[Help] I don't know what's the "matter" (TP light matter setup)

Hello Home Assistant world.

I recently acquired some TP matter smart lights and wall plugs but I can’t set either up in Home Assistant. I’ll be upfront with saying I really don’t know what I’m doing and was rather hoping that matter would “just work” but there seems to be more to it. Each time I try to add either of the Matter devices it just gives a timeout saying it can’t find a Matter controller.

I’m running a ubiquity home network on its own IOT VLAN. And Home Assistant running on a Raspberry Pi 4b with the Matter integration added. From what I can see, Matter needs Bluetooth for the initial setup. So I put the home assistant app on my phone and connected to the local instance. That all works. But when I scan the QR code on the device it just times out.

I’ve attempted to research the issue but all the resources seem unrelated or too generic. So if y’all have any good troubleshooting steps I’m all ears!

Many thanks,
Alex

You Also need the “Matter-Add-On” to get your “Matter-Controller”

Got that part. It just seems like the devices can’t see the pi

Are the devices connected to your network at all ?, i doubt they will get an IP-number from from your PI

Agreed. All I’m doing is following the setup steps. I have a Pi running Home Assistant, the Home Assistant app on my phone. I go to add device → add matter device in the app. It pulls up the camera to scan the QR code and then…times out. I’m really lost on the troubleshooting steps here. Does matter pair to a single controller? I originally got 2 bulbs, I paired one with some random “AiDo” app that it recommended in the box. That worked. so I assumed that maybe the bulb would have to be factory reset to pare to another controller. (so to save myself the hassle I just used the unpaired bulb) same error. But, the fact I can control it with the other app is promising.

Well as it’s WIFI devices, i assume one have to first make sure that the device is on the same network, as when you pair a device through your phone (i.e both need to be on 2.4GHZ, and in the same “lan-segment”)
Before your device is “available” in your Router, i doubt that you can add it in HA, as Matter runs over IP

Copy. Let me adjust the IOT network to 2.4 GHz only and see if that sorts it. Maybe the phone is connected to the 5g and the bulb is confused by the combo network. I have seen that be the case for other 2.4GHZ Wi-Fi products. They are on the same Lan Segment (If by that you mean IP range and V-land) I’ll check when I get home.

That got it! I swapped the IOT network to 2.4GHZ only and ran a reset on the bulb for good measure and they are now all working in home assistant. Thank you!

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Please mark the answer to your solution as Solved, so others who search for same/similar issues might find it, so they dont need to open yet another, for the same problem

Done, Thanks again!