I have Home Assistant running on a docker container on my Sinology NAS. So far it’s been running well and I’ve been able to connect most of my devices without too much issue. My goal is to have HA have everything connected and be my central point for automations. Then I plan to push out a limited number of device types to Apple Home so that my family can manage basic things light lights, locks, etc. without having the clutter of every random thing I have connected in HA.
I recently bought some Onvis smart outlets, they’re Matter and Thread compatible. I am having trouble adding them to HA. I read that HA can make use of an existing Matter and Thread router. I connected one of them to Apple Home directly. I used an Apple TV as my HomeKit Hub. After doing this, HA detected Matter and Thread. When I went to configure them I was able to figure out how to set my preferred Thread border router to use the Apple TV one.
The Matter configuration however is giving me trouble. I was under the impression that HA supported using 3rd parties for both Matter and Thread (like I mentioned doing with Thread). When I go to configure Matter, the only option I have is to set a URL. I used a network discovery tool on my Mac and I see the matter._tcp item, which shows an IP address of the Apple TV with a port number. If I enter this into the HA configuration for the URL it gives me an error that it failed to connect.
Am I misinterpreting this approach and trying to do something that isn’t supported? Do I still need that HA Matter server install instead?
Thanks in advance!