Matter 1.2 – New device types and improvements
csa-iot.orgStep in the right direction, but I wonder what's taking so long on getting support for cameras. That's my biggest use case at the moment. Having a bunch of Nest cameras that don't natively incorporate with HomeKit and having to do all sorts of work arounds to get a still generally crappy experience is killing my excitement for the smart home. And I won't buy new ones until they support Matter and there is true interoperability.
Probably philosophical differences over the use of CODECs which require patent licensing. The hardware universe looks on these things very differently from the web one.
Does Homebridge not have a plug in for Nest? The one for Unifi cameras is just ok and takes forever to load an image. The doorbell notification is better than the camera experience.
For Unifi cameras I switched from Homebridge to Scrypted. The streams load near instant when on the same network. All around a much more polished experience.
I recently just made the opposite switch, from Scrypted to Homebridge. Just less maintenance with Homebridge.
As long as you have enough memory (Raspberry Pi 4+) it's a great experince.
It does, but it is pretty bad. Loads very slowly. Randomly disconnects. Just overall a janky experience.
Unfortunately the options for HKSV doorbells is fairly limited. The Logitech circle view Doorbell looks like the best candidate but it has a spotty review history, with the biggest complaint being it breaking in direct sunlight.
I’m about to buy some cameras and I’m thinking of just buying Nest and using https://scrypted.app to bridge to HKSV.
>with the biggest complaint being it breaking in direct sunlight.
I feel its pain. I break down in direct sunlight too. Doorbells would definitely be tricky, as I doubt most people know the path of the sun over course of a full year. I'd assume that most people look at the sun at the time of installation (if at all) and think they are safe. They don't take into account that exact time of the year when you hold a staff in the correct location in the map room to locate the Well of Souls where the light will stream in at exactly the right angle to the lens on the camera to melt the internal senor.
Maybe feng shui is proven correct by orienting your front door to the north so your doorbell doesn't face the sun?
Aqara makes a HKSV doorbell. The camera is sub-par but it's cheap and works!
Probably the same reason video is always hard, there's 7 million codecs.
Might also be privacy
> Probably the same reason video is always hard, there's 7 million codecs.
ONVIF has specifications/profiles for management, functionality, and codecs (S and T):
Sure but none of it seems to work for battery powered cameras which is a giant missing piece.
https://github.com/OpenIPC/firmware
You can get onvif-compliant firmware for some of those, but battery-powered operation cannot be expected to remain practical, given what onvif focuses on.
I seriously doubt there’s a single camera supporting Apple/Google/Amazon integration that doesn’t support H.264 plus AAC
Even between Google and Amazon you have different streaming support (Amazon is RTSPS, Google is WebRTC)
Also I have no idea why I couldn't pair Matter devices using just my computer. Home Assistant wanted me to use a mobile app to do the pairing. No thanks. I shouldn't need to use a phone at home, phone is for outside, at home I use BIG computers and BIG screens to do everything.
Came here to make the same comment. It seems like we are going to be waiting a while for video.
Is this a paper launch or did they stop working in the open?
Just look at the dishwasher example[1]: It is a lazy copy of the Lamp example. They couldn't even be bothered to fix the title. The rest of the source code is as good as empty and was not updated in months.
[1] https://github.com/project-chip/connectedhomeip/tree/master/...
Air purifiers and robot vacuums, but still no "power socket” device type??
(There is “binary switch”, which is what my Matter power sockets expose - but the measurements that I actually care about (total kWh, volts, amps, frequency, etc) are only exposed via the company’s proprietary app which runs in parallel “because there is no way of exposing these via Matter” :( )
This seemed exceedingly notable to me:
> Device & Endpoint Composition – Devices can now be hierarchically composed from complex endpoints allowing for accurate modeling of appliances, multi-unit switches, and multi-light fixtures.
ELI5: Matter is a "unified approach to IOT development"
IOT = Internet of Things
Do high-end appliance makers like Miele, Bosch and Sub-Zero have Matter on their roadmaps? (Also, how do I search for Matter without dredging up the entire internet?)
As I remember, Matter is using blockchain for doing something with their certifications. Does anyone know more about this? What they do there and whether this legitimate usage or just some case of buzzword-bingo?
As I understand it, there is no tradable token, it’s literally just a shared database.
Which is exactly what Blockchain is good at.
I wonder when Ikea's Dirigera https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/dirigera-hub-for-smart-products... is getting Matter support. Have been waiting for ages now
Off-topic, but what's with the strange font in the image at the top of the article? I see it's based off of the "csa" logo. I can't explain why but it's almost uncomfortable to read it with those connected glyphs.
I'd guess that it's Space Grotesk with those extra bits added manually.
There’s now support for robot vacuums, which is a big deal.
First Matter vacuum gets my business! I just bought a Matter thermostat on a whim (incentives took the price down to $10) and I'm really impressed. It integrated into Home Assistant in seconds after I scanned a QR code and now the local control is instant and flawless. My last thermostat could only integrate using a really complicated cloud auth process and commands only made it all the way to wherever and back to my house some of the time, and never in under a few seconds.
Yes, Zigbee and ZWave have already done the work that Matter is attempting, but they both conflate the networking architecture with the API. We really do need a pure API that can work over WiFi, or anything else.
Who makes the thermostat?
It's the new Nest one, which isn't ideal since my old Nest was the one I hated, but it's the only Matter one, so...
Which therm did you get? Does it also measure humidity?
The new Nest. Humidity is supported in the Google app, but not through Matter at the moment. No fan control either. I'm hoping that stuff gets added eventually, but I'll be fine even if not.
Does anyone know if Matter is being embraced by companies working on home automation products?
I'm in India and it seems that the ecosystem is really garbage -- some devices work with Alexa, some with Google, and very little work with _all_ major providers (and I'm an Apple user). Is it better in other countries?
Matter was finalized fairly recently in hardware timescales. It's not better anywhere just yet, though I'm expecting we'll see quite a few expensive Matter devices start coming from the major players, then trickle down to the non-discerning customers as they get cheaper.
For some products it is a horsepower/memory problem, depending on the device you're building.
If you work for traditional thermostat company that happens to also build connected ones, adding Matter on top of other things required a lot of memory and microcontroller improvements that we just didn't have the space for previously. Especially when half your company does nothing but drive cost out of the BOM.
So, it's net new product.
Now a security panel on the other hand should be a little easier.. the modern ones are basically linux boxes.
Have attempted to look at a lot of stuff but all revolve around their servers having to approve anything.
I remember a power strip that refused to work wothout internet because it could not communicate with server for auth and actions.
I have decided to go full diy and use relays and esp32 to power on devices and such.
Use raspberry pis with home assistant to do the work.
Is there a SIMPLE way to have a small python or go program act as a "switch" that shows up in Google home? The last time I tried looking at the matter stuff even checking out the git repo required gigabytes of storage and it seemed the opposite of simple.
If you can do Typescript, matter.js makes it trivial to at least create a virtual matter device. Five minutes to clone the repo, build, run and pair with Google, Apple, Alexa, SmartThings, etc. The one caveat is certification. With Google you need to register as a developer so it allows an uncertified device. The others just give a warning.
oooh! that looks perfect. The main repo is a bit much, and much of the examples seem to assume you're running on bare metal embedded
I'd have preferred another language, but what I want to do is ultimately so simple that TS should be fine.
Yeah - you can even pass your own python, go, bash, etc. "on/off" script as a parameter to the example matter-device so you can get away with no code changes at all. You can get help at the listed discord server.
Well you were right, it took not even 5 minutes to get it working. Even with having to register it as a development device. Unfortunately as it turns out I don't have any devices that can act as a matter hub for google home, so after finding and adding the device, it ends up not being able to talk to it anyway :-(
Ironically I have 4 chromecasts, but they are connected to real amplifiers and speakers, so I never felt the need to get one of the smart speakers which can act as a hub.
Yeah, you typically need some sort of hub unless you run Home Assistant. My understanding is that it doesn't need any hub for Matter support.
> Is there a SIMPLE way to have a small python or go program act as a "switch" that shows up in Google home?
You can create virtual devices using Homebridge plug-ins. Here's an example: https://www.npmjs.com/package/homebridge-dummy
Yes, that would be useful if I used homekit...
You don’t need to use HomeKit for this to work, but you will need https://github.com/oznu/homebridge-gsh. (Caveat: I haven’t tried this myself since I use HomeKit and Alexa devices.)
Oh.. less interesting how that I see how it works. I thought this would be a local thing, but it apparently connects to some third party service:
big YIKES from me there, especially because this is not really documented or even mentioned at all.// establish new websocket connection const socket = new WebSocket(`wss://homebridge-gsh.iot.oz.nu/socket?${querystring.stringify(qs)}`);Ah shoot. Glad you caught that!
Oh, now that is interesting. The requirement for "insecure mode" is a bit scary sounding, but for what I want to control, it shouldn't matter.
I wish I could use Hue's silly RGB colour loop mode over this now, but it's still hidden behind a labs experiment.
(Connecting to HomeKit via Matter has actually been smoother than using the Hue app)
It is still very hard to find matter devices. We wanted recessed downlights and ended up with Zigbee.
My air conditioner just died, would be great if a matter compatible one became available.
> My air conditioner just died, would be great if a matter compatible one became available.
What would you want the API to look like here?
I would be very conservative about opening up an API if I was a manufacturer. The reason being that there may be misuses by amateur coders that may increase wear on the product, and leading to increase in warranty claims.
I, as a manufacturer, would much rather prefer customers buy something like a Nest/Ecobee, etc. and manage that. Nest (and likely Ecobee) likely have smarts to not turn the AC on/off 30 times within 10 minutes, etc. Also, you benefit from other algorithms like "Time-to-Temp" (Nest), malfunctioning equipment alerts (Nest), etc. If you're in the US, many electricity utilities will give you a discount if you buy a smart thermostat, and then you can further gain $$ by enrolling in demand-response programs.
I want to be able to turn it on/off and set the temperature from Homekit. I can't imagine any fancy automation that would matter beyond that.
Saving money on this is not a priority for me. Ecobee already works with Homekit, I would gladly buy an ecobee AC that did the same.
What did you pick? I’m looking at the moment..
Hue -- it was the only option that felt 'mature' and well supported. We got a really great price on them and accept that we may swap them out in 3-5 years.
I’ve been looking too, and the more research I do, the more it looks like the best idea is to get regular dimmable bulbs + zigbee dimmer switches - that’s generally going to be simpler and more reliable, the main downside being lack of any colour temperature / RGB support :(
We tried this first in one room and couldn't get the bulbs with the range that we wanted. Hue really stood out in how dark and bright they could get. The RGB also ended up being much more useful than we thought.
Is there anything similar for healthcare IoT? It seems most products have their own App and Backend to share the data and nothing remotely close to universal.
In hindsight it makes sense but I never would have guessed that device types are hard coded by the protocol.
It makes perfect sense, otherwise you end up with devices like "light", "lamp" and "bulb" which could all have the same functionality, but all require different implementations because manufacturers could not communicate between themselves.
Yeah it’s like a collection of defined interfaces that share a common paradigm.
Cool update, really excited to get native support for air quality measurements here
No support for (3-phase) power metering yet :/
I wish CANOpen took off, what a world it would be.
This still feels like:
Good xkcd there, but Matter does seem to have industry acceptance at this point. Apple's support for it in Homekit was huge, and other companies have followed suit.
Competing standards will always exist, but buy-in is really key. You can have a worse standard and as long as you have buy-in, you can call it a success.