EFR32MG21 Gecko Series 2 Arm Cortex M33 Wireless Micro Controller with an 802.15.4 Multi-Protocol 2.4GHz Radio Frequency. It is able to rub both Zigbee 3.0 and Thread/Matter at the same time.
For those who want to geek it out with the details, here you are:
- MCU – Silabs EFR32MG21 Arm Cortex-M33 microcontroller @ up to 80 MHz with DSP and FPU, up to 1024 KB flash, up to 96 KB RAM, 2.4 GHz radio
- Wireless Details
- Protocols – Zigbee, Matter, Thread
- TX Power – up to +20dBm
- RX sensitivity – -104dBm (250kbps)
- 2.4 GHz PCB antenna
- Stack – EmberZNet Serial Protocol (EZSP)
- USB – USB 2.0 Type-A male up to 12 Mbps
- Bridge – Silabs CP2102N USB to UART chip
- Power Supply – 5V DC / up to 150mA
- Dimensions – 38.5 x 18 x 4.5mm
- Weight – 4 grams
The SkyConnect will have a cable included. This is simply to avoid Interference caused by the USB 3.0 port.
SmartHome247 will be having some of these Dongles in stock once they launch officially. Stay tuned for more information on such Devices and upcoming announcements .