Chip / Matter support (including Thread)

I wrote to CSA https://csa-iot.org/ YouTube to make it Free membership for opensource system. It would be great if everyone not indifferent would write to them on a page on a social network, for example.

+1 for Nabu Casa fundraiser for Matter support on “Home Assistant Amber” / “Home Assistant Yellow”.

Alternatively, try to get Silabs to sponsor Nabu Casa as part of Silicon Labs IoT Accelerator program which “Home Assistant Amber” / “Home Assistant Yellow” is a part of via the Crowd Supply campaign:

https://www.crowdsupply.com/silicon-labs/iot-accelerator

https://www.crowdsupply.com/silicon-labs/iot-accelerator

Could at least get a foot in for Nabu Casa which might get the CSA alliance to consider Home Assistant.

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Ultimately it is up to the Home Assistant core team if they want to join any alliance or not. Starting a fund raiser on here or saying a certain amount is not expensive for what is still still a free and open source project is way outside of what we should be calling for.
Nabu Casa was created to pay some core staff to work on Home Assistant sure, but it is not a big company making lots of money. The people paying for Nabu Casa Cloud pay for those core staff and there is not much left over.
It is just really the same as asking anyone on GitHub to pay $7000 a year when they make virutally no money off their project.
With that said, I am pretty sure the core team have looked at all the alliances, Z-Wave, Matter and whatever other ones are around. Might be best to contact them directly and ask what the status is. You may find it is already on the road map. They have already stated, with Home Assistant Yellow, that it can be updated to support Matter.

Let’s keep some realism here. Home Assistant is a free, open source project. It is not like SmartThings or Philips Hue. Yes, functionally it is better, but most development is still done by volunteers. If you want to donate $7000 a year to Nabu Casa / Home Assistant, I am sure they will take it and listen to your suggestions :slight_smile:

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Talking again about what really Matters :slight_smile:… Looks like this can be a good starting point for an HA integration: connectedhomeip/src/controller/python at master · project-chip/connectedhomeip · GitHub
I would like to take a look to the library an make some tests using ESP32 running as a Matter device

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Looks interesting. You would need a ZigBee radio to properly test Matter. I have seen a couple that can connect to an ESP32, but can’t recall now where I saw them.
The project you linked to looks fairly active. It could be work well as a base library for an integration.

Following up on the nRF52840 chip mentioned earlier. There is a USB dongle with case with that chip integrated (Seeed Studio NRF52840) that could be plugged right into my Raspberry Pi 4 where I have HA running.
From the previous posts it’s not clear to me if this USB dongle will work right away today, or if we’re still talking about future support/functionality.
I could also imagine just be using the Zigbee component of it for now as bridge and then use Thread once it’s supported by HA.

Please bear with me if this should have been obvious from previous posts - I’m still relatively new to HA.

The ESP32-H2 chip has been certified with Matter and Thread.

Texas Instruments, Nordic and Silicon Labs have solutions as well.

And the software implementations are open source-
Matter repository- GitHub - project-chip/connectedhomeip: Matter (formerly Project CHIP) is creating more connections between more objects, simplifying development for manufacturers and increasing compatibility for consumers, guided by the Connectivity Standards Alliance (formerly Zigbee Alliance).
OpenThread (Google) repository- https://openthread.io/

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There seams to be a python controller api build into the reference implementation of Matter. Have a look at https://github.com/project-chip/connectedhomeip/blob/6103a693e80f6b8c07e19eaea36fd28152433d0a/docs/guides/python_chip_controller_building.md and https://github.com/project-chip/connectedhomeip/tree/master/src/controller/python/chip .

For someone who already developed a integration this should be relatively simple to integrate.

Is anyone working on this integration?

Wondering if it would not make sense to base it on code from Home Assistant’s ZHA integration?

I believe that even though Matter/CHIP uses higher application-level architecture that rely on other IP-based protocols for communication, it still shares many common attributes and properties with Zigbee.

Not got the skills myself but it would maybe make sense to repurpose the ZCL implementation from zigpy and zha-device-handlers/zha-quirks libraries as a dependency for a new Matter/CHIP integration as the zigpy libraires are primarily maintained by Home Assistant’s ZHA integration devs?

We know Matter/CHIP was actually created with inspiration from the Zigbee specifications as its application layer is based on the ZCL (Zigbee Cluster Library) specification as the Matter/CHIP protocol uses Zigbee Cluster Library protocol which defines common means for applications to communicate.

https://devzone.nordicsemi.com/nordic/nordic-blog/b/blog/posts/connected-home-over-ip-sneak-peek-of-early-development-on-nrf52840

https://github.com/project-chip/zap

Just curious if decs could reuse zigpy libs as ZCL (Zigbee Cluster Library) for a Matter implementation?

Way too much debate over what’s an open standard, but I’ll weigh in ….

The big kahunas are what will make it work. Suddenly devices will be able to work on hundreds of millions of Apple, Amazon, Google hubs already in peoples houses, and billions of mobiles already in people’s pockets. Who can pass up a market that sized?

This should be two potentially separate requests:

  1. The existing HomeKit bridge is fantastic and hugely increases the WAF in my house. Suddenly anyone can talk to Siri to control things. Let’s get a similar Matter bridge going! Many households are mixed, and it would be even higher WAF if suddenly people could also talk to Alexa or Ok Google to control things (I haven’t looked into those integrations yet). It shouldn’t matter what voice assistant you prefer but we know less technical people want to use a voice assistant or their favorite phone or watch app. At the same time, a Matter bridge could eventually replace somewhat duplicate work for the three individually.

  2. Application hub, I don’t know what you’d call it, but HA has always been fantastic with including everything, being open. As Matter devices and border routers come out, let’s also support them. HA has the advantages of diversity and the long tail of existing devices. This is just one more integration for HA to be the one hub to rule them all

  3. Ok, the more I think about it, this could also spawn many smaller feature requests to implement the common data model of Matter, for existing devices

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Thread can be installed with docker Run OTBR Docker  |  OpenThread or in other ways in a Raspberry pi. In the Openthread web there are few hardware to do it, and fortunatly there are at less one stick CC2652R stick - slae.sh

You can access to the thread Network throw IP adress so I think it would be sooo easy to access in home asistant with the card website and duckdns.

Also one app was released in Android, called thread.

It would be awesome if we could integrate that on de home asistant in other way like with an addon.

This is the Openthread API التطوير باستخدام واجهات برمجة تطبيقات OpenThread

One add-on which brings the OpenThread Border Router is the Silicon Labs Multiprotocol Add-on. It supports running Zigbee and OpenThread on a single (Silicon Labs) radio (with the Multi-PAN firmware flashed). It is rather experimental though at the moment.

Matter is postponed again

Thread and matter are different things please vote only for thread integration here!!!

I’ve been doing a lot of research and benchtop testing of Thread & Matter/CHIP with the goal of pulling the IoT ecosystem into the IP Automation world.

I am finally somewhat confident in my benchtop lab system that is based on the Nordic nRF series chips. I have an OTBR on RaspberryPi with the nRF52840 dongle as an RCP. Three nrf52840dk and one nrf5340dk dev kits. A couple of Afafruit nrf52840 Feather Express boards. I have some nRF Thingy:52 devices too but they seem like a bad purchase now as they don’t support Thread.

I’ve been using the sample firmware code in the nRF Connect SDK such as the OpenThread Coap Server/Client and the Matter Light Bulb/Switch examples. It is time for me now to start working on the interfacing of the Thread or Matter network into the Home Assistant ecosystem.

I’ll do more reading here to catch up.

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I just hope Home Assistant Yellow (the board being developed) can be able to support Matter out-of-the-box (the hardware, since it’s not very upgradable I guess)

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I have been playing with matter (via openthread) for about 2 months now here are some things i discovered:

With a USB RCP dongle (mine uses nrf52833), any linux computer can become a border router for matter.
My border router runs on Openwrt on Xiaomi Router R3, “router”, of course.

USB appears as a Network device - wpan0. Matter messages go through this interface and are TCP messages.

I really want the matter (openthread) border router and home assistant to run on the same router and that’s it, just like zigbee now.

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Just added the OpenThread Border Router add-on to the development add-on repository

It is built directly from the upstream OpenThread sources, specifically the OpenThread Border Router for POSIX platforms. So far I joined nRF52840-Dongle based CLI devices (ot-cli-ftd, basically Thread devices with a CLI for testing). I’ve tested it using Nordic Semiconductor with the USB nRF52840-Dongle as well as with Silicon Labs EFR32 MGM210P flashed with OpenThread RCP firmware (the radio on Yellow).

The work is based on my previous SiliconLabs Zigbee/OpenThread Multiprotocol Add-on. This add-on uses the vanilla/upstream OTBR. It supports regular OpenThread RCP protocol radios (it does not support the SiliconLabs specific CPCd as the above add-on does). Ideally the SiLabs Multiprotocol add-on should be stripped of its forked version of OTBR and reuse the upstream OTBR version, however, for that to be possible upstream OTBR would need to gain CPCd support.

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@agners Wondering if you could ask the other Nabu Casa developers what the plan is for the new Matter integration and if they will consider use re-use (or fork) the existing zigpy library (that the existing ZHA integration uses a dependency) in your Matter implementation for Home Assistant as well?

The reason for asking that specifically is because the existing zigpy library contains a “Zigbee Cluster Library” (ZCL) that follows the specification standards by Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA, formerly Zigbee Alliance) which if I understand correctly also plays a part in the Matter standard for Thread based devices?

I am also wondering if you have considered what programming language that the Matter components and dependency libraries will be coded in? …will they be written primarily in Python like Home Assistant?

Reason for that question is that just read in the latest Home Assistant newsletter that Dominic Griesel (a.k.a. AlCalzone on GitHub) from the Z-Wave JS project will join Nabu Casa later this month to focus on further improving Z-Wave JS and will help Home Assistant in adopting the new Matter (formerly CHIP) standard.

I know that unlike zigpy which is written in Python (same as the Home Assistant core and other native integrationscomponents), the Z-Wave driver for Z-Wave JS project was instead written entirely in JavaScript/TypeScript project is written.

So the question is really if the existing zigpy library can be re-purposed in a Matter implementation for Home Assistant and by doing so hopefully be able to share developers with ZHA and other zigpy based projects and that way be maintained by more developers.

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