The majority of Matter-compliant light bulbs I've seen use WiFi as the transport. The exceptions being Nanoleaf and "Mujoy", which use Thread.
I am in the market for some new light bulbs - does anyone know if these Matter-compliant WiFi bulbs are better at staying online than older WiFi bulbs, such as those sold by LiFX. I am particularly interested in knowing their functionality on mesh WiFi networks. By and large my LiFX bulbs stayed online (say about 90% of the time), but did occasionally fall off requiring a power-cycle to get back online.
I wish there were more choices for Matter-compliant bulbs that use Thread, because it would easy to deploy a few more HomePods as border routers.
So far… The ones I have tested have been very reliable… Some of the super cheap ones ignore transition time though… There is quite a bit more packet delivery/retransmit functionally than the LIFX API provides..
Another option, although maybe not the most popular or cost effective, is using a Philips Hue bridge with Hue bulbs. The Hue bridge firmware has been updated recently to allow it to act as a Matter Bridge device, thereby exposing bulbs. motion sensors, etc… as Matter devices to Matter Controllers that support Matter Bridges.
I have not tried this, yet. But it is promising that users who have a significant investment in the Hue platform will have the option to use Matter in the future without additional costs.
So, the nice thing is that it 'should' eliminate the need for a Hubitat custom integration for the Hue bridge, at some point in the future...assuming Matter Bridge device support eventually is added to Hubitat's Matter Controller implementation. This would mean the end of having to poll for Hue status updates that occur outside of the Hubitat system (i.e. making a change to a Hue light via the Hue App, HomeKit, etc...)
My experience with wi-fi bulbs was Shelly and Lifx, both were constantly dropping ff line. That why I ended up sticking with zigbee.
So far, I am rather impressed with the Nanoleaf Essentials bulbs. The colors are very nice, rich and solid, not that semi-washed out that I see with so many bulbs. I didn't have any issues with adding them that were not operator errors.
I initially bought a set of three. and looking at replacing another three, if I do that, then all of my Zigbee bulbs will be out of the network and everything will be Matter or Zwave. I realize I'm an outlier, but I am probably one of the few who have found the best result with Zwave over Zigbee. As a matter of fact, if things play out the way I think they will, I will be all matter and Z-wave for my bulbs shortly.
As much as I love CoCoHue, this would be very awesome! Maybe silly, but I do like getting Hue f/w updates seamlessly via the Hue bridge and stuff like that.
If we have other qualifying Matter-compatible bridges in the mix, we might as well put applicable stuff back on those from HE in order to spread the workload around.
I didn't phrase that super great... I just meant that if (for example), we can one day integrate Hue stuff via Matter without having to do a Hue-specific integration w/in HE, that would be a resource win for HE. I realize it's not like Hue is a ginormous resource hog, but it just seems like spreading the workload like that would be a win.
Of course, the devil will be in the details, which are all still TBD. But it's an interesting possibility.
Bulbs staying online only 90% of the time would be a massive WAF failure in our house. While I mostly have controlled switches, I have about 15 Zigbee bulbs. In the last year I've only had to power cycle two bulbs, just once each. That's easily a 99.99% online.
Yeah, it’s probably more than 90% for me. But they are definitely not as “reliable” as the Sengleds I had previously. I do like the color reproduction and color temperature range on the LiFX much much more.
I haven't seen this update yet(unless I missed it), I just fired up my Hue hub again the other day after several months down and didn't see an update. This gives me some hope for my recent Zigbee situation. So are those Zigbe motion sensors being updated to matter now? This is what really confuses me about matter. Would this allow the hue bridge to act as a border router? If so maybe I should just leave it online for that purpose? or am I looking at this all wrong?
No, your Hue bridge will still connect to Hue devices via zigbee. The Hue bridge will be a Matter bridge to expose zigbee-connected devices to other Matter Controllers, like the Hubitat C-8.
I found a bit of technical info on the Texas Instruments website about matter for those interested. Still trying to digest it all myself. Matter (ti.com)
No you really aren't. I've been having Zigbee issues lately. I'm probably going to end up eliminating all but three of them. Those three are all hue motion sensors. It sounds like it may be just as easy for me to put them all back on the hue bridge instead of trying to pair them to my hub and use them through there as a matter bridge. I also had a fleeting thought that it might help to keep the Hue hub on line, thinking in terms of mesh. Basically a bunch of jumbled thoughts coming out at the same time.
EDIT:
I have the attention span of ricochet rabbit this month... even i cant keep up with myself.
Just to chime in about the Hue Bridge and Matter, I’m running that at home. I’ve got the Matter integration connected to both Google and Apple Home. The integration only brings in bulbs for Google. Apple brings in both bulbs and button devices (my tap dial is available). Groups and Scenes are not brought into either system; though, this is the nature of Matter (scenes are not really available at this time).
From a Hubitat perspective, a Matter integration would help with resources (have people use Matter rather than a standalone integration); however, it will not replace the community integrations since they offer more stuff. Personally, I’m still running CoCoHue to bring in scenes/buttons and utilize Hubitat’s strong automation system.
Apple Home and Google Home serve as our dashboards and voice control systems when necessary with Hubitat controlling the automation.
