hardwired Thread-powered Eve Light Switch
The SmartLife app for Android also allows comissioning Matter devices to the phone without a hub, although that would be multi-admin if you already have another smart home platform and I wouldnât do it: the phone is going to be receiving all the traffic from Matter subscriptions and some lights can get very spammy and will impact battery life of the phone.
I guess the iOS feature is using the same fabric of the Apple Home hub so I find it better for scenarios where the hub dies and you can still use the phone to manually control devices (although many devices already have their own apps for local control like Nanoleaf, WiZ, Tapo, etc. so the emergency case is already covered).
If you are using the SmartThings hub and going to use multi-admin to add devices to Apple Home without having an Apple Home hub to have local control with the iPhone (which the ST app does not have), I would think it twice.
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this product has been out for awhile but havenât seen it reported on the forum with Matter support through the Aqara hub. IFA 2024 news.
Classic Aqara marketing tricks 
The relay does not have Matter if it requires the Aqara hub.
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As you know, you and I disagree on this.
If the individual device does not have the matter logo on the box (this one does not), and it works with a certified matter bridge to expose it to other matter-compliant platforms (which this one does) and it lists the requirement of using that bridge (which this one does), then I donât consider it a âmarketing trick.â
Itâs useful information because not all devices are exposed through all matter bridges.
But weâll just have to continue to agree to disagree on this one. 
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I agree that marking something as working with their Matter Bridge is good idea. But they need to be really clear that a hub is needed because the average person is very confused about Matter.
I have a Moes (Tuya) Matter Bridge and you have no idea if a Tuya ZigBee device paired with the bridge will show up as a Matter device in SmartThings until you buy it and test it.
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The issue with using your phone as the Matter controller is that you will have no control of the devices when you are not connected to the local network. I had this experience when I used the THIRD REALITY 3rd Installer app as the commissioner and controller for their smart night light. No control when not connected to my home Wi-Fi. With a home automation hub as your controller, it will always be local and accessible remotely through the platformâs remote access capability.
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Nice to see Eve finally get a Matter over Thread switch out. I have both the plug-in outlet and duplex in-wall outlet and am very pleased with them. Nice alternative to Inovelli since those seem to be out of stock constantly and are also at a higher price point.
Be interesting to see if the switch also supports energy reporting like the outlets.
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Thatâs the point, âwith Matterâ or âcompatible with Matterâ is a feature of the hub / bridge, not the device. The device is with ZigBee, not with Matter.
We agree in the need to know what can be bridged and what not. The correct way in my opinion is that the hub should describe the devices it is able to bridge and what functions are bridged. After all it all depends on the hub, not on the device.
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Since it is physically quite difficult for me to navigate the Internet, I actually appreciate it the other way around. If Iâm on the product page for a specific device, like a relay, I want that page to tell me if I can get to it via a matter bridge and which matter bridge. (Literally tell me: I use a screen reader. )
What I really donât want to have to do is listen to a list of 127 different devices to see if the one Iâm interested in buying is on that list. Or not. And get to the end of the list and wonder if maybe I just missed it and have to go back up to the top and start again. 
I donât even want to have to go to the hub page.
I just want the product description for the relay to tell me if it can be bridged to matter and if so, with which bridge.
I would also like to see the information on the hub page of all the devices that can be bridged by it. But thatâs not what Iâm likely to use unless Iâm shopping for a new hub/bridge.
Choice is good.
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That reminded me The Verge has a website with âa list of all Matter-compatible productsâ. It was great at the beginning, now itâs almost useless for me because itâs full of âthrough Switchbot hubâ and âthrough Aqara hubâ and finding actual Matter devices turns into searching a needle in a haystack.
Imagine they start adding ALL devices from IKEA of the last 10 years that can be bridged now, the list would have hundreds of references and would be even more useless.
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A day after writing this, it happened again. Itâs a long story about a specific chicken and egg case with Matter lights, feel free to skip it.
Home Assistant is the only platform that set a default transition time for Matter lights so thereâs a nice smooth transition when you change the brightness or temperature. As commented in other posts, some vendors do not implement transitions correctly and the experience when using them can be awful, including flooding the hub or taking forever to turn on the light.
Users started to experience those issues. HA stood still since it was not HA fault but a wrong Matter implementation by some vendors, so clearly it was vendors the ones who had to fix it. They did not, some havenât updated the Matter code for months, sometimes over a year.
Then HA added a blocklist to prevent transitions in vendors and models with known bad implementations. It was a good call for action for vendors, âhey, you are on the blocklist for bad implementation, please fix it or Iâll buy another non-blocklisted brandâ.
Two days ago, we lost. Transitions in HA go back to the default 0 that everybody else uses because updating a list of bad implementations is a pain and most vendors apparently donât even care. Remove default transition in Matter light platform by marcelveldt ¡ Pull Request #126220 ¡ home-assistant/core ¡ GitHub
As feature-rich Matter is, at least for lights, if vendors donât implement features correctly and smart home platforms donât use those features by default because they donât work (so people and media donât even know they exist) then thereâs no incentive for vendors to fix them and we will be stuck on the most basic features forever.
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I have said before, unfortunately, I will probably have to say it again, but I am so disappointed in the way the matter logo certification program has worked. I really feel that they leaned too much on the Zigbee model. They shouldâve looked at the zwave model.
Of course, Zwave had a few glitches in the early days, and in particular, with the 300 series some devices got permission to use the logo that probably shouldnât have because they were idiosyncratic and how they implemented the command sets.
But they did fix that for the 400 series and now you can pick up any brandâs Z wave device and at least 90% of the time if a feature doesnât work itâs the fault of the hubâs platform, not the end deviceâs manufacturer.
But with Zigbee Lots of features have lots of âplayâ in them so that the device can be certified, but wonât work with all platforms. And Iâm not talking about the âmanufacturer proprietaryâ clusters. But just ordinary stuff like how frequently The device reports.
Just think about how often youâve seen a âZ wave thingâ versus a âZigbee thing. â
Matter was supposed to fix stuff like that, but they have allowed logo use for devices which just donât work to the standard. Plus, of course, allowing everyone to roll out matter support on their own timeline while still using the logo, including controllers that can only handle a few device classes.
To be clear: I donât mind the multiple timelines and a later updates if they had only been refused logo usage until they met a consistent viable matter support level. But thatâs not how it works right now.
Itâs very annoying.
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It is. Controllers not supporting whole device types is another chicken and egg. Google Home or Alexa not supporting buttons is almost hard to believe being in 2024, and itâs probably the reason why nobody is launching Matter buttons.
Nanoleaf in fact recognized the lack of general support across smart home platforms changed some decisions regarding Matter in their new remote and went for their own protocol for their lights.
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SmartSetup Matter over Thread US style switch.
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5 posts were split to a new topic: Adding Matter Devices to a ST Wifi Hub?
The German Matter Smart Home blog (available in German, French, and English) has some interesting tidbits based on a recent interview with Shelly.
Shelley has just certified their first matter device, a GEN 3 Wi-Fi plug. They told the blog they plan to eventually offer firmware upgrades for other GEN 3 models to support matter.
However, while they originally intended to also include the GEN two models, it turns out that those models just donât have enough memory to run matter support. So instead, they are considering a matter bridge for those devices. But no announced timeline yet.
They arenât the first Wi-Fi device manufacturer to discover that matter support wasnât possible on existing devices because of the memory issues: Meross came to the same conclusion.
Anyway, hereâs the article about Shelly:
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The Shelly smart plug is certified since July but, unfortunately, only for Matter 1.2, meaning it wonât have power monitoring in Matter at launch unless it releases with an updated firmware.
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IFA is a huge tradeshow held every year in Europe, dedicated to consumer electronics and home appliances. So lots of smart home stuff.
The German blog Matter Smart Home (available in German, French, and English) Has an in-depth article on what they saw there relative to matter and thread. Worth a read.
Among other things, they point out that the end device manufacturers are waiting on the platforms (Apple, Google, Alexa, SmartThings, etc) to become more consistent in their matter support before they invest in developing consumer products.
The article doesnât say, but which Iâm sure is a driving factor, is that one of the promises of Matter for device manufacturers is that it would lower both development and customer support costs by making everything work the same on the major platforms. Only it doesnât yet. 
The article does contain some interesting comments from Aqara and some observations about Flic.
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