It's really hard to find the information on this as searching for Matter Bridge support brings with it all kinds of things like Hubitat supporting other matter bridges, so I wanted to ask here.
Will my C5 ever be a mater bridge that will expose my Z-wave and ZigBee devices for another Matter controller to ingest? IE Hubitat makes all your devices available for use with things like Google Home, Home Assistant without the need for custom software. I chose this platform because of its openness and so far it seems to be the most closed so far with Matter with companies like LG and aqara giving support for their hubs to be matter bridges.
Is there a reason why Hubitat has not done so, is there hardware limitations, its it a matter of the dev's doing the leg work.
Does a newer model already support it?
Sorry for all the questions as I am just getting into all this and realizing the power of a matter bridge!
I'm not clear why you are focusing on Matter. If you want to bridge Hubitat's Zigbee to matter, that is something you do externally, and I don't see why the hub would ever need to act as a matter Zigbee bridge for something else.
You can get access to you Zigbee devices through Hubitat's Maker API, so why do you need to use the Matter protocol at all?
It's because not every hub or controller has an app on the other side to integrate with Maker API. I'm sure one can be easily written but why recreate the wheel that already works? For me Matter allows multi controllers so If my wife loves her iPhone she can use it and I can continue to use Google Home and my kids can use Alexa..Etc. There are many reason why matter is a better choice in different situations.
To each their own. I was just curious if it had been announced and I didn't see it!
Ok, makes sense. I would just buy something like the THIRDREALITY Smart Bridge MZ1 to do it, but I think you need to pair your Zigbee devices to the bridge, and then use them as matter devices in Hubitat? I'm really not clear on that, but I think there is a bridge out there that will do what you want.
That's cool Mater Bridge!!, Do you know if they make a z-wave one?? I don't use any ZigBee but yeah looking for something like this if Hubitat wont support it. but again would be a pain as i have to make sure it supports all my devices
as far as the C5, I seriously doubt it. To be a bridge requires a newer chipset that supports Zigbee & Matter, like an EFRMG... for example. I believe(not 100% ) that the C5 has an older chipset unable to support Zigbee & Matter.
My 2 cents is Matter is not ready for primetime, as I've used more flawed products than functional. And that's with a Matter certified ST 3rd gen hub.
The C5 can do both ZigBee and Matter no issues there
Also you are talking about smart devices that support Matter, I am talking about Matter Bridges.. I am not talking about buying new devices that supports Matter and using them with Hubitat, I am talking about Hubitat advertising the devices it currently supports and has connected to it, to Matter. This allows other Matter controllers/hubs to control them! Convert proprietary to universal. That is what the bridge part of the name means, it bridges from any protocol to Matter... It's a way to get older devices and protocols to a newer one or for your hub to ONLY advertise the devices you want controlled by another controller. IE I have energy plug on my dryer.. I don't want Google Home to have access to that plug as its only used for power monitoring not for on off. So you don't expose it on the Matter bridge. But i do what to advertise my "Good Night Automation" to Google home so that I don't need to recreate it on another controller.
Hoping a future HE hub will include the capability to be a Matter bridge and Matter over Thread bridge; as long as it still had all the capabilities of my C-7, that additional functionality would cause me to upgrade. Also:
I'd pay an upcharge for additional memory that would unlock visual graphing in dashboards that can be viewed remotely, if that is a thing...
I would pay for a HE specific device that wirelessly connects to HE and does text to speech, without a mic that just seamlessly works, or even better one that includes a mic that HE could guarantee is 100% local and data not sold that could do voice commands even if those commands were VERY limited and had to be taught.
I would pay for a HE specific battery backup device that detects when HE loses power, runs on backup, gracefully shuts down the hub when the battery backup itself nears running out of power and then restarts HE when power is restored. Yes I know there are other devices and apps I can hack together to do this, I'm just stating I'd pay for an all in one ready to go solution specific to HE...
Yup - that makes things simpler. Also maybe also attracted by fewer certification constraints on Zigbee devices than Z-Wave, which can be good and bad for Zigbee.
Zigbee is definitely a double-edged sword in that regard.
Cheaper to make devices, and no certification process makes it cheaper for end users. That's good.
Companies or people that don't actually read the zigbee spec and stick a bunch of things in custom clusters that could have been done with standard clusters is the downside.
That used to happen it a lot, but it has gotten somewhat better in the last 5 years.
As you know, they also dabble in Matter via WiFi with their 3-1 Night Light. Third Reality also announced a new Thread Smart Switch and a few other devices at CES 2025 (THIRDREALITY Showcases Latest Innovations in Smart Home Technology at CES 2025 – ThirdReality). So, they are definitely expanding a little bit, but no Z-wave. Zigbee, WiFi and now Thread with Matter support for the latter two. Note, Matter support isn't explicitly mentioned on the thread switch, but I bet it will be there.
