Does it Matter?

[kurelgyer]

It's been a solid 6 months since my last inquiry.  Are the Matter capabilities ever coming?

[FrayAdjacent]

I don't know, but I've been homeless for a few months, didn't have time to extract all of my Insteon hard-wired stuff and now I'm in my brand-spankin' new house. I have a few ZWave dimmers on the way, and the front door lock that the builder installed is ZWave compatible. Connecting it to my EISY was really simple and it works well. Hopefully ZWave will continue to work well.

I was hoping Matter would be more mature by now, too. 

[kurelgyer]

Any news?

[paulbates]

Integrators like udi, insteon and home assistant are not there yet with matter.

• Udi has mentioned their struggles with thread.
• Despite their other successes touted at their 2 year celebration zoom call last week, insteon kicked the thread discussion down the road till next January for their hub and director products.
• While home assistant has some thread capabilities, their last blog post that I could find is from this past January, where they consider it a beta capability. They ask users not to move away from working zigbee or zwave installations at this time. They also suggest using brand affiliated gateways with the devices selected.

To me, the matter standard has a lot of practical barriers to it's own success as something that can actually be implemented to the promised vision of seamless cross manufacturer integration, and we remain in the "bleeding edge" phase. It's on the big manufacturers (Google, etc)  and the matter standard committee to get it together.

Udi is rightly stubborn about not implementing something that doesn't work and can't be supported... yet.

Edited July 23 by paulbates

[CoolToys]

@kurelgyer, While I would love to see Insteon join the matter crowd, I am not quite understanding what @paulbates is saying.  Like many in earlier threads I leaned forward and fell into the chasm hoping UDI would create a bridge.  

I disagree with Mr. Bates about implementation and working.  Somehow Amazon Echo and Apple home both instantly recognized my matter devices once I figured out how to designate one of the echos or an iPad as the "matter controller", with only amazon echo devices or only apple home devices everything worked fine.  The only problem I see with matter is that somehow once a matter controller is set within an eco-system that system becomes the master.  This seems to violate the whole idea of matter, but then again who is matter to force Amazon and Apple and Google to play nice.  

I have caved and let Amazon echo be the master and Apple Home can no longer control the blinds or the outlets.  Honestly does it matter if I ask Siri or Alexa or Google?  I would much rather add logic in my eisy to do the same tasks.  If all I wanted was a schedule the Insteon Hub would be fine.

All of the devices are instantly recognized and added to Amazon, Apple and UDI eco systems.  I just haven't found a way for the UDI eisy to understand what the devices are and do.  With 8.3.4 update, each blind now has a window of information that wasn't there before, but it looks like an alarm sensor from my Elk M1.

My fingers are crossed that whatever information is being sent in the setup mode by the devices that Apple and Alexa can figure out, UDI will figure it out too.  They always do.

[kurelgyer]

I was hoping to hear something from @Michel Kohanim.  For the last year it sounded like UDI was close, but seem to have fallen silent.  I'm not inferring it's a UDI problem, but it would be helpful as I expand outside Insteon, to have some idea what's going on.

I now have Aqara FP2's, Zigbee wireless buttons and Zigbee hose valves.  They are either not compatible with EISY, or are not playing nice out of the box.  I'm beginning to split things up between EISY and Home Assistant on a pi.  It's becoming "not pretty".

Edited August 27 by kurelgyer

[Geddy]

@kurelgyer last update I recall is in another thread: 

 

[paulbates]

Re-iterating what was said:

Homeseer, Insteon, UDI and yes, Home Assistant, as comparatively smaller integrators, aren't fully there yet. None of them have a "we'll be ready here" date. Matter/Thread require significant resources for smaller integrators to complete the work, compared to Apple, google, Amazon.

From Home Assistant's current Matter web page:

"Realize that you are an early adopter, both on the hardware side and on the software (controller) side so you may run into compatibility issues or features that are still missing. Report any issues you may find and help out others if you find a workaround or tested a device."

3 hours ago, kurelgyer said:

I'm not inferring it's a UDI problem, but it would be helpful as I expand outside Insteon, to have some idea what's going on.

All due credit to Home Assistant's advanced state of integration, they are not saying "we're there". There's not a date. They are the lead horse in the race.

Not all integration companies have the necessary resources to deliver the Matter plumbing .You've chosen an early adopter standard above automating functions in your house and will need the patience to see it through.. or make the necessary platform choices based on the direction you want to go.

 

Edited August 27 by paulbates

[Geddy]

@kurelgyer since you recently asked...here's another update from @Michel Kohanim:

 

 

[kurelgyer]

Thanks for the heads up, @Geddy!

 

FWIW, I've been home automating since 1999 starting with X-10 and IBM Home Director.  After that, an early adopter to Insteon and HAL2000 by automated living.  I moved to the ISY99 when it became a thing.  I'm aware of what life on the edge is  (I've been on it for 25 years).  But I'm not a programmer by any means.  I am patiently impatient (?).  Excited, I guess, at new prospects.  As such, when it's discussed that something is very, very close, I anticipate release of some sort somewhat soon.  I am aware Matter is a mess (I mean, Google is behind it, after all 🙄).  I come here looking for updates because @Michel Kohanim is a reliable straight shooter.  So, after 8 months I was looking for an inside scoop from someone in the know as to the State of Matter - hoping it isn't slipping into the vapor.

[Guy Lavoie]

I've been taking the periodic glance at the discussions about Matter, which often include inquiries about where it's at with UDI. From reading up on it, it's mostly attractive as an interoperability standard, and won't really be offering any functionality that you didn't have before. I compare it to the Cirrus or Plus ATM networks, which allow you to do basic banking at a member bank that's not your own, but not the more detailed stuff that requires you to go to your own bank. For Matter, this might mean on/off and dim commands, but not status tracking or scenes. Controllers like the eisy are how we've been doing this already, using if/then programming to look for commands from one controller type to then issue a command to another platform. The Matter standard (dare I call it a standard...) might make that more transparent to the casual user who prefers to buy a shrink wrapped product (think Apple). Send a Homekit "On" command and the hub will issue the equivalent generic Zigbee "On" command agreed upon in the standard, etc. If this is what it is, then UDI is indeed in a good position to add simplified functionality to an already capable controller. It already does some of that in scene support, allowing you to include a zwave device as a responder to an Insteon scene for example, without writing any programs.

Matter does appear to be closely related to Zigbee and Wifi devices. Those two (especially Wifi) data layers have a multitude of incompatible devices all using a common transport layer, but proprietary protocols. The companies that make them know that most people have Wifi at home, so they use that as the mode of transmission, but then write their own protocol and issue their own phone app and a "skill" for Alexa and Google home to make them compatible to those devices so they can put "Works with Alexa/Google home" on the package, but little else. This is where Matter might help make them finally interoperate, and then let them compete on price and features. 

[robgarrett]

I've managed to get my aging Insteon network to play nicely with my new Thread network, Home Kit and Alexa with the help of Home Assistant. I concur with the above comments that Matter is still in an immature state, but for those early adopters, here's what I did....

• Set up Home Assistant on a RPi and connected to my EISY
• Connected EISY to Alexa initially via the UD portal
• Connected EISY to Apple Home Kit with the bridge add-on
• Purchased the Sky Connect dongle and attached to the HA RPi
• Configured HA as a Thread Border Router (required some trial and effort using Silicon Labs Multiprotocol add-on)
• Used the Alexa app to install an inexpensive Onvi smart plug into the new HA thread mesh network
• Shared the smart plug with Apple Home and Alexa and confirmed everything works
• Installed Matter Bridge on the HA and added to the HA thread network
• Setup Matter Bridge to expose my UDI devices via HA as Matter devices
• I shared the Matter Bridge as an aggregator with Alexa
• Alexa started to pickup my UDI devices
• Disconnected the ISY V3 Alexa skill and switched over to the matter versions of my Insteon lights

Some observations...

• Setting up a thread network on HA was a PITA, required lots of trial and error. I managed to get it to work as joint thread and Zigbee using SkyConnect. Others have needed to disable the Zigbee radio.
• Matter bridge is pretty cool for a community project. Ideally, I'd prefer UDI to expose my Insteon devices as Matter via the EISY, but that'll take time, per the earlier comments in this forum thread.
• Matter is still very generic and makes assumptions about device classifications. Matter bridge classifies my ceiling fans as dimmable lights, which means they don't show up as fans on the Alexa side
• I have an Alexa device in pretty much every room of my home, making for plenty of redundant matter controllers. I'm considering picking up some newer Echo 4's so I can have additional TBRs, Presently HA is the only TBR in my home, so when that goes offline so does my matter/thread network
• I've not tested it yet, but I should be able to pull my home Internet connection and Alexa devices should still control the Matter and thread devices.

It's an exciting time... hopefully the above helps some other early adopters. In time, many of the major Home Automation players will fully adopt Matter and Thread radios, UDI included. For now, it's all about patience :)

[kurelgyer]

Thanks @robgarrett  Great write up!