It’s definitely not automatic and easy, more of a GUI programming/automation language. So yeah it’s a fair amount of custom setup. Here’s the addon for HA and an example of one of my “flows”. This covers changes coming from virtual Matter devices on the left, and sending HA initiated changes back to the same Matter devices on the right.
Documentation for node-red-matter is light but notes the current limitations:
The plugin only supports 4 device types: Dimmable and not dimmable lights, and dimmable and not dimmable switches. More device types will be added in the future.
You can make use of on/off switches for example to run scripts or control basic entities, but they won’t be exposed as the true entity type.
I prefer where Matterbridge is going, and is much more of the automatic setup you’re looking for. The plugins are ecosystem specific, currently he’s close to releasing a new one for Shelly devices. I’m hoping Z-Wave JS is included at some point, or down the line maybe a more generalized integration for all HA entities.
Okay, I see where this is going and I remember why I never started using node-red
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.
okay wow - that was easier than expected
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.
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
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.
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 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
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.
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?
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.
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.
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?
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
Woah, thank you very much for your work!
I was looking for this feature for such a long time and finally found it
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.
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
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.
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.
