Matter matters: implementing yet-another smart home standard

I’ve worked with a lot of different technologies and vendor ecosystems since I first started tinkering with home automation in 2011. It started with Z-Wave devices and ADT Pulse but expanded to include Google Nest, Amazon Alexa, HomeSeer, Homebridge, and Ring, with additional forays into things like HomeAssistant and Node-Red, plus a proliferation of new Z-Wave Plus and WiFi devices (I’ve never dabbled with Zigbee though).

My current system is built around HomeSeer on a HomeTroller Pi with an 800 Series Z-Wave hat, so adding new Z-Wave devices is easy. Devices that use WiFi, however, typically require using the vendor’s specific app, like Tuya, Kasa, or SmartLife, and then I have to use an additional plug-in for HomeSeer in order to be able to control them there. It gets complicated.

Matter is a new communications standard for smart home devices hoping to simplify that complicated sprawl. A Matter-enabled device will work with any Matter-enabled hub, can connect to multiple hubs at the same time, and most major vendors (like Apple, Google, Amazon, etc.) are adding Matter support to their devices.

I started down the path of experimenting with Matter in, of course, HomeSeer. I installed the free Matter Controller plug-in, configured it to use my IoT VLAN for the wireless network, and purchased two Matter-compatible TP-Link Kasa WiFi smart plugs. Matter uses Bluetooth (BLE) for the initial device “commissioning” before connecting to WiFi (although that might be changing) so I had to jump through a few technical hoops to get Bluetooth working on my RasPi HomeTroller (it also uses IPv6 so you’ll need to have that enabled on your router). Each Matter device has a QR code with a numeric pairing code on it. After plugging in one of the outlets, I went into the HS4 plug-in and initiated the comissioning process to add a new Matter device. I entered the pairing code printed on the outlet’s label and a few seconds later, the device appeared in HomeSeer and I could see it on my wireless network. No Kasa app necessary!

Matter device in HomeSeer

HomeSeer is not really a Matter hub, however, and the process described above is not typical of using a Matter device, but I wanted to at least test out the plug-in. HomeSeer also does not support Thread, but more on that later.

The real reason I wanted to implement Matter, however, was for the Kwikset Halo Select smart locks. In order to use the Apple HomeKey feature (for tap-to-unlock) the locks needed to be connected via Matter and not with the Kwikset app over WiFi. You can read my other post on how I added the locks initially to my WiFi network and then converted them to Matter using my Apple TV 4K as the Matter hub so I could enable Apple HomeKey. It works great.

With the locks connected to the Apple Homekit via Matter, next it was time to connect them to Amazon Alexa and HomeSeer. The primary benefit of Matter is not only being able to connect a Matter device to any Matter hub, but to also connect it to multiple Matter hubs. From inside the Apple Home app, I initiated another commissioning, which put the lock in pairing mode and generated a new pairing code. Then, in the Alexa app on my iPhone I added a new device and walked through the Matter setup, entering the code from the Apple Home app. Now Alexa was able to see and control the locks too! I even received a push notification from the Apple Home app informing me the device had been successfully added to another hub.

I then went through the same steps to add the locks to HomeSeer: initiated pairing to get a new code, then entered that code into the Matter Controller in HS4, and the new devices were created, just like my initial test outlets. Now I can controll the locks from all three ecosystems: Apple Homekit (for HomeKey/tap-to-unlock), Amazon Alexa (for voice control; “Alexa, lock the front door”), and HomeSeer (to handle all the “heavy lifting” automation events like locking the doors when the Ring alarm is armed). Pretty sweet!

Amazon Alexa showing other connected hubs

One note about adding devices to other hubs: they all need to be on the same network subnet. I originally had my Amazon Echo devices on my IoT VLAN (as compared to the Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV sticks that were on the main network) but in order for them to participate in the Matter/Thread network I had to move them back to the primary VLAN. I figured this out pretty quickly when my initial attempts to commission the locks with Alexa failed because the Echo couldn’t find them (since it was unable to see the IPv6 traffic from the IoT VLAN). The HomeTroller Pi running HomeSeer was already multi-homed so that wasn’t a problem there.

So what’s Thread, and how does it figure into all of this? Matter is the language spoken by the hubs and devices and Thread is the network connecting them all together. It’s separate from your normal wireless network … Thread devices create their own mesh network (it’s IEEE 802.15.4 at 2.4 GHz, the same as Zigbee), ensuring everything keeps working smoothly even if your WiFi goes out. They don’t need an internet connection for local control to keep working so, theoretically, even during a power outage I should be able to unlock my front door with my Apple Watch (I might get a chance to test that this hurricane season, who knows). It’s also very low-power so I’ll be curious to see how long the batteries in these locks last (although they’re probably bad examples since a lot of the battery power will go into powering the touchscreen and locking mechanism).

It’s a little odd having a network in the house that I can’t really see or manage. I’m so used to controlling (and, let’s be honest, micro-managing) everything that’s connected to my network. Once the Kwikset locks were “converted” to Matter, they disappeared from WiFi. Luckily, there’s an app for that! Well, a beta app: the Thread Tools app is now available for Android and iOS. I gave it a quick whirl and it found my hub and two devices, but there’s not much to actually do. At least I can confirm I do have a working Thread mesh now.