https://sonoff.tech/products/sonoff-mini-extreme-wi-fi-smart...
This is good because manufacturers of well built physical switches are usually rubbish at technology, and high tech electronics manufacturers are rubbish at making aesthetically pleasing, durable switches. Separating them gives you the best of both of worlds.
The obsolescence is in the radio integration whereby one day you can control it remotely, the next day you cannot.
Matter is a bit like HTTP. It's WHAT your devices say to each other. It's a way for them to say "Hi, I'm a lightbulb and you can change my color and brightness."
Can it operate without an internet connection and with an open standard that lets the me, the user, to be in control using a hub (if necessary) and software I choose, including an open source option should I so choose?
Or do I have to use proprietary hubs and software to control the devices?
In short, are there any end user hostile features or can I use the devices like how Zigbee works?
The only thing that seems to advantage thread is manufacturers support, but I don't see what's stopped them to regroup around zigbee.
Any one has clues on why Thread was needed when zigbee already existed?
Also one Thread advantage from that discussion made me laugh:
safe as the internet, using proven IP technologies
It is easier to develop on an ip stack.
You have great tooling and great libraries out of the box because pretty much everything uses ip nowadays.
Plus, at least part of the controllers people use for their smart home will use ip anyway. A non ip network will need a bridge.
> How is that possible when thread use an ipv6 stack over 802.15.4 while zigbee use a simpler stack also over 802.15.4?
Easy, zigbee doesn't use a simpler stack. Using the same physical layer protocol doesn't tell you anything about the rest of the stack.
It's actually pretty simple. 6LoWPAN which is what Thread uses is more efficient than the Zigbee network protocol. Packets are smaller and the routing is better. It's not particularly surprising to be honest because Thread was designed by people who knew Zigbee really well and were aiming for an improvement.
Edit: One thing Matter adds that was not in Zigbee is Bluetooth provisioning, letting you use your phone to add a device to your network without QR codes or numbers to type in.
Also fun fact; Homeassistant is part of the CSA and apparently, Google, Apple and others use HA for testing!
I haven’t tried Thread yet, but I’m delighted by the concept of having a couple of easy-to-maintain base stations (routers or whatever they’re called) connected to the local network and having devices automatically roam between them.
I am not delighted by the fact that an Apple Home Thread network, a Google Home thread network, and a Home Assistant native thread network appear to be different things that are not entirely compatible with each other.
Hmm, in what way? The Matter standard does demand that devices support at least 5 of such "fabrics" at once. Where is the issue in practice?
I am running multiple Zigbee networks near each other (in a house and in a detached garage) with Home Assistant, MQTT server and a Sonoff Zigbee bridge, with Tasmota.
I'm currently blocked because Google and Amazon don't support "Generic Switches". Which means that if I switch over a light-bulb to being a smart one I can't use something like the Arre Smart Button to control them. Which seems like such a standard requirement that I do not understand why it's not supported.
If Ikea will let me set that up then I'll be delighted.
But I read that Thread supports IPv6 via mesh networking. It did always feel a bit awkward having Zigbee networking and IP networking competing over the same site. It would be very nice to issue commands from any peer to any other peer, using standard networking. Can anyone here confirm that Matter/Thread will be a bright, open, and happy new future?
A lot of people I know would scoff at “smart home” stuff. I used to. Having a programmable house is incredibly useful though. When all your lights and sensors are available for programming you can do stuff that’s cool not because it is particularly innovative but because it is incredibly easy to implement:
- my partner can control a “do not enter, call in progress” red light bulb;
- my outside lights trigger off PIR, door sensors, or Ring motion detection;
- I have a series of indoor lamps come on in succession if motion is detected outside at night;
- we programmed a push button to turn a light green on one tap and red on a double tap for a fun game of twenty questions;
- and my indoor Ring cameras shut down unless both my partner and I are out of the house.
All of these things were trivial to do given that everything is available on one Home Assistant instance!
Sorry, it’s a closed ecosystem. It relies on PKI and device attestation to ensure that only devices from approved partners are usable. It’s unlikely that small players can participate, and zero chance of any homebrew scene.
can you explain what you mean by this?
Also: the Apple home app can’t change their mode to matter, you have to do that in home assistant.
The part about Matter that's "closed" is the device attestation process; the Distributed Compliance Ledger (DCL) contains a closed set of trusted Product Attestation Authorities. The device's Device Attestation Certificate (DAC) needs to chain to these PAAs for a "production" Matter Commissioner to enroll the device in a fabric without additional steps.
Here's he thing: all available Matter Commissioners make it really easy to commission a device with an untrusted DAC; for Google you need to add the IDs for the device to a Developer account associated with device you're trying to use as the Commissioner, and for Apple (at least as of a year or so ago when I last tried this), you just press "Trust this untrustworthy device" on a dialog box.
I was working on a Matter device but it never got certified due to high cost/lack of customer demand.
Matter states that firmware images “may be encrypted.” This is not a requirement, though encryption is allowed and may add security
(https://community.arm.com/arm-community-blogs/b/internet-of-...)
Disclaimer: I haven't tried serial flashing of Shelly/Sonoff Matter-enabled devices myself, just remember some complaints of customers that failed to re-flash such devices.
I personally think the worst part of this is that China manufacturers are less likely to produce Matter/Thread equipment.
Cheap China equipment has been great for Zigbee adoption. They're much less reliable, but fantastic for getting a smart home going for cheap.
Funny, to me that's a feature. It makes the threat of a hacked device that exfiltrate data from within your network much less likely. I avoid any wifi device because of that.
Not everything has to be on TCP/IP. For smart home connectivity, I’d say that’s a feature, provided said networking standard is just as open as TCP/IP.
I have/had a segmented network, so I made sure my router accepted this route so that devices on different networks could communicate with the Thread devices. It worked, usually. However, I ran into some challenges with the reliability of communicating from my phone to various devices. I never quite got mDNS reflection 100% correct, and I strongly suspect that's my problem. If you look at an mDNS entry for a device, you'll see some advertise all their IPv6 addresses including link local (fe80::). I suspected some clients were dumb, trying the first IP they found, and giving up when it didn't work. I was working on modifying the golang mdns-reflector project to filter these entries. I had some success, but I haven't finished.
e.g. if I add future Ikea lightbulbs or other equipment, will this mean managing them via a different system?
(By the by, I've been very happy with Ikea bulbs so far; while other people complain of LED bulbs with a short lifespan, [touches wood] I've not had a single failure with Ikea smart bulbs, with ~7 years and counting on one of mine.)
There have been many attempts at industry standards but they fray around the edges. Nobody understands that a protocol and a spec is not a user experience, so the standards just become the basis for closed walled garden “systems.”
It’s why I stay away from it.
I will just have make sure that I have a spare zigbee radio in case they eventually disappear from the market.
https://staceyoniot.com/matter-only-solves-about-one-of-the-...
I think the whole point of Matter is that the devices are manufacturer independent and you can use any device with any hub.
I love my Ikea smart home gear, it works really well. Odd that a cheap furniture store that sells meatballs seems to have a more coherent smart device strategy than major tech companies!
My guess is that it’s because they sell any particular piece of hardware in millions and it’s in their best interest to design it properly so they don’t have to deal with the returns.
On top of that, the switch breaks compatibility with existing hardware (except for the Touchlink functionality). If you have a bunch of Zigbee devices, but at some point want to add some of the new ones, you need to start thinking about replacing all the perfectly working Zigbee devices or have a fragmented network.
Yes, if you're using the manufacturer's half-assed smartphone app, but if you're on Home Assistant, like basically anyone who's serious about their smart home, having multiple kinds of smart devices isn't really a problem. It's just one more radio to configure. Some people run both Zigbee and Zwave, some people run Zigbee + Wi-Fi or even Zigbee + Zwave + Wi-Fi + cloud integrations, Home Assistant doesn't care.
1) no electricity, everything down but fiber, wifi, HA and the doorbell (they run off an UPS)
2) internet down: no problem, you just cannot reach the home automation from outside
3) Home assistant down: zigbee devices are paired together (like buttons + bulbs) or I have physical zigbee relays controlling dumb bulbs.
But, as said, I have some subsystem not fully working when (3) happens, like a zigbee button controlling a tasmota-based fan control.
We survived for over 100 years by getting up and flipping a wall switch, so the risk of a few hours without smart features shouldn’t be a showstopper.
I didn't really care for the way it became a sysadmin job where the stakes of a bad update or me not reading some release notes were that my light switches didn't work until I sat there and futzed around with it. I'm a programmer, enjoy Linux admin, run a whole bunch of servers....but having to dive into logs and YAML configs because the lights in my kitchen won't turn off is just not ideal. Similar issues with HomeKit, except when things mysteriously stop working there's even less ability to diagnose, given Apple's design principles that everything "just works", so apparently providing detailed error messages or diagnostics is gauche.
This makes me a little weary of your comment. I don't think I'd really care if my lights not working was due to a "manufacturer being flaky" if they worked yesterday, but don't today.
Are you talking about devices being flaky on first setup (which sucks, but is understandable), or are you talking about them being flaky after an update?
Pairing a Matter device takes much longer than pairing a Zigbee device through Z2M in my experience, and the Matter add-on still sometimes needs restarting as it refuses to allow any more devices to pair after a while.
But - rather than need a Zigbee dongle (or manufacturer hub) if you've got Apple or Google devices such as HomePods you've got a ready made Thread network as they act as border routers.
And despite it not being open enough for open source enthusiasts, it's also got a bad name with manufacturers. I work for one and I asked why we wouldn't implement matter and thread and it was laughed off because apparently marketing will never give up their own app as a data collection and cross selling vehicle. Of course those are exactly the reasons I don't want this.
I didn't even know about the certification that only big players can do and the locked firmware requirements. It's ridiculous. Why were thread and matter hailed as the open revolution when they're exactly the opposite?
Subterfuge PR or the subversion of original intention by greed.
Also, wasn’t there recent news that thread was being abandoned by manufacturers, even declaring it EOL? Or am I conflating that with something else?
Because consumers are lazy and dumb, and do not do any kind of research. They believe what is written on the tin. Why is OpenAI called "open"?
Spoiler alert: No. There's a whole bunch of bullshit: https://developers.home.google.com/matter/integration/pair#p...
You can sort of run your own device if you're fine with giving google far too much information and they can block you at any time.
Face it, bigtech has a hardon for closed ecosystems. If they could they'd make it so every computer that wants to send an ethernet packet has a private key blessed by some bigtech cabal which they can revoke, but luckily for us this standard predates this gross new fetish.
Here is the Silabs explainer on the certification process: https://docs.silabs.com/matter/latest/matter-certification/
You can! You just can't ship it/sell it without certification.
https://www.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/comments/1adh8ah/esp3...
I did exactly that last week... Certification is required if you want to use the trademarked logo in your marketing materials (same as with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth afaik).
Thank you for the clarification?
If "closed" means open to anyone that has their product certified to adhere to the rules, then I'm ok with that.
Just like Apple HomeKit you can add devices that aren't certified. It shows a warning, but apart from that it functions like a normal device (for as far as I can tell).
I have been using https://github.com/t0bst4r/home-assistant-matter-hub to expose my home assistant devices to Google Home without having to expose my Home Assistant to the cloud.
Second, certification is what separates Z-Wave from Zigbee which in my (n=1) experience means less issues in terms of compatibility.
Of course, with that GitHub package I shared all of that goes through the window, but who cares? I can clone the code and modify it.
I ended up pairing mine with a 'ConBee II' and with a bit of Go code was able to receive sensor data with very little latency, and activate switches and lights very quickly.
What a shame they discontinue such a great product line. But I already decided this is the last home automation technology I'll invest in. ZigBee seems perfectly suited for this role, and no idea why we need yet another new standard. Although I also said that switching away from x10, if anyone still remembers that.
You can probably plumb Home Assistant into your MQTT server from there.
Their latest one has two radios so you can do both Zigbee and Thread from a single device.
I've found however, that Thread prefers several border routers around my house to operate well.
So it's a closed ecosystem that makes money for a cabal of corporations
If you want to participate as more than a hobbyist, you'll need to join the CSA (a non-profit mutual-benefit corporation). This will cost a bit less than half of what it cost manufacturers to join the equivalent organization for Z-Wave — a closed, single-vendor, non-IP-based solution that was state-of-the-art 25 years ago.
Money paid by commercial vendors funds stuff like test labs, interop events, and compliance support systems.
https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/matter/
Adding a device now requires a whole song & dance with bluetooth, a mobile phone and god knows what else.
Meanwhile zigbee is:
1. Buy a zigbee stick, there are dozens, they all work great
2. Press the permit join button in home assistant
3. Press a button on the device for 10 seconds or 3 times or whatever
4. You're done and it works!
Oh, and for some reason https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/matter/#experimen... involves google cloud in the process of me testing a device I created locally on my own network
The final nail in the coffin is:
> It is recommended to run the Matter add-on on Home Assistant OS. This is currently the only supported option. Other installation types are without support and at your own risk.
So I can't even officially use this stuff without uprooting my entire operating system.
If I had to wipe and re-setup my smart home with 100 Zigbee devices and 18 Matter over Thread devices (Tado smart thermostat and TRV's) the Zigbee devices would take me about half an hour in total to have back up and running in HomeAssistant, the Matter over Thread devices would take me around 2-3 hours as you have to pair them one-at-a-time.
.. but all I can remember from growing up is the X-10 POWERHOUSE
I've found Matter totally confusing. Given a device that supports Matter (e.g., a smart plug) and a set of devices I want to control that from (e.g., an Amazon Echo and an iPad) it is not clear to me what else I need.
Apparently I need a "controller", which is not necessarily the thing that I as a user would think of the controller--as a user I think of the controller as the device I issue command from. A Matter controller is apparently a hub for connecting the thing I'm using to issue commands to the IOT device I want to control.
And maybe I need a "Thread border router"?
As far as the controller goes, apparently at some point Apple added the ability for iPads to be Matter controllers, so you could use a Matter device with just an iPad (if the Matter device used WiFi...if it used Thread then you would need a separate Matter controller and I'd guess one of those Thread border routers).
I was able to briefly use a Matter smart plug with my iPad without having a separate hub, but it stopped working not too long after. I deleted the plug from the iPad and did a factory reset on the plug and tried setting up again, but now when the iPad searches for the device during setup it doesn't even see it.
Apple still has instructions on their site for setting up devices for direct use from iPad, but several sites on the net report that they actually dropped that support from iPad.
So lets say I go get an actual Matter hub. Do I need a separate hubs for using my Matter devices from my Apple devices and using my Matter devices from my Amazon devices? How about if I need a Thread border router--will I need one for Apple and one for Amazon? What if I add Home Assistant later--am I going to need a third hub?
All I'm really trying to do for now is use this one TP-Link Tapo smart plug that supports Matter from Apple Shortcuts without having to use the Tapo app. The Tapo app does integrate with Shortcuts but you have to be logged in to your TP-Link account on the app for it to work. Every so often you have to re-login, breaking your shortcuts until you do.
What I'm currently considering is installing Home Assistant somewhere, probably in a VM on my Mac for now but latter on a dedicated RPi if the experiments in a VM show that it will work, and setting it up to be my Matter controller for the smart plug. Shortcuts (or Siri) won't be able to directly use Matter to control the plug with that setup, but there is a Home Assistant app for iOS/iPadOS that can do so and that supports Shortcuts.
It will basically be like I'm doing now with the Tapo app but instead with the Home Assistant app and no need to be logged in to TP-Link (or to even have internet access).
PS: I wouldn't need any of this if Apple would just get around to implementing for iPadOS the same 80% charge limit option that they have had on iOS for ages. I'm using the smart plug and Shortcuts as a kludge while waiting for that. I charge through the smart plug and have a Shortcut automation to turn off the smart plug when the iPad's battery level rises above 80%.
You still need the TP-Link app for some more advanced functions like power metering though.
sc970•5h ago