Light groups in Matter?

Configuration Matter/Thread
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Is it possible to create light groups in Matter? I can do this under ZigBee and this makes the group of bulbs work without the popcorn effect.

Is this also possible in Matter?

I currently use a helper group, with the effect that out of 6 bulbs, 2 come on immediately and the others follow bit by bit …

According to Matter releases there is something like “command batching” since Matter 1.3 … that would support HA.

Thanks for your help!

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There’s no groupcast for Matter yet in Home Assistant, it’s on the list of future features though: create groups · Issue #1071 · home-assistant-libs/python-matter-server · GitHub

“Command batching” is not useful for popcorn with native Matter over WiFi or Matter over Thread devices, that just allows sending multiple commands to one device, not one command to multiple devices. If any it’s useful for non-Matter bridged lights since it allows sending the bridge all the commands for individual lights in a single batch.

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Thank you very much!

Does that mean there is currently no way to avoid this popcorn effect?

I hope this feature will be added soon. :slight_smile:

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How bad is it? In terms of time, between the first light turning on and the last one, a second? More? It’s not that 6 lights is a lot.

Right now it sends the “on” command to each light one by one so you can only try to optimize the latencies in each step:

  • Hub: a slow or busy one will take more time to send the commands than a faster one.
  • Network: a crowded network or with interferences may take more time and retries to get the command from the hub to each light. Matter over WiFi lights may have an advantage when it comes to ensure similar latency for all of them, Matter over Thread depends on the paths of the mesh and the performance of the devices acting as routers.
  • Lights: even if the command arrived at the same time to all the lights, there could be subtle differences between brands, models and technologies.
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Thanks for your answer!

I use a Google TV Streamer as a thread border router. This is 6 meters away from the light bulbs. The bulbs are all from the same model/manufacturer (Aqara T2 RGB).

I have a total of 20 devices in the Thread network. 6 light bulbs and 14 Contact Sensors.

The latency when switching on is different. Now it was also partly imperceptible. Otherwise I would say the latency between first and last is a maximum of 2 seconds. Sounds like very little, but it’s still annoying :wink: Sorry, I’m a perfectionist. And with the ZigBee bulbs it always works without any problems - thanks to the group function.

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That’s expected then, if it was more there would be an issue somewhere. Native Matter groups will make a difference in your case when it gets implemented in HA. So far seems like no smart home platform supports them.

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