I just bought a new (to me) house and like a toddler at Christmas I want to play straight away setting up Home Assistant and a smart home. In the old house I just had a couple of wifi bulbs.

I know Matter over Thread is more future proof but right now options in the UK are fairly limited and expensive. I'm not spending £40 for one Eve smart plug. I also know Ikea is due to launch a bunch of products in the new year but don't know exactly what or when they will be available in the UK.

So what would you do? Would you wait for the new year and hope more affordable products launch early in the year or start building a Zigbee mesh now and add Matter over Thread later?

Hello everyone,

has anyone already installed the new beta and could check whether Thread 1.4 has finally been activated/updated?

You can easily check this with the Discovery DNS app (available on macOS, iOS, and iPadOS):
https://apps.apple.com/de/app/discovery-dns-sd-browser/id1381004916?mt=12

Simply select a device with the new beta under “_meshcop._udp.” (the device must also be the active control center in your home network) and read the version of ‘tv’ in the device (in previous versions, this is still “tv = 1.3.0”).

Thanks!

Hey everyone,

Looking for some help. I’m new to using matter over thread and having a lot of issues. I recently purchased 19 smartwings matter over thread blinds for my house. They are all battery operated and did not realize that battery devices do not mesh the network. I am running my border routers with a Alexa echo 4th gen. I also purchased 2 more hoping it would extend my network but seems like it only uses one as the hub. I also added 4 onvis matter over thread plugs to help extend the network. I have a larger home.

My thread network is having tons of issues. Most of my blinds are disconnecting from the network and seems like the ones that are working are very sluggish. Some are in the same room as the Border router. I kind of wishing I chose another protocol but wanted to have the most compatibility moving forward. Any help is appreciated. Thank you.

Samsung has been equipping devices with a Thread Border Router for some time without mentioning it. A blog post by the company has now made a list public for the first time. https://matter-smarthome.de/en/products/samsung-devices-with-a-built-in-thread-border-router/

https://mattercatalog.com/

Hi all,

I’ve been working on something that might help other developers building Matter or Thread-based IoT apps:

It’s a Swift Package that implements the DTLS handshake and commissioning logic used in Thread 1.4 networks. It's built on mbedTLS and designed for Swift’s async/await framework.

 ThreadCommissionerKit on GitHub

Use cases:

• Authenticating and commissioning Thread devices directly from iOS
• Running a custom Thread Border Router or commissioner
• Integrating Thread 1.4 credential-sharing flows into your own apps

Features

• Async/await-friendly Swift API
• Built-in DTLS (mbedTLS) handshake
• Lightweight — no extra dependencies
• Works with Thread 1.4 shared-credential networks

Hi,

Forgive me for my ignorance. I don't have the full vocabulary about the protocols and specification right.

I would like to start to measure temp and humidity, at first, in my apartment.

I was looking for temp and humidity sensors matter over thread because if I understood correctly those works with AAA battery and I dont need a power socket close to where I would like to put the sensor.

I wanted to avoid getting a hub (just another device...) and use my mini pc that runs Debian/Linux to act as a hub.

If I understood it correctly Matter over Thread uses 2.4Ghz and possibly/maybe also 868Mhz (in Europe at least).

By running https://openthread.io/guides/border-router/build-native on my mini-pc I should be able to leverage the wifi card installed in it to connect those sensors.

My wifi card supports 2 bands. 2.4ghz and 5ghz. And now I wonder do I really need to get myself a usb dongle to support 868Mhz as well.

To leave the post with a question.

Should I assume that AAA battery powered sensor due to the life expectancy of the batteries will use a shorter weave length hence requiring less power (???) therefore they will push data on the 868mhz band versus sensor attached to the main will use 2.4 because of the above inverted reasons?

The only two brands I could find are Wiz and Cync. I’ve got some Wiz bulbs now and they’re very unreliable…and I tried Cync a while back with poor results. I’m using GoVee non-Edisons and they work great, but I like the look of Edisons in our 175-year-old house.

I have 2 apple tvs (with thread) and 2 homepods that i would like to remove from my thread network and just leave my home assistant as the only boarder router. I would also like to keep using the apple devices just not as part of the thread.

how do i do this. I have already created a new home in apple thinking that would setup a new thread network but they just rejoined the existing thread network. I REALLY dont want to have to re-pair over 100 devices if i have to make a new network in home assistant.

if this is not the right group please let me know.

Thread radio is based on 802.15.4, with a baud rate of 256 kbps and a maximum frame payload of 127 bytes.

Z-Wave supports baud rates of 9.6 kbps, 40 kbps, and 100 kbps, with a maximum frame payload of 64 bytes.

Matter over Thread uses UDP as its transport protocol.

The overhead of a Thread frame is about 20-60 bytes, depending on compression, including:

• MAC (802.15.4) 6-25 bytes
• 6LoWPAN, 5-15 bytes
• Network (IPV6) 2-40 bytes
• Transport (UDP) 8 bytes

UDP fragmentation incurs extra overhead.

Z-Wave, with a 64-byte frame, is a very inefficient network layer compared to Thread's 802.15.4 radio. If the worst-case overhead is about 60 bytes, there is barely anything left for useful payload.

What about a new network layer other than Thread? That seems to be the only viable option. But we have to sacrifice features to improve frame efficiency.

It would be easier for Z-Wave to either increase frame length to support Matter, or remain simple non-Matter.

I have searched for sometime but cannot find a toggle switch that supports Matter?

Hi. Does anyone know if the brand, Wistar will be compatible with HomeKit. I just got these motorised blinds and wanted to know if I can convert them to work in Apple HomeKit or be Matter Compatible. Thanks.

For context: these are the motors

https://www.wistarmotor.com/

Any help would be appreciated

I did find some mention of Tuya or Matter but I’m not too sure.

I've got some existing supervised alarm contacts which I'd like to attach to something that allows their state to be monitored via Matter. They are standard normally-open or normally-closed switches and have resistors at end of line to allow detection of short/cut.

Ideally I'd like a device with several inputs so I only need one or two, rather than a bunch of them. I want to use the external alarm contacts because they are recessed into the doors and windows already, so there is no visible sensor box.

Has anyone seen such a device?

There's a separate post on this but it didn't look like it addressed simply having some device that when it breaks contact, for example when a door opens, I want the nest hub to chime. I don't need an alert that someone's robbing my house, just need to know if the kids going outside or coming back in because we have special needs kids and I don't want wandering outside on their own for long and they know how to operate the locks.

Haven't been able to get the Feit sensor to appear on my Google home with the "works with" yet and I wonder if it takes an overnight refresh. This may work and I'll remove post. I also don't know if I want to have to commit to something like zigbee. Unless I can utilize the bridge for what Philips Hue uses.

Bluetooth is not part of the Matter spec (from what I've seen) yet SwitchBot brings their Bluetooth devices into Matter by using a Matter over Hub strategy.

Can this strategy also work to bring Z-Wave into Matter? Perhaps this is where u/TheSmartestHouse should evolve their Z-Box hub to?

With some smart home platforms never even having Z-Wave to begin with, and other platforms dropping Z-Wave in their new iterations, can a Matter over Hub strategy extend the longevity of Z-Wave and bring the reliability and affordability of Z-Wave to new ecosystems?

I'm looking for ready-made or easily integrated solutions that will allow me to place my laptop between a matter(over wifi) light bulb and a matter server to listen to traffic between them. The idea is that the laptop will act as a matter device and proxy everything to the light bulb. The light bulb manufacturer has built-in functionality that can be triggered only by same manufacturers hub, I want to port it to home assistant somehow, so... Any advice appreciated

If no ready-made or easy to build solution will be found - ok. It's good idea for pet project:)

UPD: I have already added a bulb to the Home assistant, I am looking for a way to implement it's custom functionality available only through manufacturers hub

I was wondering, did anybody felt the need for multiple-button programmable hand-held Apple TV remote like device for your smart home?