Nice headline
If esphome get matter and thread, the DIY smart home device ecosystem will go from great to amazing. Right now esphome just has trouble with truly low power devices due to WiFi, polling, standoff, sleep, etc… Matter instead of the esphome API will probably solve a lot of that.
There are esp32 variants that can do ZigBee. It’s very surprising to me that there’s no esphome for those. I’d think that the community would be all over that, but all I have found so far are abandoned GitHub repos. Maybe there’s something I don’t know about the chip or the protocol that makes it difficult?
Yeah there are large threads on them but because the API has been developed for WiFi, moving to a mesh like ZigBee would be a substantial rewrite although matter would be a lot easier than ZigBee, which got written off a long time ago as just too large if I remember right.
It is also a huge project for people to start developing on, their core team isn’t massive, so there is a large barrier to entry for such a thing. It might be happening in the background though, no idea.
Matter sounds neat and all, but it’s still wireless on the 2.4 GHz band, so it will still have the same amount of noise that Zigbee does.
That’s Thread. Matter is an application layer standard, which currently supports running over WiFi, Ethernet or Thread.
Matter could run over new wireless systems in the future.
Besides that, Thread is pretty low-bandwidth and low-noise. It’s designed to sip battery life from devices.
2.4Ghz just allows it to be built into tons of devices without an extra chip. Every Google Hub, Alexa, or Apple hub supports it.
@thehatfox
It builds on IPV6, so any medium capable of transporting IPV6 can potentially be used.
Matter is the protocol not the method isn’t it? Matter works over thread etc
That’s why I avoided ZigBee but my Hue bulbs have had WAY fewer problems than my z-wave stuff over the years, so I’m consisting migrating everything.
Fantastic, hoping to see more Matter devices, I wonder what a hub will cost to connect HA to Matter
You can flash the Sonoff Zigbee Dongle-E to turn into a Thread antenna using OpenThread RCP. So you can run Matter over Thread. This dongle cost less than $30 on AliExpress.
https://darkxst.github.io/silabs-firmware-builder/
I’ve connected my Nuki smart lock via this dongle. Though I’m preferring to use the MQTT over Thread implementation for this lock. Since it broadcasts more information over MQTT than with the Matter integration.
My Matter (and Zigbee, and Z-Wave) hub is a laptop I paid 300.00 for almost 10 years ago, when I wanted something cheap for the semi truck.
I run Home Assistant on it now. I have both a $40 zwave USB stick, and a similarly priced Zigbee stick.
The software for the hub comes with HA. Just install the matter server
Their zbt-1 dongle can do either zigbee or thread, but matter does not technically need anything else. Thread does, but not Matter. Install Matter Server addon and you can use any matter WiFi device.
I have a Zigbee dongle, so Matter works on WiFi hardware? I don’t need a extra dongle?
Correct. Unlike zigbee and zwave Matter does not define a single communication technique.
It can be used with thread, or over a standard tco TCP IP network.
Typically, Matter devices will support either thread or WiFi, but there’s no definite distinction to Matter itself.
If you also want to use Matter over Thread devices, you will need a thread dongle. The ZBT-1 can do either thread OR zigbee but not both at once.
In fact, the biggest issue I see with Matter is that there’s no real easy way to tell if the device uses WiFi or thread.
There are a lot of Matter devices out there now, but only a few use the Thread protocol.
Tried a couple matter devices. Ended up having to create an account with the manufacturer. Was there truly a local option? Who knows. So far I haven’t been impressed.
