(Ahead warning; this post will bore the pants off non techies. For the non techies: It works now, so the answer is Trådfri.)

I’ve been adding more and more IKEA trådfri smart lighting gadgets, but also have had frequent issues; trådfri or not trådfri was often the question. At first, I blamed the gateway and thought it had died on me. The flickering lights would indicate no internet connection, yet all my other devices were connected sharing the same WiFi. Resetting Router or Gateway did sometimes help, but not always and in the end not at all anymore. So I googled it, and found hints that the IKEA gateway does not like all routers. Mine in particular, is an LTE/3G router, and one of the features is that it resets itself daily. So daily, the Ikea gateway would lose internet connection. Ikea suggests you assign a permanent IP address to the gateway, but my LTE router has no such option. To counter the IKEA gateway losing connection and not regaining after the router was back up, I added a timer switch, that would switch off the Ikea gateway every night for 15 minutes, and then power it back up again. That worked for a while. But as I arrived this time, I could not get the gateway to connect at all; it simply would reset itself after trying to connect. So more drastic measures were required; I bought a second router (also giving me the advantage of being able to use both 2.4 and 5GHz and connect more devices using Ethernet) and disabled the LTE Router’s WiFi. The new router hooks up to the LTE router with a UTP cable, and the new router does NAT from the 192.168.0.X to the 10.0.0.X range. My Ikea Tradfri gateway now connects to the new router, that acts as a DHCP server for the gateway (and all other devices in the home using either WiFi or ethernet.)

Ikea and the new router get along well so far; I’ve had no issues for the last 4 days. (other than Siri not always understanding me, but maybe we should blame my accent for that).
Two days ago, during a thunderstorm, we lost power for 15 minutes, but as power came back on, so did the gateway. So now, most things works with voice control, or iOS App or physical remotes in Ozuye Lodge. I can unlock the door with my Applewatch or by  Phone, and invite users with access from a certain day/time to another certain day/time. Yelling “Hey Siri, open the door” from outside won’t work; only on approved personal devices, Siri can be used to unlock the door. Remember the three beer bottles that make the lights over the bar? They are Pecan Porter, Devil’s Backbone and Blood&Honey. Siri now understands commands like “Hey Siri, bar lights 50%” but you can also single them out by name; “Hey Siri, Blood and Honey 5%” dims only the Blood & Honey light to 5%. So next time someone  at the bar has had too much to drink, you can just switch off their light. I will try add instructions to the smart mirror, so everyone that visits can learn which commands are possible.

Oh, and I managed to get all remotes and dimmers operational again. Ikea just doesn’t always deliver fresh batteries so I had to replace 3 that were pretty new.