Good clarification. Border routers are really about Thread, but there’s not really any point to a border router that can only talk to Thread devices or WiFi/Ethernet devices. Its job is to integrate both into the mesh network.
There are USB Thread controllers (which are pretty much updated Zigbee controllers), so this should be possible. I have no idea which approach would be better/easier to implement (again, not a developer). Both aspects would be required if we wanted OH to be seen as a border router. Without looking at what HA is doing, I suspect that that’s their goal.
OH exposing devices to Matter is really critical. It’ll eliminate the lag and unreliability of routing commands through cloud services, even if you’re not concerned about security and/or privacy of them.
That’s a huge benefit, IMO. Even more so for existing OH users, which are obviously already running a slew of non-Matter devices.
I don’t see how matter addresses that at all. If it’s a cloud API, it’s a cloud API. All OH exposing it to Matter will do is let something that speaks Matter talk to OH which in turn will talk to the device’s cloud API. It’s not going to magically cut the device off from its own cloud API.
What it might mean though is stuff that doesn’t speak Matter, can show up on and be controllable from a hub that speaks Matter (Alexa, Google Assistant, HomeKit, etc.) opening up different sorts of integrations.
What it might mean though is stuff that doesn’t speak Matter, can show up on and be controllable from a hub that speaks Matter
Exactly. Right now, to control anything attached to OH via the common (and affordable) devices like an Echo, or Nest Hub, you have to go through myopenhab or a private install running in the cloud. That’s – best case – slow. Sometimes it lags a second or two, sometimes its five or ten seconds, and sometimes it just doesn’t work at all.
If OH was exposing its devices via Matter, those commands would not go through the cloud, with all the associated latency. (Although the latency is an order of magnitude worse for OH than other devices – a command to a Kasa device triggers effectively instantly from Google Home, but the command via myopenhab can take many seconds.
Sort of like how, early on, Alexa-based devices could communicate to a certain subset of UPNP-exposed devices directly, with no skills/cloud services needed. They would trigger instantly.
I can’t imagine I’m in the minority when I’m constantly trying to figure out if Google or Alexa just didn’t hear me, or if the connection via myopenhab is being slow, or if its just down again.
Hi All! I’m currently looking at a few home automation solutions, which brought me here to this particular thread. I used to run an OH system many, many years ago when it was brand new. It’s great to see how much it’s grown and improved over the years!
However, with all due respect, I have to say it’s a little concerning reading the comments from important people in this and other threads regarding Matter and Thread. These are by far the most important developments in home automation in many years, yet, and please forgive me for saying so, but the people who make decisions around here seem to be largely uninformed about what these new standards are and what they mean. I would have thought that it was something the whole community would be really excited about given the benefits to both vendors and more importantly end users.
Other home automation communities have already been working on Matter and Thread for some time. Google Home just published their first app version with full Matter support. Home Assistant has been working on Matter for a while now and published their beta version this month. And yet nobody at OH is even thinking about it yet?
It’s likely that Matter and Thread will largely replace any existing standards in new hardware in the next 12 months. It’s already happening at companies like Ikea, where all their new devices are Matter and Thread replacing their Zigbee devices. Just the savings in licensing costs alone is enough to make companies using Zigbee switch in many cases, and companies making WiFi devices no longer need to spend the time and money creating and supporting their own ecosystems, apps etc, so Matter is a huge benefit there too.
I know OH is all volunteer based. Let’s hope someone with the time and experience can be found soon to start looking at this really critical new ecosystem.
I myself have already spent much time with Matter and I even gave a conference talk about it already - so I think I roughly know what it is about.
Fact is that it is pretty complicated to implement a Matter server and it is unrealistic to do such an effort from scratch in Java. Instead, it imho makes much more sense to join forces with Home Assistant and make use of and contribute to their Matter server, which is designed to be completely independent of HA, so that it can be used stand-alone with any other smart home software.
openHAB support of Matter would hence be reduced to integration with this Matter server. It would be awesome to find any volunteer in our community that starts looking into that (as I don’t think I will find enough time for it myself in the near future).
The only decisions that are ever made in this regard are individuals deciding what they want to work on. No one in this thread, not even @Kai, has the ability to demand that someone work on Matter.
This is not the only thread that’s discussed Thread on the forum. Kai linked to the main open issue that is discussing the nitty gritty details about integrating it with OH. I think it’s unfair to say “no one is thinking about it.” We have been very interested in Matter and there has been many thousands of words written about it here on the forum and some technical work done towards it.
But ultimately, what will drive any implementation will be actual code written by some volunteer(s). Assuming we go with integration with the Matter Server Kai linked to, a binding shouldn’t be too hard since it’s all pretty straight forward websocket with JSON messages.
The Verge has taken an early look at Eve devices that have been firmware-upgraded to the Matter standard (using Thread radios).
I’m a little disappointed by this:
Once a Matter device is onboarded to one platform, you can’t just add it to another platform as a new device. You have to go through the pairing process from the original app. This is not clearly explained anywhere, and the settings for “Linking Services” are buried deeply in all three apps.
Removing devices from multiple services at once didn’t work. In all three platforms, the option to unlink all services from a device is there — which I went to do when I had to reset the Eve sensors. But it only seemed to remove it from the app that I was using; I still had to manually remove it from the other apps.
I was also under the impression that we’d be able to add a device to the Matter mesh and it would automatically be available to all platforms/apps in the mesh. This is much clunkier (though probably still better).
I remain of the opinion that there’s no good reason to leap into Matter/Thread immediately.
Given that now Matter 1.1 is out and more and more devices are comming I feel that OH must slowly fallow, otherwise Matteradopters have no other choice than switching to HASS.
Is there any advancement in this regard?
Not really. If someone has built their system in openHAB, they’ve done so without Matter. Whether it’s OH or HA, there’s no reason to replace working gear with Matter devices, because everything that works now will continue to work for the foreseeable future.
I remain hopeful that Matter will simplify home automation in the future, but that can’t happen until there’s an actual, functional ecosystem. I haven’t seen evidence of that yet, but perhaps you’re seeing more Matter availability where you are. As far as I can tell, it’s just not happening in Canada.
In any case, I’m not worried about people switching to HA if that works better for them. It’s not a competition.
Just fyi, from where I’m working I’m seeing huge and I really do mean freaking huge matter interest and adoption all across the spectrum.
I went from “maybe maybe maybe… to “this looks interesting” to “holy crap”.
Entire product revamps around matter, Wi-Fi enabled devices being updated with matter, devices using dongles receiving new dongles with matter.
But I do agree with @rpwong , this isn’t a race. But I expect to see tons of new possibilities (devices that required bindings to contact the cloud of the vendor to become accessible directly through a matter hub for example.)
So I remain cautiously optimistic. I wonder if there’s any work being done by openHAB devs on the HA matter hub? Would be nice to know that some contributions from our end is being done there.
Looking for compatible set of hardware is another thing. I see lots of devices being certified for new standard, which is great. Now, question is - can we identify an affordable and portable set (ideally available in US/EU/AU which could be used for further tinkering? Is there a Thread compatible USB dongle which anyone could recommend?
I’m seeing huge interest but still not a whole lot of available devices. Lots of controllers and Thread routers are on this list but not that many actual devices. For example, only three lights ship with Matter support right now, no smart switches, four smart plugs, two sensors, no locks, no thermostats, etc.
There’s a bunch of stuff expecting to get updates sometime this year that will more than could the list, but it’s still a short list. Note this article was written in April.
And you have big players like Belkin stepping back from supporting Matter at all in the near future.
I’m not arguing that we shouldn’t support Matter. Eventually it will be a must. But I don’t think availability of hardware combined with the availability of willing volunteers has reached a level where it’s feasible yet. Note that unlike HA, we are a 100% volunteer effort. We do not and can not hire developers to work on things. And it looks like HA went and developed their own USB dongle to support Zigbee/Thread/Matter. Home Assistant launches SkyConnect USB stick with Zigbee, Thread, Matter support - CNX Software but it only appears to work on Home Assistant OS and in a way that would be very challenging to support in OH I think. And so far it’s the only dongle I can find.
Matter over WiFi would probably be easier to support but I’m not sure that will take us very far.
Just to clarify - most of serial sticks I saw work more or less in the same way, regardless of manufacturer. Their role is bridging radio traffic to serial interface thus I doubt if they do anything more than just packing up packets and flushing them to the other side of USB port. Making anything more advanced on such devices is fairly difficult due to limited resources available for microcontroller.
Serial protocol is EmberZNet Serial Protocol, which I think @chris might be familiar with, given ember stick used for zigbee.
Making branded hardware is a way to cash out people interested in it and promise them better support.
Why start with Home Assistant OS support for multi-protocol?
A standalone Zigbee or standalone Thread stick works by turning radio signals into radio packets and then processing those radio packets and making that available over a serial port.
With multi-protocol, the processing of the radio packets is moved into Linux daemons. This means we run one daemon to split the radio packets into Zigbee and Thread streams, one daemon to process the Zigbee radio packets and one daemon to process the Thread radio packets.
To make this all work together, we need to strictly manage the version of the firmware on the stick and the three different Linux daemons. The easiest way for us to do this is using Home Assistant add-ons in a known host environment, which is Home Assistant OS.
