One of my HA goals is to have a house that still works as expected if I get hit by a truck or sell the house or my FIOS Internet connection goes South.
When Matter was announced, it sounded like it would check all the boxes. It sounded like I could install a Matter light switch and a matter light bulb and get the switch to control the light without any other service running as long as the local network was up. And I wouldn’t need a new app for every brand (I’m at 14 now).
Now the questions:
Is Matter still the best path to a resilient smart home?
I did the work to learn the IPv6 basics, but even with a dual-homed HA instance, VLANs seem to break things. Should I delete my iot VLAN and revert to a flat network?
Is it time to start replacing all the smart bulbs and light switches and plugs with the Matter versions, or are we not there yet?
Funny, I have had similar thoughts. I came to the conclusion that if I ever get hit by a truck, my wife is just going to have to hire an electrician to undo everything I’ve done and make everything in this house dumb again.
Matter is still a young protocol, and needs a LOT of development.
If you look at the Inovelli forums for their new White Series Thread/Matter switches, almost none of the fancy stuff that’s in their Z-Wave and Zigbee offerings is supported under the Matter protocols yet. Even worse, they claim that not one single HA platform can perform Matter bindings between switches and Thread/Matter devices today. Also, Apple’s support of the standard is a source of quirky complaints like random endpoint device indexes being assigned when a new switch is added, if that was your post-demise backup plan…
Almost the same here. We have various components in the house (window shutters; lights; thermostats etc) each with their own remote controls and/or apps.
HA runs on a Mac Mini, and brings all these together with automations and scenes.
I have shown my wife which plug to pull (the one from the Mac Mini) so that everything goes back to the way it was before I put in HA
But devices that function without app or HAi.
If you can throw your HA server out the window and still use the device without compromise, that’s the path to follow
The best solution is to make sure everything still works in “dumb” mode.
For example, instead of binding a “smart” switch to a “smart” light, just use a normal wall switch wired to the light. If you want to automate it, stick something like a SONOFF ZBMini in the switch box. Now the switch works normally, but can also be controlled through HA (or whatever.)
MUST work as intended without internet connectivity, or controller software (internet and HA full outage)
-or-
Its not critical and we can withstand it.
In practice.
Smart bulbs ONLY for accent lighting in places where the switches are easily accessible and turn on white by default if manually switched. (if the internet goes out my wife can still turn on the table lamp where she reads.
All other lighting controls are done at the switch.
Switches are all using a protocol that does not restrict the from doing thier basic job with no network (mostly ZWave but in this case doesn’t matter the protocol - if the network is down it still switches or dims locally at the switch. We just lost the smarts.)
Same with alarm same with water sensing and shutoff.
HA just adds coordination and control over the top of that.
Because if I get hit by that truck the house continues to work no problem.Things like the robovac don’t work in this situation but honestly I’ll live if Rosie doesn’t mop the floor for a few days.
Someone mentioned selling the home. - that’s a different story. Under no circumstances am I handing over a built HA install (or smartthings or any home automation platform) without factory reset. It’s a massive security issue for both the prior and new owner if you don’t reset (just have a look how many secrets HA stores for other platforms) but It’s out of scope for this conversation - I do have a packet with instructions on how to do the reset in a known location.
We got hammered in the Texas snowmageddon event a few years ago. When we had generator or battery power we still had lights we could control and took no intervention because everything was designed to be resilient and disconnected.
We’re my HA logs pissed when everything came back you bet. But the home kept working and I did t have to babysit HA. None of this is due to what protocol I picked. It’s design of the devices and ensuring your design philosophy accounts for your ‘I may get hit by a bus’ philosophy.