I wanted to continue this thread started by Ristin, but its closed ... so Matter for Dummies II is created

I need a Dummies guide to Matter dongle on the EISY.

I have a mix of Insteon and z-wave devices, google home (speaker) and / or Alexa Dot

It would be nice to a comprehensive guide as per UD of how this should all work

You should ask more specific questions. But as far as the ZMatter dongle goes, it has hardly...mattered (bad pun) yet. Matter is based on IPv6 and most line powered devices will be using IP (wifi or hardwired). Battery powered devices will more likely use Thread, which is IPv6 over a Zigbee network. The few tests I have done with Thread were with Nanoleaf bulbs, which use Thread even though they are line powered. The ZMatter dongle (which is ZWave/Zigbee really) is meant to allow direct communication with Thread, as well as conventional Zigbee. But I don't think this has been implemented yet. Instead, UDI has been supporting Thread based Matter through a border router, which is what I did, using a Echo in my case. Border routers are "transparent", simply bridging IPv6 packets, across wifi/hardwired IP and Zigbee networks.

There has been very little in terms of announcements from UDI since the initial release and excitement last spring. But in reading the notes in the sysconfig.txt file of the latest release (6.0.3), some additional Matter fixes were added. I don't have access to that right now, but I've seen some mentions of Matter among the changes.

Thanks for the reply and it seems to be a deep subject ... when I first read the spec on Matter, it sounded very simple in as much ... all these companies signing on to provide one command method of coms across a vast offering of hardware .... but they had to make it difficult :-(

Specific questions, well it's winter here, snow is deep, stuck inside, thought maybe I could play and just maybe, get something working and a bonus would be voice commands

Do you have a Matter device to try? Ideally something that's just on/off like a switch, or light bulb.

I have understood that "matter" is in the early stages for UD and, as such, documentation and user manuals is not something we should expect. I have had some luck with matter devices over wifi, but matter devices over thread have not worked consistently for me. In fairness, the thread devices (nano leaf bulbs) I have tried also do not consistently work with echo or google, either, and am willing to consider the possibility that the problems might be with the nano leaf bulb, rather than with the EISY. I keep looking for other thread devices to try, but I don't see many around.