Nabu Casa at the Matter Member Meeting

I imagine “disabled” just means you’re not setting a static address or using RA to find one. It would still have a link-local IPv6 address which is what it would be using to talk to Matter devices.

I thought ip6 disabled means ip6 disabled! Ip6 is also disabled on my router too! I guess this just means I have a lot to learn!

Yes, once we’re certified we will be added to DCL. Until then you will only see some numbers in those listings (our vendor id)

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Correct! By default Matter devices use Link local IPv6 so completely independent of your (layer 3) network. Only if you have an actual IPv6 infrastructure set-up, some devices (not all) will also get an IP address from your ISP or router.

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Great information, thank you. Is there any information when energy power monitoring will become part of the Matter Standard?

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I recently migrated from a Apple Home network with ~30 thread devices (mostly Eve and Nanoleaf) to HA. Thread was terribly instable with everything on the Apple thread network until I created a new Thread network using SkyConnect in HA and migrated all devices to it. It is better but still devices go offline from time to time and on each HA reboot the integration fails for a few devices, forcing me to manually relaunch the integration for these devices until they work. With that experience, there are a couple of issues that need to be solved:

  • Pairing a matter device to a thread network created by HA currently has no UI in HA, forcing us to use JS code in the browser console to run a WebSocket connection to the thread border router, see this post. This is neither documented nor usable. You cannot expect anyone to go this route when purchasing a e.g. Nanoleaf Thread light bulb.
  • Displaying a thread/matter network with link qualities visually should be possible in HA, similar to the network map in Zigbee2MQTT.
  • HA should have a network analysis as choosing channels is an issue when you also run a Zigbee network, another Thread network,…
  • I wish I could let my existing Apple devices join the thread network that is managed and created by HA/SkyConnect/OTBR as additional border routers. Currently they sit in their otherwise empty network.
  • iOS apps like from Eve and Nanoleaf should be able to access the HA OTBR thread network, currently they only search for their devices in the Apple Thread network, so any matter device that joins a OTBR thread network is invisible to them.
  • I’m hoping for cheap border routers that one can easily add to an existing setup to increase range and stability and the single point of failure.

Thread is a visionary idea but its implementation is still not stable and complete, which is why I decided not to buy any more Matter devices but only Zigbee devices. But as I don’t want to throw out the 30 homekit/threat/matter devices I own, I hope for quick improvements.

PS: Eve recently delayed their Matter firmware for many devices by a month or so, so it’s not just HA but other companies being frustrated/challenged with Matter too.

My Skyconnect stays in it’s box until I can join matter thread networks together. I refuse to have six distinct meshes.

That isn’t HAs fault unfortunately - kind of wish it was at least we could file a bug and get a fix. The HA matter team is remarkably responsive.

I put it at the hands of certain vendors who have thier own ideas about key sharing and Marcel - that’s what I see needs to be fixed. The end user experience on cross fabric sharing and commissioning is completely broken until everyone shares the creds. I can’t even imagine explaining to my mom ok do this unless you use this phone and have that smart speaker then you have to… No. Just no it’s supposed to fix all that. And IMHO it got worse

No matter for me until that happens.

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I had remote access fully working without Home Assistant Cloud but decided to subscribe anyway to help fund your great work, keep it up :slight_smile:

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Windows, for sensors like this one: https://de.elv.com/elv-homematic-ip-arr-bausatz-fenstergriffsensor-hmip-srh-fuer-smart-home-hausautomation-152133

Same here!

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Is there a plan to implement the matter server into core or will it always run as a container?
Advantages:
a) Easier for beginners
b) Supports all installation methods

I checked out other open source smart home projects, where it seems they go a route without container.

I started with HA around v0.25. While I briefly held of on moving into containers, the move to an environment based on containers with the supervisor module has made my life so much easier and more stable.

When buying a matter device from a company, do they sell a hub as well and if so, do you need that specific hub?

I imagine a world where home Assistent is the hub and you do not need to have others (at least for matter).
Is this achievable?

This would enable true HA - High Availability, when multiple remote border routers are connected to sync’ed Home Assistsnt instances.
Difficult to do now with Zigbee / Zwave.

Well, it should be in the next release (march/april 2024) but it might not make it and then it will be moved to the next one. But I have high hopes it will make it to the upcoming 1.3 release. But then we’ll have to see if vendors are going to push firmware updates to update their existing devices to use the official cluster(s) for energy monitoring. So realistically it might take something like about a year before this is actually available.

Now, let’s hope we can do a few more custom implementations like we did with Eve to fill the gap in between.

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Using existing Apple Border routers is actually the most stable Thread network you can get at the moment so your experience is somewhat weird.

Using Home Assistant as Thread Border router is not yet available (and highly experimental as you have experienced) so you shouldn’t start using it in the first place until it is ready. We have still so many things to do to finish that, like creating UI, work out the issues with Bluetooth, etc. etc.

So my advice would actually be to go back to the Apple Thread network because that should give a stable experience.

At least… if you do not add any Nanoleaf devices to the Thread mesh. Those devices have buggy firmware at the moment and your entire thread mesh becomes very unstable because of that. At the moment I just advise everybody to remove (or not add) Nanoleaf Thread devices until the new 3.6 firmware is released.

Remember that Matter has just been released a year ago, it will need a few years to mature. Until than do not expect wonders but what I can tell is that development is going REALLY fast because the big tech companies are so heavily investing in it.
So I don’t think its going to take 10 years to mature/stabilize like Z-Wave and Zigbee but more like 2 or 3 years.

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Well, it is just a matter of time until this is going to be fixed, this has high priority all over the industry. I’m optimistic :wink:

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Probably it was so terribly instable as I joined SkyConnect OTBR to the existing Apple based Thread network, and also I was using the SkyConnect in multiprotocol mode and ran ZHA on it too. I later purchased an additional radio and migrated ZHA to Z2M, configured SkyConnect to thread only and created a new thread network (using a different channel), then migrating everything to this new thread network.

There was a reason though why I didn’t just disable thread on the SkyConnect and continue to use my HomePod mini as thread border router, but unfortunately I cannot remember what it was.

I have not yet seen those kind of sensors yet but pretty sure they will eventually be released. Many companies are working on Thread devices. I believe the member list of CSA is actually over 700 nowadays, most stepping in because of Matter.

I actually also have a couple of Homekit IP devices in my home, one of the most stable IOT devices I have ever seen/owned. Downside is that nowadays they also seem to have a focus on their cloud platform.

Yes, that is already working today with border routers from Apple and Google thanks to the technique called TREL. The traffic is load balanced between border routers in your home. Works rock solid and it can only become better once we’re able to just form one big thread network from BR’s of multiple vendors.

Also, keep an eye on companies like GL-Inet that are working on small, standalone Thread Border routers, based on OpenThread that you can spread around your house as alternative for the BR’s from the big tech companies.

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