Ikea Matter devices - all a bit confusing

Configuration Matter/Thread
1

I decided to replace some of my wifi smart bulbs with either Zigbee or Matter over Thread. Saw the new Ikea Matter bulbs at very low prices, so I ordered some, along with a HA ZBT-2.

Plugged in the ZBT-2 and went through the setup.
Screwed in an Ikea E27 G95 close to the PC/ZBT, added it via the matter integration. Worked fine.
Added the other two G95 bulbs one at a time, again all worked perfectly.

I then tried a GU10 in the next room, kept failing to finish. Same with a ciuple of others, so I found a spare GU10 light fitting, added a mains cable, and plugged the bulbs in. Figured out how to put them into pairing mode, added again, and let each one uodate the firmware before movingvon to the next one.
I also added three Ikea smart plugs to act as routers as apparently Ikea bulbs are end devices only. Fitted the bulbs in place, all good.
I also got a couple of Ikea Bilresa switches, wh8ch I eventually managed to add and do the firmware updates.
All automations working fine, so I ordered some more bulbs to replace the remaining wufi bulbs. Big box arrived yesterday.

I added 7 more GU10 bulbs yesterday, all required a firmware update, which popped up on the screen as soon as the devices were added. All OK, put to one side to be fitted today.

This morning I added 6 more GU10, but none of them asked for a firmware update. Firmware status is showing as “Unknown”.
Looking at the bulbs, plugs and switches that I installed the other day, all but 4 are now showing “firmware unknown”. History shows they all went “unknown” at random times overnight. All the devices are working perfectly though.
The 4 devices that are showing “firmware up to date” didn’t go unavailable in History.

I tried the obvious things like rebooting the PC (bare metal HAOS) and updating the Matter add-on.

Any ideas?

2

I think this might be normal. The reporting interval for the firmware version might be quite long. I’ve seen devices that report less than once per day. “Unknown” means the device has not reported a firmware version yet.

Look to see if the reporting interval for firmware is exposed as an entity.

Sorry, I don’t have any Ikea bulbs, so I can only offer generic advice.

3

Someone on another group explained how the firmware gets “pushed” by the matter server, and sometimes the HA integration does it, sometimes it doesn’t. He recommended that I try the beta version of the Matter Server app. That includes a button to force a firmware update, as well as a reasonable visualisation of the Thread network.
The firmware update function works flawlessly.
The visualisation is very confusing, as the mesh is more like a random plate of spaghetti! A lot of useful info though, once I’d figured out what I was looking at.
One downside is it only shows Node numbers and device type, so needs cross-referencing to the Matter device list to figure out what device you are looking at.
It’s helping me to reduce the number of weak links though and create a “stronger” mesh.

4

In Matter.js UI you can go to the device, then its Endpoint0 and then BasicInfo and you will see a box called “Node Label”. Here you can type in a text string for the device that is then used in the visual map. This string is actually stored on the device and unfortunately doesn’t always persist, but it helps a lot for the map.