I have just purchased and physically installed my first Matter over Thread device - an ULTRALOQ “Bolt F Matter” door lock. The lock only supports Bluetooth and Thread - it does not have any WiFi capability.
I have also installed a Home Assistant Connect ZBT-1 dongle on the HA server. And I have confirmed that it is running OpenThread RCP 2.4.4.0.
I have the Matter, the Thread and the Open Thread Border Router Integrations installed and configured.
I notice that in the screen titled “Get ready for setup”, it says in part to “Connect your phone to your main 2.4 GHz network, if available. Most Matter-enabled devices can’t connect to a 5GHz network yet.” But, I can’t see how that is relevant in this case as I am connecting to the lock via Bluetooth and the lock doesn’t support WiFi of any flavour …
My Samsung Android phone (an S22) defaults to 5Ghz and cannot be manually changed. I can, with a lot of mucking around, disable the 5Ghz band on my WiFi, but I cannot see how the WiFi band can be relevant in this setup process?
As both Matter and Thread are all new to me, I would welcome some advice or suggestions as to why HA cannot find the device, or what log files I should inspect …
I finally managed to get the ULTRALOQ Bolt F Matter added as a device to Home Assistant. I did 2 things, but I don’t know which one actually solved the problem.
I configured my WiFi 3-node Mesh setup to work only on 2.4 Ghz and I factory reset the ULTRALOQ Bolt F Matter lock. After making those 2 changes, the “Add Matter device” process in the Home Assistant Companion app completed successfully.
I still can’t see how restricting my WiFi to just 2.4 Ghz contributed to this outcome, as this device (lock) doesn’t use WiFi, to the best of my knowledge.
Curious, can you modify fingerprints or pin codes over matter? Or do you have to use the native app for most of that still? I have the Z-Wave variant of the fingerprint lock from a few years back, and user/access management is pretty weak.
The ULTRALOQ “Bolt F Matter” door lock that I have, only supports BLE and Thread for communications. Setting up new users or modifying fingerprints and PINs requires the native app connected via BLE to the lock and it works very reliably.
Connecting to the lock from Home assistant via Matter allows the lock status to be checked and locked/unlocked remotely.
Wondering if the logs in HomeAssistant show all activities associated with the logs, such as when a user open the door using fingerprint, open with the app, key combination etc. ?
It does support adding PIN codes over Matter, but I don’t know if it’s possible to do so via Home Assistant (if it is, I haven’t figured it out). I paired mine to Home Assistant first, then shared the device via Matter to HomeKit and Google Home. In HomeKit I was prompted to create an access PIN during setup, while in Google Home I can set/change PINs in the settings for the device.
As far as fingerprints, you can add those on the device itself without the app as long as the lock is in Standalone mode (i.e. was set up without the app in the first place). If you already set the lock up in the app, you’ll have to keep managing it there unless you factory reset it.
To set fingerprints without the app: Hold the Ultraloq button on the exterior side of the lock for a few seconds to enter programming mode (it’ll beep twice and light up blue), then put in your code and push the Ultraloq button again to set up a fingerprint for that code (it should beep twice and light up green). Press the fingerprint reader and it’ll beep and blink to confirm the read, repeat that five or six times until the lights all turn off and the fingerprint will be saved.
Mine just shows lock/unlock status, but not how it was accessed. Not sure if the app has more detailed logging, as I never set it up. Here’s what I see in HA:
