Well I had high hopes for the new firmware and my Ikea Matter devices. Apple Home generated codes to add to HE. Worked great. Devices added in very quick with no issues. All worked fine for the first few times. Then they all quit working in HE. Still work in Home. 2 motion detectors and 1 double button. If I hit initialize the device will work about one more time then quit again.
Bummer. Sorry to hear that. It just seems like Matter (Over WiFi and Over Thread) still have some maturing to do. I am sure Hubitat still needs some improvements on their side, but I also think that IKEA's new MoT (Matter over Thread) devices will need some firmware updates before they are truly stable on platforms other than Apple Home. I definitely feel like Apple Home is the most mature Matter platform at this point, as I have the best luck in commissioning new devices with it. Other platforms, are a little hit or miss for me.
Ikea’s new Matter smart home devices are having connection problems | The Verge
Do they still show as connected in the Matter details page in settings?
The motion sensors do, the button says no.
But none of them are working.
EDIT: Initially the motion detector would stop reporting motion but was responding to lux changes. Then it even quit doing that. In all cases they still worked fine in Home.
IDK if this will help, but i had a similar issues w/ HA. Matter devices added to Apple, HE, and HA no issue. Then out of the blue, they stoped responding in HA only. I tried deleting the device(s) and adding it back but that failed too.
It seams networking plays a much bigger role in the stability of a matter / thread network than i had originally thought or hoped. I did had some network weirdness like youtube videos would play fine on my tablet but would buffer and die on my TV, so i fiquired… maybe it my network.
Ultimately i did a full and graceful reboot of my entire home, down to the circuit breakers and unplugging all the network and automation gear. As slow and graceful as a ballerina everything came up 1 by 1, i was able to readd the matter device and it’s been working like a champ and all of the network weirdness went away.
I know this is the thermonuclear option, but if it works, it works.
Thanks for the suggestion. But I have a number of straight Matter devices that were originally paired in Apple Home then added to HE. There was a couple issues early on, but they all have been working fine for several months now. It's just the Ikea thread devices that hiccup. I don't have any other brand thread devices as of yet, so don't know if it's just Ikea, which it very well may be, or thread in general.
Luckily none of these were critical and I had work arounds so can wait to see what happens.
Not sure where I’ve seen it
… but pretty sure people are having many issues with the IKEA MoT Button Controller device. To the point that they’ve had to rebuild their Thread networks and make sure to not add the IKEA Button Controller device out of fear. ![]()
I wasn’t using the button for anything so no big deal there. I went ahead and removed it from Apple also. Maybe I’ll try adding one of the motion sensors back in to HE just to see if that had any affect.
This morning I re-added one of the Motion Sensors and a door contact. First thing I noticed was HE wouldn't add them till I re-booted the hub.
Door Contact worked one time then quit. Showed red in Matter details.
Motion sensor motion worked one time then quit also. But still showing ok in Matter details and reporting Lux.
So will just be content with automation in Apple to trigger a virtual switch in HE.
Trying to figure this out so been doing a lot of experimenting. Since I don't fully understand how all this works forgive me if what I say doesn't really apply.
So I wondered if I could pair one of these devices with another platform. I didn't want to buy anything so digging around in junk box (I really need to clean that out) I found my PI. So decided to install HA on that and try it. After repeated attempts I gave up on that.
Also in the junk box I ran across my old Smartthings hub. Plugged it in and it came up and things looked good there. My Ikea Motion sensor is paired in Apple Home and working. Put it in pairing mode and added to Smartthings. Added in OK, but kinda weird the way it added. Anyway, tested for over a day and it worked great in Home and ST.
I had another IKEA contact sensor that I hadn't opened up yet. So got it out, paired in Home. Looked good there. Added into HE. Looked good there for awhile. Worked for awhile then quit responding in HE but was ok in Home. Matter details showed it as ok. Hit Initialize and it started working again. Then a few minutes later quit. Hit initialize and it was good again.
Removed the Motion detector from ST. Added back in to HE. Gonna play with it and see what it does this time.
But something is definitely weird with the HE part or my system. Reading elsewhere others seem to be having no problems.
EDIT: One thing I just noticed. When the contact sensor quits the Matter detials doesn't show an IP address. Hit initialize and the IP shows back up.
Contact sensor quit altogether. Removed it from HE. Added it to ST. Worked fine for awhile then quit in ST. So definitely an Ikea issue, I would think.
So far motion detector is still working in HE. Wondering if there was a firmware update to the motion at some point...
It is definitely IKEA's new Thread devices that are not working reliably. On the screenshot below it is Ikea's own DIRIGER hub that lost connection to two of the sensors today :
There are many posts on Reddit about similar disconnection issues with other home automation systems, including Apple Home and Home Assistant. So I don't think this is a HE-specific issue at this point.
I'm curious as to how a Matter or Thread device works with multiple platforms.
For instance. A sensor senses something and sends a message. Every platform that it is connected to 'should' receive the message? Or is it some other method that passes the info on from platform to platform?
Reason I'm confused is the sensor works fine in Apple Home but not on another platform it is also connected to.
Just mainly wondering how it is supposed to work.
That’s exactly how it works. Matter devices will broadcast to all controllers they are connected to. There is one small catch with thread devices and their speed. Thread Boarder Routers will always “see” the device change slightly before Matter controllers who do not have a thread radio. It works like this:
With Thread Radio
Contact Sensor says Open —> Boarder Router sees it open and shows it
Without Thread Radio
Contact Sensor says Open —> Boarder Router process it —> Converts event to LAN —> Other Matter Controllers see it
So in the case of thread device using Apple as border router it passes through that before getting to HE?. Wondering if the fact that Apple is still on V1.3 while HE is on 1.5 could be part of the problem?
That’s got nothing to do with it. Version numbers are just new features and bug fixes from previous releases. Apple devices all have TREL enabled which allows Thread traffic to be bridged directly to your local IP network, reducing congestion and improving latency for better smart home performance. Hubitat having a thread radio would be helpful but not necessarily improve performance of these devices that are struggling to stay connected.
The issues you are having are mostly IKEA related.
I forgot to answer this and yes. Devices with a thread radio will see this response faster than others. Hubitat relies on the conversion that happens from Apple Thread to LAN in order to see the changes.
I guess that’s what puzzles me. If Apple is receiving the message correctly then why is it not getting passed on correctly?
Thanks for all the explanations. My old brain sometimes takes a while to process this stuff ![]()
EDIT: Is it because the thread device has to tell the router to send it on somewhere else?
Great question. I wish I knew why these IKEA Matter over Thread (MoT) devices were flakey. Perhaps they don't handle the Matter Multi-Admin functionality very well? Hopefully a firmware update will eventually help them to be more reliable.
Here is a good diagram that may help visualize the data flows. The Thread Border Router (TBR) in the Apple TV4K or HomePod Mini (or Google Home Hub or Amazon Echo) is a bridge between your home's LAN and the Thread Mesh network. A Thread mesh network can have multiple TBRs, and each will take on certain responsibilities, sharing the TBR workload. If one goes down (e.g. it gets unplugged), the other TBR(s) will take on all of the workload automatically. In theory, it really sounds great. Hopefully someday soon, it lives up to all of the hype.
I think it'll be a few more years until Matter devices get most of the bugs worked out, and vendors learn to play nicely with each other.
Don't want to beat this subject to death but tell me if I this is what I understand to be correct.
Let's say there is a thread device that is paired to 2 platforms. For the sake of simplicity there is one TBR. The TBR tells the device that it is where to send messages.
Then within the Thread device it stores a routing table that has the 'address' of both the platforms. So when the device sends a message it tells the TBR which platforms to send the data on to.
Does that sound correct or am I still off base?
Good question. I am not familiar with that level of detail of the Matter specification.

