upstatemike

Is Hub Pro the same as PLM Pro? We don't really need a hub, just an updated PLM.

Z-Wave is widely available but so are Caseta and Hue... neither of which waste my time the way Z-Wave does. And Insteon is still working for me with plenty of second-hand stuff around so I'll probably continue to criticize Z-Wave (and Matter for that matter) in the hopes they will improve/introduce better products as a result.

Just one of the reasons I love Z-Wave so much!

If you enroll it on a battery and then apply AC after won't it still behave as a battery device? (ie not act as a repeater etc.)

This of course is one of the problems that Matter will solve once and for all.

I think I am going to give up on Z-Wave and return my small test area (about 20 devices) to Insteon. Z-Wave just consumes too much effort every time I want to change something and I still can't get groups and associations (direct or programmatic) to work the way I want them to.

I wonder what happens if an end point device supports Matter plus a legacy protocol? Will the Matter path always take priority? Will the device be clever enough to determine which path is more efficient (least latency)? Will this be yet another thing that is left up to the manufacturer so there is no way to predict what will happen?

So I was thinking a cool thing to roll out in conjunction with eisy would be a new Alexa skill that lets you configure eisy dashboards on any Echo Show. I already have tons of Echo Shows around my house so I'm not excited to use tablets or other screens for Dashboards... one screen per room is enough. I think something like this would get a lot of consumer attention.

Eve just released a new thread enabled motion sensor that is supposed to operate lights in a scene instantly. Waiting for somebody here to get one and confirm that.

Who for all their market research still seem unable to grasp what users actually want from these products. I'll quit bashing Matter for now and wait until there are some actual products available to evaluate. I still might change my username to "antiMatter" though.

So if you buy a device it might follow the current Matter standard or it might work using legacy proprietary messages (buyer beware). Don't we already have that with Z-Wave and Zigbee so called standards? What was the point of Matter again?

Which itself is a concern. We are into double overtime now for the published standard and we still only have vague marketing descriptions about what it will and will not include. There should be a Matter spokesman who can get down into the weeds about this stuff by this time but all we get are smoke and mirrors.

Happy to go back to talking about the latest communication from Inseon instead... If only there was one.

So a couple of things here: 1 I don't care if there is only 1 way to control light as long as "control" includes ramp rate, color or color temperature, behaviour in a scene, status reporting that the command was recieved and executed, etc. Who is deciding what "control" means and what needs to be included as part of the universal standard? 2 As many folks have noted on other threads, automation is not just about remote control but also about triggering things from current state, state change, manual vs programatic changes, multiple button presses and long vs short button presses. etc. Where is my assurance that all of that is part of the universal standard? 3 If manufacturers implement proprietry features without following a framework or standard then what prevents another manufacturer from implementing the same feature in a different proprietary way? At what point does Matter declare that function to be common enough that it should be part of the universal standard and how will thay walk back all that proprietary junk and force it to conform to the newly updated universal standard?

Only works if the manufacturers implement it. If Z-Wave used it I could probably live with that platform; but they don't and nobody else has stepped up to say "yes we know that this is important so we will make sure multicast control of groups is part of the most basic command set that will be required to be supported across all Matter products and manufacturers"... unless they did and I just missed it somehow.

So my take away from the above is: 1 I probably misused the term protocol when I should just say platform to identify a particular technology. 2 While it is possible for a routed technology to avoid the popcorn effect it would take some attention from the manufacturer to prioritize that and none have published any intent of addressing it. Insteon being a broadcast technology avoids the issue automatically. 3 Popcorn effect really really really sucks and we need better channels to communicate to manufacturers that fixing this is important. I suggest any device sold on Amazon deserves a question about smooth group actions to deliberately emabarrass any product manufacturer who did not make an effort to provide this in their offering. 4 Most of the benefits of Matter will only be realized when end point devices speak Matter natively (so plan to replace everything you have). The kluge of having a hub do translation is just a way to get by in the near term. 5 Products like Lutron, Insteon, Hue, Broadlink Fastcon. and Yolink LoRa, will do a bare minimum Matter integration to get the logo but will otherwise ignore it as it provides less advantages to consumers than the native versions of those products.

So my take away from this conversation is: 1. Matter will provide a common protocol where everything works together so the only differentiator from one product to the next will be price. So Amazon will simply provide cheaper matter devices than anyone else and will soon be the only source for IoT products. 2. The Matter protocol will emphasize security over performance so any group of lights will s l o w l y respond one by one like Z-Wave instead of simultaneously like Hue or Insteon or Lutron. 3. Matter will borrow heavily from Wi-Fi and Zigbee and therefore add congestion to the already overloaded 2.4GHz frequency range while sacrificing the longer range and better material penetration you get from 900MHz or 300MHz based products. I can't wait!

You are completely missing the point! Matter is going to be great because you don't need so many apps on your phone. You just add a new Matter device using any Matter compatible app and you will be able to configure all of the basic features (like really braindead basic). Of course if you want to adjust any of the advanced features (ie most of the features) you will still need to use the actual manufacturer app for that product... so skip over that one. But with Matter you won't need a hardware hub for each technology. You just need a Matter "Edge Router" (another name for a hub) to talk to all of your Matter devices. Of course some manufacturers won't put Matter in endpoint devices but will instead put Edge Router functionality into their own hub and let that translate to their native protocol which means you still need all your existing hubs in addition to the official Edge Router hub... so let's skip that one as well. But Matter will let you control things from multiple platforms at the same time! Imagine if you could control your Hue lights either from the Hue app OR by talking to Alexa... which is pretty much how it works now so skip that too. What was the point of Matter again?

That whole certificate discussion in the link was pretty interesting. I wonder if Caseta and RA3 will have to be 2 separate Node Servers?

I am kind of suprised everyone is looking at the GEM simply as an energy monitor. I use mine to trigger actions such as reminders that the oven is still on or that the dryer is finished. In fact I don't monitor anything at all, I use it exclusively for triggers.

How about video out to a status screen with audio used for local TTS announcements? I don't have much need for touch screen solutions but am always looking for an easy way to monitor some critical things and get alerts to critical situations.

GEM talks to Homeseer. Homeseer talks to ISY/Polisy. There is always a way.

I don't think about "dumping" Insteon, or any other technology, but rather about embracing the best technology currently available. Unfortunately I don't agree that Wi-Fi can make the claim of being the best because I don't think it is scalable, I don't think it offers good support for integration with other platforms (ie pressing a button on a Wi-Fi keypad to open your garage door or start your whole house music system), and I just don't agree that currently available Wi-Fi switches are particularly attractive when compared to the likes of Lutron, C4, and some Zigbee and Z-Wave offerings. I guess I'm saying I don't want to worry about what no longer works as much as I would like to find something that does. I love the simplicity of telling Alexa to turn on a Wi-Fi light switch but I can't live with Alexa routines that have no "OR" statements and I need switches and keypads that are as good at controlling other stuff as they are at being controlled from Alexa or some other controller.

I assume you mean the capability to support Matter... not the cabability to fix popcorn effect across platforms. That is something only a unifying protocol can do.

My thinking is that if Matter could eliminate the popcorn effect across platforms then they would be shouting it from the rooftops. It is never mentioned in any Matter feature discussion so it is a safe bet that Matter can't do anything to deal with it.