bruceyeg

I'm keenly interested in the new Matter devices and protocols. However, on reading through this forum, I see that few people realize that Matter devices don't run on WiFi. Instead, they have their own thread based mesh network which accesses your LAN through the thread network's border router. Much of the thread traffic might not appear on your LAN. If it does appear on your LAN, it might only be one group of matter devices in one thread subnet talking to another group of matter devices in another thread subnet using communication between the 2 thread subnetworks using their border routers. Matter devices have IPv6 addresses. There are only about 4 billion possible IPv4 addresses, which is only enough to provide 1 IP address for half the population on the planet. However, IPv6 provides about 32000 IP addresses for every human. This means that Matter devices can communicate through your router to the WAN without network address translation. They need to be extremely secure, and the Matter spec allows the firmware to be updated remotely and automatically as soon as a security exploit is discovered. Matter is currently being implemented only for devices and situations with low data rates. Zigbee is now part of Matter, so it will turn lights on and off. Matter can control door locks, thermostats and control TV's. It is being used to synchronize Google's Nest Audio devices and in this situation is works the same way Sonos does when Sonos synchronizes its speakers using SonosNet. Matter is also in networking equipment such as mesh routers and switches. If you are watching video from the cloud in several locations in your home, on a normal LAN all the packets for all your video streams would be visible everywhere on your LAN. Matter solves this problem. I believe it can manage your mesh routers and switches to utilize your LAN efficiently so that packets are sent where they are needed and not everywhere on your LAN. Matter devices have standardized APIs that will be supported by about 100 companies that support Matter. The list of companies includes Google, Apple, Samsung and many others. People can go to Best Buy and just look for the Matter logo on a product and know that it will work with almost everything. Now to my situation. I have 2 Ethernet LANs with mesh routers. On these I have about 120 devices including 13 cameras, 50 Google devices, over 20 Sonos speakers and much more. So I am really happy to have my other 250 devices such as light switches, HVAC, irrigation, etc on INSTEON. I couldn't add these 250 devices to my LANs that already have 120 devices. However, INSTEON has its problems, such as keeping RF noise out of my electrical wiring. Ultimately, I would like to replace all my INSTEON devices with Matter devices. Moreover, Matter will support door locks, which I can currently not controlling with my ISY. I've thought about how the ISY could work with Matter and here are 3 possibilities. (1) The ISY supports Zigbee, and Zigbee is now part of Matter. The ISY has a Zigbee radio so it could communicate with Matter devices using their IPv6 addresses. This would almost certainly require a firmware update in the ISY's Zigbee radio. I don't use Zigbee and don't know much about it, so I'm wondering if the Zigbee radio chip can be updated in this way. (2) People who use Home Assistant and Open HAB are very keen on connecting to Matter devices. Suppose they succeed in getting software running on their Linux systems that can talk to Matter devices using their IPv6 addresses. Then it should be possible to put the same software on the POLISY and connect the matter devices to the virtual node server framework. Then a Matter node with your Matter devices should appear on the ISY. (3) We (or rather I) don't know if interacting with Matter devices using the IPv6 address has all the capabilities that would be available if the POLISY could talk to Matter devices directly using Thread. I think there are going to be devices with a thread radio that could be used to build a POLISY. Maybe there will be a RaspPi with a tread radio. I think people using HA or OpenHAB will probably start using these before we will. However, whatever software is developed, it should run on the POLISY and we ISY fans should be able to interact with Matter devices. In my case, as INSTEON slowly dies, I'd like to swap all my INSTEON devices for Matter devices and continue to run my smart home with my ISY. The questions I'm most interested in having an answer to in this forum are (1) is UDI thinking about whether or how the Zigbee radio can work with Matter, and (2) are any of you POLISY developers interested in getting the Matter software running on the POLISY.