All good points... I think Matter can and likely will effectively lower the barrier of entry for folks totally new to smarthome.
That's not a bad thing -- it's more money in the manu's pockets, and most of those new folks will probably be content with the basic/"minimum" interoperability Matter will provide. More people adopting smarthome stuff will drive more products & innovation, and that tide lifts our boats too.
But as robust smarthome users, we're all already well past most (if not all) those initial barriers Matter will help knock down for newbs.
For instance, I'll be interested to see if (one day) HE and Hue can more efficiently connect via Matter, but I'm not holding my breath. Perhaps that's not even a good example (I have no idea), but you get what I mean.
What is more likely from the way I understand it is, could be similar to how we have a bunch of Geneirc Zwave drivers that give basic support for different device types. Matter over Wifi/IP would allow a Generic Matter Plug driver for example, to (in theory) control any plug/outlet that follows the matter standards. Similar to how all Zwave certified devices follow the same set of rules for communication. Possibly the hub would have a new device type for Matter which does discovery via the LAN to make it easy to add new devices (similar to Zwave discovery on Zwave Network).
Further I think once the device is joined to the local Matter network, supposedly any other matter hub can then find and communicate directly with that device. I assume the device would send out global status updated for all hubs to pick up.
Matter over thread would be different story, since HE does not have any near plans to support a Thread radio. But I am sure there will be ways to get a separate Thread hub (Hue maybe?) to talk to HE via a local API.
I got my first Matter device this week. It was a smart color LED bulb that Amazon threw in as a freebee with a new Echo I ordered. Here are my impressions in the order they happened:
The moment I turned on power to the lamp, my wifi app alerted me that a new device had joined the network. So Amazon pre-programmed the bulb with my wifi credentials? Not sure I like that. Somehow it has never surprised me when they pre-programmed my wifi creds into an Echo device, but into a bulb? I wasn't expecting that.
Ok, so now I know this is a wifi device. It's not zigbee, or Thread, or anything like that. I hear that in Matter over wifi, the hubs talk directly to the devices, but this device could still "phone home" somewhere, unless I block it at my router.
My Alexa app quickly alerted me about the bulb, and auto-joined it, even giving it a name. I assume this is something Amazon did to be "helpful", and not something about Matter in general.
I then started trying out its color change abilities. It worked very well through voice commands or the Alexa app.
I knew I couldn't actually join this bulb to my Hubitat, which means I'm going to end up giving it away, but I wanted to play with Matter. So next, I wanted to try cross-joining it to my Apple HomeKit.
Nothing in the bulb's instructions told how to do that.
I went into my iPhone Home app to see if I could add it. It didn't show up there.
Now I google it, and discover that, from whatever hub it joined to originally, there will be a process to expose it so that another Hub can find it. (Probably different on every platform, of course.)
So I found that option in the Alexa app. Exposed it for joining to other hubs.
Now I can see it for adding in iPhone Home app. Let's do it! It warns me it could take a couple minutes. (Wait, a couple minutes to share EACH device? I don't like the sound of that.)
A spinner... for minutes... and more minutes...
It failed to join.
I try again 3 or 4 times, always fails after multiple minutes. No clue offered about how it could be fixed.
So that's it. I'm done with this bulb. It was a curiosity, but I'll give it to a friend who only wants to control 2 or 3 bulbs from his Alexa. Probably done with Matter too. I'm sure different vendors will improve the integration process over time. But now that I have first-hand experience with how the architecture works, I can see that it violates my own beliefs about good software architecture. (Single source of truth, Don't Repeat Yourself, assume all networks can and will partition when you don't want them to so don't introduce those links unnecessarily, etc) I'll stick to my linear architecture, confined within my own network. I know I can find and fix problems in it when they happen.
It doesn't need to preprogram your wifi creds. Instead it sends the new device id to your existing devices and saying "it's okay to share creds with this device."
It's called "Amazon Frustration-Free Setup." See the FAQ for more information.
Mostly secure in theory, but I am not really a fan.
This is exactly how Matter will work. I'm currently running Phillips Hue via Matter connected to Google Home with CoCoHue bringing it into Hubitat. Right now, Matter only allows certain functions. With bulbs, that is on/off, brightness, color/color temperature. Switches are on/off and level. Plugs are just on/off. Groups and Scenes are not brought in via Matter. For Hue, that means the App is important along with either the built-in (groups) or two community apps (both groups and scenes). I don't think I would connect my Hue bulbs via Matter to Hubitat due to the loss of functionality, but my holiday plugs? Absolutely. I would gain local control via Hubitat and the Google Home app with voice control obviously being cloud dependent.
My view with Hubitat and Matter is that it would allow my family to use the Google Home app is a local control dashboard (which they already know how to use) rather than the dashboard provided by Hubitat. Automation would reside with Hubitat and Google can do the voice control.
Have you tested this by shutting off access to the outside internet to see if you can still control the hue bulbs from google home? I would be surprised if it works.
In order to commission a Matter device to a second controller, there's a specific process. The first controller that you joined a matter device to will need turn on pairing for that device. When pairing is turned on, it should give you a new Matter code. In the second Matter controller you 'add' a new device but you MUST use this new Matter code that was generated by the other controller. You CAN NOT use the Matter code printed on the physical device. That will NEVER work for additional controllers.
In the Apple Home app it's a little hidden how you add a device using the generated matter code. You have to tap through several onboarding screens before it let's you manually enter a Matter code. After that, it should add in 1-2 minutes to Apple Home.
In Apple Home you Add Accessory -> More Options -> My accessory isn't shown here -> Enter code -> --Paste in Matter pairing code from other controller-- Wait 1-2 minutes and it should commission in Apple Home.
I have almost 20 Matter devices in Home Assistant and Apple Home. Beware that if you have Matter commissioning or control issues (i.e. device becomes unavailable) in your controller's app, it could well be due to network issues. Matter relies on IPv6, mDNS and multicast. Any number of network devices including WiFi APs, ethernet switches, routers, etc. can break multicast in weird ways which negatively impacts the Matter experience. Settings like IGMP snooping, mDNS reflectors, multicast to unicast conversion (can happen on some WiFi APs) all could break Matter. Multiple VLANs are also a major headache if your Matter device and controller(s) are on different VLANs.
The Home Assistant Matter community is very vibrant with great developers. So I've learned a lot about the inner workings and the root cause of many issues people are seeing. In addition, Nanoleaf firmware is extremely buggy and has a high chance of negatively impacting other Matter devices because of their bugs.
Matter/thread is pretty young, but when it works it's really awesome. The networking issues and buggy vendor firmware are probably the top 2 issues that degrade the Matter experience.
Yep, this is what I discovered. (Not documented with the device, of course.) But even after discovering it, I was not able to get my HomeKit to import a Matter device from Alexa.
And even if it worked, 1-2 minutes to pair a single device to another controller is going to be a burdensome requirement for anyone with a large deployment. In comparison, right now when I add a new z-wave device to my Hubitat, the process to share it out to Alexa and HomeKit takes... maybe 15 seconds? And doesn't require copying and entering any individual codes. Just click a couple checkboxes and hit the ok button in Hubitat. And it's not much longer if I had added 30 z-wave devices. Just tick off all 30 of them and click ok. Boom, they show up in Alexa and HomeKit.
I just released that from 100++ devices I have 0 (zero) Matter enabled devices. This included the only one Thread device, which turned out to be working only with Apple thread routers (HomePod mini in my case) and nothing else!
When purchasing new devices, even if they use Thread for communication, make sure they have the Matter logo if you intend to bring them to Hubitat later.
Thread and Matter are two entirely different things. One is a networking protocol (Thread), while Matter is a SOFTWARE control plane protocol. Neither requires the other. And just because a device has one, it in no way means it has the other.
It should take the same amount of time or even less to share a Matter device. Copy code, paste on new controller, and you're done. The advantage of using Matter is that is local, as opposed to sharing device to either Alexa or Google Home, which would be via not one but two clouds.
@bobbyD regarding the Hubitat matter / thread support.
If I buy the nanoleaf thread bulbs that only support Thread, can I pair them to a C8? Or if I pair them to a HomePod, will they be available to the C8 via matter?
The reason I don’t want to buy the Matter version of the nanoleaf bulbs is the lack of support for dynamic lighting.
Think of Thread and Wi-Fi as cars and Matter is the road. You can't drive a car without a road. Jokes aside, no, you can't connect Hubitat directly to a Thread network because Hubitat doesn't have a Thread radio, you'd need a method of making Hubitat talk to that network, either an API (local or cloud) or Matter.
Yes, if the device supports Matter (so you will need Nanoleaf Matter device for that).
