Hi everyone, I have few questions regarding Matter mostly more specific to home assistant. But before that I would like to set up some context here. Please be patient before I ask the questions. My current home automation setup at a high level involves the following:
Home Assistant running on a Raspberry Pi4 with a Conbee II in terms of the core controller hardware.
Few TP Link Kasa Switches and Plugs (Connected to Home Assistant via TP Link Integration which in turn relies on TP Link Kasa APIs I believe)
Tuya Switches and plugs (All connected to Home Assistant via local Tuya Plugin)
Honeywell T6 Thermostat (Connected locally to Home Assistant via Homekit Controller HomeKit Controller - Home Assistant, btw this is amazing, and I discovered this a couple of weeks back only!!)
Eufy Cameras, motion and contact sensor (Connected to Home Assistant via Eufy Plugin which in turn relies on Eufy APIs)
Shark IQ robot (Connected to HA via SharkIQ Plugin, again seems to be based on Shark IQ APIs)
MyQ Garage Controller (Connected to HA via MyQ Addon, based on MyQ/Chamberlain APIs)
A couple of Govee LEDs (Connected to HA via Govee Addon, based on Govee APIs)
A WIZ Led Bulb (Connected to HA via Wiz Integration, again seems to be working based on some remote Wiz APIs)
A couple of Flic buttons (Connected to HA via Flic Plugin which connects locally over Bluetooth)
Aqara button, motion sensor and contact sensor (Connected locally to HA via Zigbee Integration)
A couple of Ikea Tradfri buttons (Connected locally to HA via Zigbee Integration)
I prefer to run most of my automations via Home Assistant rather than the respective apps for many of these devices (one of the main reasons HA exists). But at the same time, to enable voice-based commands, I have to rely on Google’ Nest Mini, Nest Hub Max and a Bose (Google Assistant Enabled Smart Speaker). Instead of connecting all these devices individually via their respective app to Google Home, I have exposed my HA over the public Internet utilizing Cloudflare’s tunnel (Cloudflared plugin ). Opening port was not an option for me as I am behind a CGNAT. This all works OK, but here are a few of my concerns:
As you noticed, a lot of my devices are connected to HA not locally but via their Cloud APIs (mostly that is how they are being right now) and on top of it to bring the voice control on them, I had to also expose them to Google Assistant. Same is the case with Alexa as well, I still have to expose them over public endpoint. But interestingly few days back, I realized same is not the situation with HomeKit, the Homebridge Integration in HA allows to bring all the unsupported devices from HA to your HomeKit and it’s all local and way less involved in terms of setup as compared to Google Assistant or Alexa. It was faster as well as it’s at least local up to the point where Siri on your phone or Homepod Mini talks to-> HomeKit running locally which in turn talks to-> Homebridge APIs running locally on your HA. Then from HA to the device it depends on how the device was setup.
I wonder with Matter support being there both in HA (with some dongle’s help in terms of hardware like Skyconnect) and in any of these hubs (Google’s or Amazon’s, as they announced they are releasing matter support to most of their Hubs), would there be a way where all the HA devices would be available on these Hubs without all the steps we do ( very much on the lines of Homekit Integration HomeKit - Home Assistant in HA). This would make things a lot more snappy and secure. I understand that someone may argue about all the Integrations running on HA for the devices for which HA still utilizes their cloud-based APIs. To that I would say I am more optimistic in terms of investing in vendor specific hubs that will act as a translator between non-matter compatible devices to a matter enabled hub (in this case HA). TP Link and Hue recently announced this, and I am sure others are also following the same as it’s impractical for me or any customer to change all their switches and sensors and so on. In short, I am in the pursuit of bringing most of my HA stuff to as local as possible and would matter be of any help to me in that in the way I want as described above.
A VERY solid Maybe. In theory yes, but you’re on the razor’s edge right now and actual support and behavior still has to be fleshed out in a lot of circumstances. Theory: Matter’s Multi-Admin support and bridges make it technically possible. In practice, these features are optional by the device manufacturers (I’m looking at you Multi-admin) and they very much matter (the pun never gets old) to how one Matter controller presents devices to external systems. I mention the razor’s edge in the fact that most devices aren’t available yet and many of those are in various stages of beta. Kevin Toefel (Stacy on IoT podcast) recently tried to get a few select Eve devices on Matter and - let’s just say it was interesting? How my first Matter upgrade experience went - Stacey on IoT | Internet of Things news and analysis but it’s very beta so we can’t judge by this.)
No - there’s a process. But Yes the process is supposed to be much easier.
A little hard to follow but I think you’re talking about the Matter Bridge function. It presents devices behind it as a Matter device, like - Zwave for instance.
Again - there’s a lot of theory v. practice here. The hope is that a user doesn’t have to trash their entire install to get into Matter. There will be niche players and quite honestly HomeAssistant is probbaly the environment Im MOST optimistic about offering a Matter Bridge function. But that’s because I’m LESS optimistic about vendors offering matter bridges. The whole spec is predicated on the fact that they (Members of the CSA) are doing this because they want to sell MORE devices. In theory a lot of Zigbee3 and early Thread radios should be upgradeable to Matter… In practice - i doubt you’ll see a lot of it, it’s not cost effective as a device manufacturer - with Eve being a very notable exception. (Which I’m very excited about as it makes the previously Homekit only devices available for this not-iO-Anything user) Because doing so allows Eve to sell more devices to a wider audience than their previous target.
All of that to say you’re on day 1 of a LONG multi-year journey and we have months before we truly understand how the theory and practice shake out when they finish colliding.
Yes exactly!! Also I want to emphasize the fact - one of the reasons I would love to see the Matter Bridge or something on the same lines so that Voice Assistants I invested in already like Alexa and Google are able to see these devices integrated with HA as individual matter devices without me exposing my HA instance over the public Internet (my current set up). The closest I have seen is what HomeKit Integration does, it presents pretty much all the devices integrated with HA (does not matter supported by HomeKit or not) to the HomeKit app and Siri without exposing HA to some weird Apple web console and writing some Serverless functions/code unlike Google and Amazon and I must say I was impressed!! At that point I literally bought a Home Pod mini, but eventually ended up returning it as I cannot miss some of the Googles functionalities like playing music on my Youtube premium, Google weather and traffic, photos on my Nest Hub Max and some other similar services I am already deep in and prefer to use them in future as well. I am still OK with my voice command going to some server for intent generation (I can live without projects like Rhasspyhttps://github.com/rhasspy/rhasspy for some more time) but the whole idea of that command calling my HA over the cloud and then HA eventually calling the device which is actually running in my home seems some what weird and counter productive to me and yes less secure as well.
I am pretty much on the same thoughts as you mentioned above and super optimistic about HA being that bridge, but yes I think waiting is the game here for now!!
Hi, sorry for bringing this topic back, and also with an off-stopic but its the only way I found right now to contact you RonzG,
I need help with my Shark robot, I cannot seem to conect it to the app I have been trying for a week now and have no luck, and after some research I think I found the problem in the CGNAT.
In your experience, could the CGNAT and therefore not been able to open the ports be the problem to my connection issue?
Thanks in advance, and once again sorry for writing this on this post.