Can Polisy + ZMatter expose Insteon (via PLM) lighting as Matter devices?

[zmarty]

I would like for other Matter devices to see my Insteon lights as Matter, can Polisy + ZMatter do that?

Bonus question: If yes, what about X-way light switches?

[lilyoyo1]

10 hours ago, zmarty said:

I would like for other Matter devices to see my Insteon lights as Matter, can Polisy + ZMatter do that?

Bonus question: If yes, what about X-way light switches?

No one can answer that since matter isn't out yet. Based on what matter claims then yes. What reality is could be different. 

[zmarty]

27 minutes ago, lilyoyo1 said:

No one can answer that since matter isn't out yet. Based on what matter claims then yes. What reality is could be different. 

New smart home standard Matter is finally officially official with 190 certified devices

https://www.androidpolice.com/matter-official-amsterdam-launch-event/

Maybe @Michel Kohanim knows?

[lilyoyo1]

41 minutes ago, zmarty said:

New smart home standard Matter is finally officially official with 190 certified devices

https://www.androidpolice.com/matter-official-amsterdam-launch-event/

Maybe @Michel Kohanim knows?

A press release has nothing to do with how something will work in real life. The same stuff was claimed with homekit and we see how that went once actually released. 

Michel has already answered with the same  response to the other times this question has been asked.

[Goose66]

I assume you are asking whether the ISY will act as a bridge for Matter to Insteon devices.

I suspect at least a first iteration will likely provide access from the ISY to Matter-compliant devices over Ethernet/Wi-fi and Thread (IEEE 802.15.4). Integration and interoperability between Insteon devices, ZWave devices, and Matter devices would be through ISY scenes and programs.

A hub to bridge Insteon and ZWave devices to other Matter-compliant controllers and devices may be out-of-scope for UDI, since they aren’t really the keeper of these mesh standards. That said, at least for Insteon, if UDI doesn’t do it, I doubt it will ever be done.

Edited November 6, 2022 by Goose66

[Bumbershoot]

1 hour ago, Goose66 said:

That said, at least for Insteon, if UDI doesn’t do it, I doubt it will ever be done.

Ken Fairbanks, in the Insteon Webinar on 11/04 indicated that Matter support is very much on the radar for Insteon.  I'll believe it when I see it.

[larryllix]

My forecast is after all the dust settles, most of the excitement will have been for nothing and we will have another count in the already 1234 protocols.

Hopefully, this is not what happens but we have been here so many times before. You will never get three companies to agree on a protocol or protocol implementation and the home automation field is getting so broad there will always have to be "special cases" built into the protocol. That will end up making 200 implementations of the same protocol that only talk to each other on Feb 29th each year.

Gawd, I hope I am wrong on this one.

[MrBill]

46 minutes ago, Bumbershoot said:

Ken Fairbanks, in the Insteon Webinar on 11/04 indicated that Matter support is very much on the radar for Insteon.  I'll believe it when I see it.

like the article someone else linked (The Verge perhaps) points out, hubs will very much be part of our lives for years to come.  Those hubs, like hue has already done, will support matter to bring the devices into the ecosystem.  That's the first place you'll see it with insteon... in the hub.  After some time (a few years probably) you'll start to see more device centric matter.   yep i didn't capitalize matter because I don't think it matters, but I'm not anti-matter like some seem to be.

[Goose66]

2 hours ago, MrBill said:

like the article someone else linked (The Verge perhaps) points out, hubs will very much be part of our lives for years to come.  Those hubs, like hue has already done, will support matter to bring the devices into the ecosystem.  That's the first place you'll see it with insteon... in the hub…

Which may leave us ISY/Insteon users out in the cold since the ISY bypasses the hub and goes straight to the device through the PLM. So either UDI implements bridge logic (which I don’t see happening) or IDI migrates away from “native” Insteon support in the ISY to support through the Insteon Hub (perhaps via a node server), and I don’t see the latter happening (nor do I want it to happen) until Smarthome offers a local, two-way API to the hub.

[MrBill]

11 minutes ago, Goose66 said:

Which may leave us ISY/Insteon users out in the cold since the ISY bypasses the hub and goes straight to the device through the PLM. So either UDI implements bridge logic (which I don’t see happening) or IDI migrates away from “native” Insteon support in the ISY to support through the Insteon Hub (perhaps via a node server), and I don’t see the latter happening (nor do I want it to happen) until Smarthome offers a local, two-way API to the hub.

The alternative for "native" support is going to be replacing all switches... which i will never do.

... unless of course I win powerball tomorrow night....

[oberkc]

4 hours ago, larryllix said:

Gawd, I hope I am wrong on this one.

I, too, hope you are wrong.

26 minutes ago, Goose66 said:

Which may leave us ISY/Insteon users out in the cold since

My memory may have failed me, but I thought that was the intention of the EISY and matter board for the Polisy?

[lilyoyo1]

54 minutes ago, Goose66 said:

Which may leave us ISY/Insteon users out in the cold since the ISY bypasses the hub and goes straight to the device through the PLM. So either UDI implements bridge logic (which I don’t see happening) or IDI migrates away from “native” Insteon support in the ISY to support through the Insteon Hub (perhaps via a node server), and I don’t see the latter happening (nor do I want it to happen) until Smarthome offers a local, two-way API to the hub.

That's what the Matter/zwave board is for. In essence, the Isy/polisy is a hub. Using the matter board with polisy/eisy, you'll be able to take advantage of what matter has to offer (depending on how everyone designs their system around matter).

Insteon is creating their new hub for Matter to be used for their own ecosystem. No different than current UDI users being able to use Alexa/Google withouut the insteon hub

[Geddy]

10 hours ago, zmarty said:

New smart home standard Matter is finally officially official with 190 certified devices

Read ALL the words in the link you provided. Don't believe what you think you read...

Quote

"The alliance also boasts that in this timeframe, there are now 190 certifications in progress or finished for new products."

This doesn't mean there's 190 devices out in the wild now that are "matter certified". There might be a few, but I'd hazard to guess that 99% are still being developed to hopefully be certified and most of this 190 are probably still being tested for certification. So...don't believe the hype. It's just released. You can't expect everybody to have an answer right away. Even Hue said it would be early 2023 before they'd start rolling out updates to their hubs to be able to "talk/work' with Matter. 

It's still way to early to tell. 

Besides, who is ready to run out and spend a ton of money to replace stuff that's probably working fine just to work with a new made up "Standard"? Sure, if you've broke stuff you need to replace it might be nice to get something a little future proof, but if not...why worry about it?

I think the biggest thing is NOBODY really understands what Matter is and too many are using it as a buzz word to suddenly think everything can talk to everything. Sure, somewhere down the road maybe that's what it means, but now...life as usual for most of us. Good luck to the poor saps on the bleeding edge of technology wanting to have stuff work to be let down when it's really not much better than they already have. 

Just my 2¢ (with inflation is probably worth less than 1¢ these days)

 

[larryllix]

This doesn't mean there's 190 devices out in the wild now that are "matter certified". There might be a few, but I'd hazard to guess that 99% are still being developed to hopefully be certified and most of this 190 are probably still being tested for certification. So...don't believe the hype. It's just released. You can't expect everybody to have an answer right away. Even Hue said it would be early 2023 before they'd start rolling out updates to their hubs to be able to "talk/work' with Matter. 
It's still way to early to tell. 
Besides, who is ready to run out and spend a ton of money to replace stuff that's probably working fine just to work with a new made up "Standard"? Sure, if you've broke stuff you need to replace it might be nice to get something a little future proof, but if not...why worry about it?
I think the biggest thing is NOBODY really understands what Matter is and too many are using it as a buzz word to suddenly think everything can talk to everything. Sure, somewhere down the road maybe that's what it means, but now...life as usual for most of us. Good luck to the poor saps on the bleeding edge of technology wanting to have stuff work to be let down when it's really not much better than they already have. 
Just my 2¢ (with inflation is probably worth less than 1¢ these days)
 

...but I was hoping my camera would talk to my light bulbs.

Nicely posted.

Sent from my SM-G781W using Tapatalk

[Goose66]

3 hours ago, lilyoyo1 said:

That's what the Matter/zwave board is for. In essence, the Isy/polisy is a hub. Using the matter board with polisy/eisy, you'll be able to take advantage of what matter has to offer (depending on how everyone designs their system around matter).

So you are saying adding the Matter/Zwave board to your ISY will allow the ISY to act as a Matter-> Insteon bridge so that Matter-compliant controllers and devices to integrate with Insteon devices controlled by the ISY? Can you point me to that information? Not trying to be argumentative - actually very interested in reading about that capability.

Edited November 7, 2022 by Goose66

[lilyoyo1]

11 minutes ago, Goose66 said:

So you are saying adding the Matter/Zwave board to your ISY will allow the ISY to act as a Matter-> Insteon bridge so that Matter-compliant controllers and devices to integrate with Insteon devices controlled by the ISY? Can you point me to that information? Not trying to be argumentative - actually very interested in reading about that capability.

I cannot. There's been numerous threads over the past 6 months or so about it. Too much to take the time to dig through for specific information. UDI chose the path that they did to enable future matter support. If everything and everyone does what matter claims then there will be cross communication. No difference with how I stein devices can work with voice assistants without using an insteon hub. 

As I stated earlier, no one knows exactly how matter will work so no one can say what exactly will happen. It could be a situation like homekit where apple created an ecosystem that had certain capabilities but most manufacturers did not take advantage of it. Until it's released And UDIs board is finalized, how everything will interact together is up in the air. 

[Geddy]

19 minutes ago, Goose66 said:

Can you point me to that information?

Not specific to your thought of how it would work, but here's what UDI posted about the new board back in July. Read through that.

The way I interpret this is that the matter/zwave board would be able to talk to other matter certified devices. But again, having just been released who really knows (at least among us users) how and what will work?

The way I see it is that the Polisy/eisy would be able to control Matter while maintaining all the systems it controls now (either natively or through Node Servers). I don't know if some other controller would be able to talk to the Matter board on a Polisy to tell it to do something on the Insteon (or Node Server) side. We all would need more information from UDI on that regard.

 

 

 

 

[upstatemike]

Still confused about what Matter will do for me. If a Zigbee device and an Insteon device are connected to Polisy then they can interact with each other. If the Zigbee device adds Matter and Polisy is upgraded to support Matter then the Zigbee/Matter device can interact with the Insteon device... just the same as before Matter was added to the equation. 

I guess I need an example of the specific use case where Matter will let me do something that I could not do before.

[MrBill]

13 hours ago, upstatemike said:

Still confused about what Matter will do for me

Probably nothing... I don't think they are releasing a matter board for your stargate.

[upstatemike]

Stargate is the most reliable piece of automation hardware ever made... I would not want change that by adding Matter to it. (Stargate is the thing that monitors my other platforms and tells me when they screw up)

I'm just struggling with the terminology in this thread. What is difference between having Polisy provide interoperability between different protocols like Insteon and Matter/Thread (basically what we have now) and having it "Expose Insteon devices as Matter devices"? 

Insteon modules are never going to respond to Matter commands directly because there is no Matter spec to run on PLC or the RF protocol Insteon uses so it will always be a translation via Polisy. I guess you can call Polisy an Edge Router if it makes you feel better but beyond that I don't understand what is being requested here?

[MrBill]

2 minutes ago, upstatemike said:

I guess you can call Polisy an Edge Router if it makes you feel better but beyond that I don't understand what is being requested here?

Matter will matter differently to people that already have an investment in pre-matter devices.  Those that start fresh after-matter may take a different approach entirely.   Makers of all types have to figure out how to make interoperability work and bridge the gap.  Of course with all this talk we are assuming matter succeeds... what if it doesn't?

[Goose66]

18 hours ago, upstatemike said:

Still confused about what Matter will do for me. If a Zigbee device and an Insteon device are connected to Polisy then they can interact with each other. If the Zigbee device adds Matter and Polisy is upgraded to support Matter then the Zigbee/Matter device can interact with the Insteon device... just the same as before Matter was added to the equation. 

One confusing thing is the use of "Matter" to refer to both the application layer protocol known as "Matter" and one of many link layers available to Matter known as Thread. Thread is a wireless mesh networking standard defined by IEEE 802.15.4. While it uses the same physical communication channels as Zigbee (same frequencies and antennas and such), the network protocol is TCP/IP instead of the proprietary Zigbee protocol (Matter relies on TCP/IP protocol for all supported link layers).

Thus, from a purely practical standpoint, the ZMatter board from ISY is more of a Thread board than a Matter board. Given that, there are several functions UDI can implement via software that will utilize their ZMatter board:

1. It can give ISY/Polisy access to Matter-compliant devices over Thread. These devices would show up in the ISY as nodes right alongside Insteon, Zigbee, and ZWave devices. "Integration" between devices would be accomplished using the ISY ecosystem functions of Scenes and Programs. This is what I expect to see in the (at least initial) ZMatter support.

2. In addition to #1, the Polisy could act as a Thread "border router." This would allow it to take communications for Matter devices from Wifi/Ethernet and bridge them to the Thread mesh network. I don't know if UDI will implement this type of functionality, but I suspect there will be plenty of devices becoming available with Thread border router functionality (Home Internet routers, Amazon Echo devices, etc.)

3. The Polisy could act as Matter "hub." This functionality would allow natively supported devices (Insteon, ZWave, Zigbee(?)) to appear as Matter devices on the network, which would allow Matter controllers access to these devices for control and automation (along with the ISY control). I don't expect to see this functionality added.

Also, independent of the ZMatter board, UDI could implement support for Matter devices over other transports, such as WiFi and Ethernet. This would allow the ISY to act as a Matter "controller" (a thing in Matter) and show Matter devices as nodes alongside nodes for native/node server supported devices, providing integration between these devices with Scenes and Programs as discussed above. This seems like a natural extension to implementing function #1 above, but it may not appear in the initial ZMatter support.

Matter support could also be accomplished with a node server in Polyglot, but because Matter is already an application layer with all the standards, device types, and lower level support defined, it seems a node server would be an unnecessary intermediate layer.

Edited November 7, 2022 by Goose66

[upstatemike]

So I understand all of the above but don't see how it relates to Insteon any differently than any other protocol or standard. If you substitute Lutron RadioRA3 for Matter would you ask the same question? "Can Polisy expose Insteon (via PLM) lighting as Radio RA3 devices?" What would that even mean? 

Is the question whether Insteon devices connected via Polisy + ZMatter will automatically appear in some Matter Controller as Matter devices? In other words Is Polisy publishing Insteon devices as Matter devices on a Matter network? If so then I just wasn't understanding the question correctly.

[Goose66]

9 minutes ago, upstatemike said:

Is the question whether Insteon devices connected via Polisy + ZMatter will automatically appear in some Matter Controller as Matter devices? In other words Is Polisy publishing Insteon devices as Matter devices on a Matter network? If so then I just wasn't understanding the question correctly.

Exactly. Will the ISY act as a Matter hub for natively support devices (Insteon and ZWave) and expose them on the network as Matter-compliant devices. Similarly to how matter support for Philips Hue bulbs won't be in the devices, but implemented in the Hue Bridge, i.e., Matter Controller-(TCP/IP)->Hue Bridge-(Zigbee)->Hue bulb, instead of Matter Controller-(TCP/IP/Thread)->Hue bulb.

That is how I interpreted the OP's question, and I suspect the answer is no.

Edited November 7, 2022 by Goose66

[upstatemike]

OK so Polisy would just do translation and the event engine used for actually automating the devices will reside in some native Matter Controller someplace else. Ignoring cloud based platforms such as Alexa, have any native Matter local controller platforms with robust event engines been announced yet? Everybody talks about Matter being the universal standard for communication between devices but the logic to control those devices has to reside someplace.

Edited November 7, 2022 by upstatemike