State of Matter v Google Matter v Local Voice

Configuration Matter/Thread
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1

Was buying some new devices and matter was a choice so started reading about it.

Is there a good document that gives the current positioning of Home Assistant’s matter support, Home Assistants efforts at their own voice products, Google’s announcements of Google home/nest devices as matter controllers including local control, etc?

I can find lots of detail about individual pieces, e.g. exposing HA devices as matter devices, but is there something that lays out an expected roadmap of where all this is going.

As a simple example - I’ve been planning on eventually replacing my Goggle mini/home/max devices with HA voice devices for local voice control, once a tad more mature. Is that becoming moot?

Should I just wait a bit and magic will happen and I will have local voice control with existing devices?

Does all this mean that nabu casa subscription will become moot? How will we support HA then, just leave the subscription and not use it? (This presumes one, as I do, uses it only for voice control from google).

Has there been a ‘state of the matter’ document somewhere with HA viewpoint?

Linwood

2

Hi,

You are asking too many questions about too broad an area to give an all encompasisng answer.

  • Many Matter hardware manufacturers use HA’s Matter support to test their devices as HA gets the latest spec updates so quickly.
    Yes, really.
  • Google voice devices used to be able to answer wide-ranging questions, but now, pre-Gemini, my Nest Max / Hub 2 are dumb as rocks. No, I’m not paying Slurp even more (Google One customer) for non-functional replacements for launch features.
    The NC Voice Preview hardware can switch devices, give a weather forecast, and set timers. No pretty graphics for “Cake Timer”, but works as well for me.
  • Don’t replace the Next Hubs - you can ChromeCast HA pages to the screens - yes, full HA touch control on a Google device. Voice notifications, video, all works.

State of Matter? Dunno - there are some NC blog posts when Paulus and Andre presented to the Connectivity Standards Alliance, but that’s about it.

If this helps, :heart: this post!

3

That’s why I was asking if there was a HA generated white paper or similar.

Thanks for your contributions to an answer though. I don’t have any hubs, but a speaker of one flavor or another in every room. Right now I get voice control of HA through nabu casa through them. It works reasonably well.

4

Sorry, this is off topic but it will be brief. Your Google assistant devices with screens actually work well when a Hass dashboard is cast to them? No recasting issues or drop outs and stuttering?

Do you use the Hass casting setup or something like CCD (continuously casting dashboards)?

Sorry for being off topic but I am fascinated to know that casting dashboards is a good experience for someone.

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Ish…

I can manually use the Media interface to Chromecast HA tabs or camera feeds to a Nest Hub Max. Works fine (wow!), but I can’t work out how to programmatically trigger the casting.

So, works, is magic (not just images but full GUI - wow!), but I can’t replace a voice notification of “the doorbell has been pressed” with a live video feed as I just can’t work out the YAML foo to do it automatically.

Probably works well, but not something I could work out (HA user of 4 years, C.Eng, openHAB, MisterHouse, and custom automation hardware since 1998).

TBH, the Google Nest Hubs are more used for YT video Chromecasting as Google has decided that every other feature is DEAD because AI. Press pause, and Google gets amnesia and dumps you to the weather frog so not a HA issue.

Anything beyond weather and timers was broken in 2023 by Google. Why they pay product managers on changes is beyond me! Everything breaks in new innovative ways.

Ironically, the Nabu Casa voice preview device just does switching, weather and timers so feature parity.

Matter hardware is happening slower than I’d hoped but as a solutions architect, I have an analysis post on the market and comparative protocols elsewhere on this forum…

Matter does work well in HA, and is probably better than any other platform (Sonoff Mini4RM is excellent as an implant).

Not tried Thread, but my strategy is to rip and replace ZigBee with Thread when kit arrives as the protocol is superior (multiple TBR). Just not quite yet.

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Any chance of a link?

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Ah, the legendary Google product sacrifice cycle.

Can’t get promo if not launch new product. Can’t release new product if old product good and functioning with happy users → Must kill old product to get promo.

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8

Hi,
The analysis is from 2022:

  • Getting both Zigbee and Thead on one SilLabs radio proved too hard - one IEEE 802.15.4 stack, but suspect meeting higher-level timings to TWO protocols proved too much for one TX/ RX bandwidth.

  • Matter is starting to make it to shops, but FAANG companies still like lock-in so Matter 1.4 had to make it explicit that open interoperability is required. It looks like Google got the memo.

  • It appears Matter & Thread may be stuck in the middle:

    • High-end goods are getting Matter (washing machines, refrigerators) to avoid the long-term costs of private cloud infrastructure (exactly as designed).

    • Low-end goods may have too little margin for many brands, but the security hardware needed means Zigbee (and Tyua white-label) is still cheaper so still not Thread. Espressif keeps bringing out cheaper ESP32 variants, so this will likely equalise.

  • Matter does work, and I have deployed devices in 2025. The biggest selling point now is the ability to use Google/ Apple/ Amazon today, but move to Home Assistant or another platform tomorrow without pain. Matter kit is ideal for relatives who want some tech, but you don’t want to have to deploy and manage HA for them (even a NC Green needs some sysadmin).

  • Z-Wave LR seems weird to me - longer range, but not mesh, and no sign of the multiple gateway support that Thread has (e.g. several TBR giving full coverage). Feels like a hail mary for specific industrial customers (building automation or like LoRA?) rather than a consumer product. It’s from the same SilLabs that locked up Z-Wave for years, so hard to say if they can get partners to make LR compete with Thread (battery life?).

If this helps, :heart: this post!

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9

Sooo, given the recent news of Google going all in on matter support on their Hubs, anyone here with some insightful remarks? (I don’t see the full consequences of this announcement. Yet.)

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Many Nest Hubs are already Thread Border Routers, so the addition of local Matter control just lowers the latency of touch-screen dashboard to control Matter devices (hub->device, not hub->cloud->device).

Voice control won’t change much as the larger latency of shipping voice to the cloud for recognition means cloud back to local Matter doesn’t make any difference (think of the whole data path).

The API stuff looks more like Matter 1.4 inter-working which might make pairing / sharing devices slightly easier. Being able to write code to work with Google’s automation platform could help the Google integration (if individuals can get API keys without big barriers), but realistically, if you use HA your automations are going to be running in HA, not Google’s stack.

If this helps, :heart: this post!

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