Act as a Matter bridge

Okay, I see where this is going and I remember why I never started using node-red :smiley:

I have seen the matterbridge project, which is btw also build on matter.js. That’s where I started, but I didn’t like the typings in typescript. On a first test it felt horrible - so i started to create my own.

But maybe I should give it another try since I am actually building exactly that home-assistant integration which is missing in matterbridge. It should not be too hard, to make that possible.
Maybe I’ll invest 1-2 hours to test that tomorrow.

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okay wow - that was easier than expected :smile:
Even the matterbridge typings were working after setting up a new repo from scratch.

Disclaimer

Please be aware that I invested just 2 hours into this project (setup + first entity integration) and barely tested anything. I have my Amazon Echo setup and connected to matterbridge and everything seems to work for me.

Currently supported

  • Light entities (light.) including on-off, brightness and hue & saturation control
  • Switch entities (switch.) including on-off control
  • Media Players (media_player.) are mapped to Switches and currently only support on-off control

Deployment

At the moment there is no “automated” way to deploy all this.

Local installation

As simple as installing matterbridge. See the README for details.

Docker

Luligu has created a docker-image and provides some details on how to run matterbridge in docker.

Use the existing matterbridge docker image and run the installation and configuration steps of my plugin in it.

I’ll create such a ready-to-use docker image in the next days.

Home Assistant Add-On

Of course there is no add-on existing, yet.
But I am planning to create the missing docker image and the corresponding add-on code in the next days or weeks.

Links

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I created another repo and built a docker image on top of that.

For me this is up and running in a docker container:

Sorry for the German screenshots, but here you can see the Alexa App. The first screenshot shows one light device showing “Connected via: Matterbridge Aggregator”. The second screenshot shows the Matterbridge Aggregator device showing “Connected Devices: 
, and 8 more”.

Help needed!

Since I have a dockerized installation of home assistant I cannot test any Home Assistant AddOns. Additionally I don’t have any experience in writing AddOns :smile:

If there is someone out there who knows what to do, to make it an AddOn, and who can test it, that would be awesome.
I already added a config.yaml and another Dockerfile to the repo, but I don’t know if that’s right and enough to work.

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Nice work, I can checkout that part :sunglasses:

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Any plans to implement this project as a Docker container? It would make sense to have a Docker image so people could easily run HA and this in a compose file. I can set up a repository with an example if needed.

Yes, I did that yesterday, but did not have the time to actually test it afterwards.
I just wanted to finalize the Home assistant addon first.

Yesterday I released a new version of the Matterbridge Plugin, including the (not yet tested) docker image :tada:
Edit: after fixing small bugs with the docker image, i got it working on my raspberry docker deployment (version 0.2.5)

Additionally I released a new version of the corresponding Home Assistant Addon :tada:

Special thanks to @mrhand who helped me a lot setting up the addon and pointing me in the right directions.

You can find detailed installation instructions in both project‘s README.

Please file an issue whenever you have problems or questions.

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This is a great initiative. For it to be able to replace the cloud integration, will it also have a way to expose scripts as some kind of matter device? maybe e push button of it cannot be exposed as a script like entity?

At the moment I have added scenes, scripts, and automations to be published as on-off-switch to matter. :+1:t3:

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Wow, thans for making this addon. We are one step closer to get local control.

I installed the docker version and paired mattebridge with HASS exposing lights. I can’t control effects, colors nor temperature but it is a step in the right direction.

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Thank you for the feedback. I have seen your GitHub issue :+1:t3:

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Thanks

I am using this with scenes for the time being and it is great. My voice commands runs a lot faster than with the google home integration.

Just tested it out, works great for me latency-wise.

Two notes:

  • Alexa pairing did not work when I had over 100 devices in the aggregator (Apple Home did)
  • It would be awesome to have the aggregator ignore hidden entities, I hide useless entities in my HA setup and they get omitted by the Alexa and HomeKit integration. A similar behaviour would be perfect.

Hi, thanks for your feedback.
I created GitHub issues for both.

  1. issue #52
  2. issue #53

Unfortunately I am a bit limited with my time this week and still have other bugs / features to solve.

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Amazing work, just tried the add-on and it works well exporting to Alexa.

This is not a feature request, because I’m sure you’re busy and have alot still planned, but do you eventually plan to add light color and temperature? Do you intend to add other “matter device types” down the road?

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Thanks for the feedback!
Which version are you currently using? Color (hs and rgb) and color temp (kelvin) should both work - still need to update the docs though. Could you provide some details if it’s not working for you?

As of now fans and climates are requested as new entity types. But feel free to request more as a GitHub issue. At the moment I am still working on stabilization as a higher priority than new types :smiley:

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Woah, thank you very much for your work!
I was looking for this feature for such a long time and finally found it :smiley:
And the best: it is so easy to integrate and works very fast as welI.
I can even fully control the light of my first gen xiaomi hub via Alexa. Never expected to have all smart home devices kind of talking to each other in such a simple way.

The only thing I have to figure out is, if there is a way to use a helper entity (like a button) to control devices which are only available inside Alexa and on the other side if there is a way to control a simple helper devices via matter.

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I have added support for input_boolean helpers.
Additionally automations/scripts/scenes can be exposed as switches. Turning them on triggers them. At least that could act as a workaround until the entity types you are missing are supported :slightly_smiling_face:

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Hi, thanks for this awesome add on. I am feeling stupid right now. I can’t get Alexa to pair with this bridge. It just sits on “looking”. Is there something I need to do to put the matter bridge in pairing mode? Do I use the pairing code in the web front end or the add on log? Thanks for any help!

Edit: I Clicked the Reset Matterbridge Commissioning button and tried again and it worked.

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I had to open the page of matter Bridge (link is in the addon).
Then you can see a QR-Code on the top left side.
Then open the Alexa app, go to => Add (Plus on the top right corner) => Device => Other (scroll completely down) => matter => Yes => Yes => Scan QR code. Then you can scan the code from the other device. For me it worked instantly.

Thanks. It did eventually work for me but I needed to reset the commissioning in the matterbridge UI first. Before doing that, Alexa just kept saying searching until it timed out.

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