I want to sincerely apologize to everyone for my previous post, which used a bit of a marketing tactic: raising an issue and then presenting a solution involving our product, hoping to draw attention to our brand. I understand now that this approach wasn’t the most transparent way to engage with the community. Moving forward, I want to be more straightforward—either genuinely discussing technical issues or, if relevant, advertising clearly (provided the moderators permit it). I owe a big “Sorry” to @FloatingBoater and others who engaged honestly.
To be candid, we are a new brand in the North American market, selling Zigbee + Matter smart lights on Amazon. After certifying our Matter Bridge product last year, we hoped to leverage the Matter buzz to quickly gain market traction. Unfortunately, it hasn’t played out that way. We found that consumer awareness and acceptance of Matter aren’t where we thought they would be, and the Matter experience still has challenges that need to be addressed.
However, we did notice that many of our customers come from the Home Assistant ecosystem. As we explored HA, we became increasingly excited about its possibilities, particularly as the Matter server component evolved. It felt like we were on the right path.
Yet, we are still newcomers to HA, and a big question remained for us: Does our Matter Bridge make sense within the HA ecosystem? Our lights work seamlessly with HA, without needing any code modifications—which was a pleasant surprise (kudos to Koenkk!). This made us wonder if selling just Zigbee lights without a Matter Bridge would be enough.
Previously, I posted about a supposed issue of Get 50+ Free Zigbee Lights for Testing Whole-Home Matter-Compatible Lighting with Home Assistant! The idea behind that post was to find real users in the U.S. who might be facing such an issue and provide them with 100 lights for free, in exchange for helping us validate the problem and potential solutions. But we haven’t found many users facing such a large-scale scenario—we’ve only found one volunteer so far, and they only have 15 lights in their home.
This was a bit disappointing! Later, I saw the linked YouTube video, which showed that some people were indeed facing similar issues, but they opted for a ZigStar gateway (I should clarify here: the user actually mentioned an SMLight gateway. My experiments used a UZG-01 gateway, which I believe uses the same open-source software as ZigStar). I did encounter the exact two issues mentioned—cross-router problems and failed device addition when Wi-Fi was enabled—but I didn’t delve deeply into why, and for that, I apologize again. My comments on the ZigStar and SMLight solutions were not rigorously supported, and I should not have casually criticized them.
Regarding my remarks on ‘device compatibility,’ I was referring to prior issues we had when integrating third-party devices with our gateway. These issues involved different chips and protocol stack routing, and were not meant to imply that HA + Z2M necessarily has similar issues. This was my oversight, and I’m sincerely sorry for not making that clearer.
I have also removed the purchasing link from my original post. I realize that it was inappropriate in this context. I do, however, want to respond to ShadowFist’s comment on the pricing of ‘our solution.’ We are not currently selling the Matter Bridge separately because it does not have the versatility of Z2M in supporting a wide range of Zigbee devices, particularly non-certified ones. Our current package costs $249 and includes 12 lights, a dimmer switch, and a Matter Bridge—effectively making the Matter Bridge free when compared to similar market offerings. The current Matter Bridge is Linux-based, which contributes to its cost. We are working on a more cost-effective RTOS-based version and conducting market research to ensure we are headed in the right direction. Recent posts were not so much about pushing products but about gathering genuine user insights.
Thank you, @ShadowFist , for patiently pointing out my mistakes. Your feedback has been very objective and constructive. It helped me understand how to be more honest and effective in my communication with the HA community. I am still relatively new to HA—I’ve only been exploring it seriously for the past six months, but I’ve migrated my whole home setup to HA and find myself falling in love with the platform, especially given the supportive and knowledgeable community here. @James, I also appreciate you pointing me to @Hedda’s detailed posts—they were immensely helpful. I hope, in time, I can contribute meaningfully to HA as well.
Finally, if no one objects, I’d still like to continue the discussion on the ‘manufactured issue’ of multi-Zigbee network cascading. If there truly is a need for cascading multiple Zigbee sub-networks, setting up multiple Z2M instances might not be user-friendly for the average consumer. What are your thoughts on this?
Again, I’m open to constructive criticism and appreciate the patience everyone has shown.