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make.co
more, can all be controlled from a single app or
hub using Matter. The goal of Matter is to create
a more open and secure smart home ecosystem,
and it is expected to be widely adopted by device
manufacturers in the near future.
Sure, that seems to be consistent with what
we know. But does Matter achieve what CEBus
tried to do in home automation standards and
interoperability? We hope so!
The January 2023 Consumer Electronics Show
(CES) included a plethora of announcements
about Matter-compatible home automation
devices and products. The CSA certification site
lists many Matter products (csa-iot.org/csa-
iot_products).We’re looking forward to checking
some out to see how they improve our current
home automation systems.
DOES IT MATTER TO MAKERS?
Meanwhile, can we make our own Matter
devices? Seems reasonable, given that the Matter
standard is published and available to anyone.
In fact, there is a Matter SDK for the Espressif
ESP32 microcontroller family (github.com/
espressif/esp-matter). Thanks to Jakub Dybczak
for developing an Arduino library too (github.com/
jakubdybczak/esp32-arduino-matter).
I’m running the “light” example from this
library on an ESP-VROOM 32 microcontroller
board. The ESP32 includes Bluetooth and Wi-Fi
interfaces. In this example, Bluetooth is used to
commission a Matter device, along with a unique
ID, perhaps via a bar code. Once commissioned,
the device uses Wi-Fi to communicate with other
Matter devices.
Using the Home Assistant Matter integration
2023.1.6 release, it works! Home Assistant is able
to commission the device (Figure
H
). Pushing
a button on the ESP32 toggles the LED and the
status is immediately updated in Home Assistant.
Home Assistant is also able to toggle the LED
(Figure
I
). Now that I have a “Hello, World!”
Matter device, I’m ready to make something!
What will it be?
Next, Amazon Alexa tried to commission the
device. It was detected, accepted a bar code scan,
but the Alexa app said “Something went wrong.”
OK, how about Google Home? It eagerly
reported that a Matter device was available,
scanned the barcode, added it to Home, and then
the device was nowhere to be found.
None of this is easy to debug at this time.
Perhaps the next Matter release (2.0) will address
this incompatibility with the ESP32 SDK.
WHAT WILL YOU AUTOMATE?
How can home automation technology make your
home smarter? Maybe you already have a project
completed. Join the growing community of
makers who are sharing their code and hardware
implementation with the worldwide community of
home automation enthusiasts.
WAYNE & MICHAEL
SELTZER
, father and son home
automation (HA) enthusiasts, share their
experiences living in homes with HA
technology, experimenting, installing,
and building their own HA stuff.
• Home Assistant Community Forum:
community.home-assistant.io
• Discord: discord.com/invite/home-assistant
• Facebook: facebook.com/groups/HomeAssistant
H
I
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