Whats the matter with my Matter?

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1

I'm running a C-8 Pro version 2.3.8.139

I've been migrating many of my devices over to Matter (over Thread) for a couple of months now. I changed all my motion sensors and many of my door/window sensors to the new-ish Eve Matter devices. These were provisioned using Apple Home and then added to Hubitat via Matter. This process went well and has largely worked. However I'm getting a few irritating issues and I'm not sure how to debug them.

My primary issue is that ad-hoc motion (I have about 12) and door (I have about 10) sensors aren't reporting their activity/events in Hubitat reliably. So I know the sensors are working as I have notifications enabled in Apple Home i.e. I walk into a room and Apple Home instantly reports a motion event (so the device must be communicating using Matter over thread to my Apple hub (an Apple TV). However this event is not reported in Hubitat (and subsequently the light don't come on as thats where I've added a rule). I open a door and Apple Home instantly reports it however its not being reported in any of the Hubitat logs.

So I leave it and go to bed and the next day things are working again. A week or so later its back usually when my wife has her hands full and the lights don't automatically come on. I'm actually considering integrating my Hue lights with Apple Home as my SO is getting a little irritated with things not working reliably.

The other things to report which I don't quite get is when I had a 30 min power cut the other day it took ages for Hubitat to start working with the Matter devices again e.g. its wasn't until the following morning when I saw things back to normal. Now the HE hub is on a UPS so that never went off during the outage. The devices are battery powered but the two Apple TVs (the TBRs) did lose their power during the outage. When the power was restored the devices started reporting via Apple Home long before these events were seen in Hubitat.

Does this make any sense to anyone?

2

It sounds to me that maybe you have a network issue? Maybe your router did an update or maybe the power outage changed something?

I am not sure I am the one who has the skills to help diagnose this, but at least I can bump your thread up so others can take a look at your post.

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3

Apparently matter doesn't matter :slight_smile:

Sorry I just couldn't help myself. John

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So it’s my understanding is that thread (devices) uses ipv6 within the thread network. This is up to the point of the TBR (thread board router). So for me this would be one of my Apple TVs acting as the TBR. So for Apple Home the TBR and matter controller are the same thing. As I say there isn’t a problem with Apple Home ever losing sensor messages so the problem (if it is networking, but I’m not convinced) would be between one of the Apple TVs (acting as the TBRs) and the Hubitat matter controller. I assume at this point the messages are sent using IPv4??? Not sure how one would try to debug this with two relatively closed platforms. Would I see anything useful from a packet cap on the wired port that the c-8 pro is connected given my understanding the data messages are encrypted). The nature that the issues are sporadic is also confusing.

Why if only the TBRs were lost in a power cut and everything else was battery or on a UPS including the Hubitat hub does it take so long for messages to start working again on Hubitat when the power to the TBRs is restored? When say a door sensor is integrated with two matter controllers (Apple home and Hubitat) what does the device do? I.e. does it keep state of the two controllers directly and send messages to all at the same time? Or is the primary / commissioning matter controller (the Apple TV in my case) critical even after the pairing with a second matter controller?