Home Automation

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Discussion about general home automation ideas and projects, home automation protocols like Z-wave, Zigbee, Matter, etc, and home automation software and hubs like HomeSeer, Home Assistant, OpenHAB, Homey.

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Does Matter matter (compared to devices flashed with third-party open source firmware)? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I'm just getting into home automation, so I don't really know what I'm doing. I care a lot about supporting open standards (which is partly why I never bothered with it until now that Matter is coming out), but I also very much like the idea of having everything I own running Open Source firmware instead of whatever potentially untrustworthy stuff it comes with.

So anyway, I got some TP-Link Kasa smart plugs (KP125MP2), but have since been doing some more research and found that some folks don't think there's actually much, if any, advantage to Matter devices compared to older wi-fi devices that've been flashed with Tasmota or ESPHome. So now I've also got some Sonoff S31 smart plugs and a USB to serial adapter to flash them with, and I'm wondering which set of things I should actually keep.

I kinda feel like I need to try installing and using them to know which I prefer, but I'd also feel bad about returning stuff after it's got provisioning info stored on it (or worse, flashed firmware). So maybe I can decide based on advice y'all give me instead?

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I mean, the obvious thing here is that “it just works” compared to flashing (and knowing how to flash) custom firmware onto devices. In my mind there are two big things that Matter has going for it:

Local-only support. If a device supports Matter it needs to be fully controllable locally per the specification.
Thread support. All the perks of zigbee and z-wave with the benefits of a much more reliable and robust network thanks to its mesh design. Every Matter device can act as a relay for any other Matter device. The only thing that needs to talk to anything over the LAN (or internet) is a border router.

Those two things aside, Matter is open source. It was formerly ProjectCHIP. So, if the device has the correct hardware to support Matter (not all current IoT devices have the necessary hardware) in theory open source firmware for those devices should be easier to develop.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A lot of Matter devices aren’t Thread, though, to be clear.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Absolutely, though it’s one of the main communication protocols, so I would imagine their numbers to increase. It seems like the HomeKit specific vendors like Eve have gone all in on it in preparation for Matter.

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