Making Sure I Have This Right.... (HomeKit + Home Assistant Sharing Matters Device)

Configuration Matter/Thread
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Right I’m controlling my SmartWave motorized shades using my Apple TV as a hub for their matter motor.

Everything comes into HomeKit just find and I can automate them, etc.

I’d like to also be able to configure automations on these blinds from Home Assistant that I’m running on a local server.

I want to confirm that the Apply TV cannot be used as a matters hub for Home Assistant. It appears that I can’t pass though these devices from HomeKit to Home Assistant. Is this right?

I think what I need to do is buy a hub like the ‘Aqara Smart Home Hub M3’ to ‘co-control’ these matter motors, thus allowing me to control the shades both in HomeKit and HomeAssistant.

Am I thinking about this right?

Thanks!

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TL;DR: there is no passthrough, but there is a sharing capability for Matter devices so another hub is unnecessary.

To clarify some details first — “HomeKit” is a protocol, Apple changed the name of their ecosystem to “Apple Home” a few years ago, basically because it now supports two protocols, HomeKit and Matter, for control.

Matter specs say that a device, independent of its network connection (WiFi or Thread) can be controlled by one or more “fabrics” (controllers). Multiple fabrics can co-exist on the same IP network and not interfere. It’s not uncommon to have both an Apple fabric (provided by TV or HomePod) and a HA fabric (provided by the Matter Add-on).

A Matter device can be commissioned (“shared”) to both fabrics so they can both control and see updates. The two fabrics/controllers do not intercommunicate, they just share a network and a common end device. In Apple Home, open the device page and view the details to obtain a “sharing code” to add it to HA as well.

Again, this applies only to Matter devices. If your shades are using the HomeKit protocol to join Apple Home, then they are restricted to a single controller. If your shades hub is a bridge for (example) Zigbee, then there may be other restrictions.

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Thanks for the reply. I’m not seeing sharing options within Apple Home. I have found the option to set up a bridge between HA and Apple home (bringing my HA devices into Apple Home), but not the other way around.

The goal is to get the Apple Home Matter devices into HA.

What is the Matter Add-on? Is this hardware?

I do see this under HA Discovered:

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But it fails when I try to add.

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Add-ons are secondary servers for HA Operating System (HAOS). If you are running HAOS there is an add-on store.

The Matter docs have an entire section on how to enable the pairing code to share a device from one ecosystem into HA:

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Nice! Thank you for the info. This is how I got it to work for those searching in the future.

1.) Add Matter Addon by searching in servers UI App store… Sorry i had pictures but am limited to only one as a new user

2.) HA > Settings > Devices & Services > Devices > Add Device > Add Matter device

3.) Proceed>Submit>Finish

4.) Add Device > Add Matter device > Yes. It’s already in use > Apple Home… then follow instructions

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Thank you so much! I was looking everywhere for this as a newbie.

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thanks for sharing your solution, you may also want to mark your post ‘as the solution’ to further help future users.