Matter Devices - what a pain in the a$$ to set-up - Thoughts?

I also hope there is a driver for matter bridges soon. I have an Aqara Hub too that I would love to test with Matter. I am thinking of buying some different Matter devices to try out. Maybe some more reputable brands. Maybe some Matter over thread devices too. As of right now, everything is connected. Let's see how long it lasts :slight_smile: Also, the bulbs I bought, I cant find anywhere to even get an updated firmware. I know probably first mistake. The ones that work consistently were recently updated, so firmware could be an issue here too.

I also found it to be confusing and complicated. I attempted to commission the bulbs with Alexa but I somehow missed that you have to select the type of other in the alexa app in order to add a Matter device. If you use the manufacturer lookup route you will be asked to use AIdot to commission the bulbs. If you commission them in AIdot and add them to Alexa, then you can't get a sharing code from Alexa to add them to Hubitat. At least in my case, Alexa would not generate the codes and displayed an error. I also was not able to get a share code from the AIdot app. So after some googling I learned that in the Alexa app you have to select Other as the device type and then Matter and go through the commissioning process in Alexa. Then you can get the share codes to add them to hubitat. Six bulbs took me the better part of a day but I could probably do it in an hour now but thats still pretty bad when you consider other types are so much faster. And thats not counting the time it took to install these new bulbs to replace existing devices using the swap app and still have to troubleshoot some issues where the device types for these new bulb did not load correctly and some issues with some of the bulbs not responding in the dashboards. All of which was resolved but it was much more work than other non matter bulbs I have used,

My key takeaway is that AIdot will automatically update the firmware so I wish i had commissioned all of them in AIdot first and then reset them to add to Alexa and then to Hubitat. (I later learned that the firmware will update automatically so this is not an issue)

Hope this helps someone else using the Orein Matter wifi smart bulbs.

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A few updates:

  • I was able to add these bulbs to the Aidot app afterwards by simply scanning the QR Code. The bulb has to be off and turned on when the app is looking for the bulb and it finds it very quickly.

  • After adding the bulbs to Aidot I discovered the firmware was already updated for the 5 remaining bulbs that were not added previously. So somehow the updates happen automatically, which is great.

  • Adding the bulbs to Aidot gives the added benefit of setting the Power Outage Recovery state to either turn on or turn off. Before adding the bulbs to Aidot the bulbs default to turning on, which was not what I wanted for these since they are not normally switched. I tested the feature and found that I can set the state to 'turn off' and the bulbs respond as expected. Additionally, if the bulb was on when the power was lost it will come on when the power returns. So this alone is a good reason to add the bulbs to Aidot if you need this functionality as I do.

  • Adding the bulbs to Aidot is not without some issues. I found that each bulb was rediscovered and duplicated in Alexa (but not Google Home) and the Hubitat dashboards required some toggling of the respective buttons to get these devices to respond correctly again. I also discovered that the bulb states in Alexa no longer updated correctly when the states were changed using the dashboards. I deleted the duplicates from Alexa and so far so good.

  • I also retested what happens if I add the bulb to Aidot first. As before, the bulb can be added to Alexa or google home but I am not able to get either of these to generate the share code to add the bulbs to Hubitat. The only way this has worked for me is to add to Alexa or Google Home first using Add Other/Matter and then generating the share code for Hubitat. Presumably, the commissioning can also be accomplished using Apple Home but I don't have that.

This is because doing it this way is not using matter. You would be using the previous integration with Alexa or whatever. It seems that the Alexa app pushes you this way rather than the local matter route. Where as I find GH tends to push you matter route over old API or integration.

Right. Alexa does lead you to commission the bulb with Aidot unless you scroll all the way down to Other where we find the option for Matter. Hoping I remember this next time.

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