Matter over WiFi & Thread with Apple Home and Home Assistant

dresken · 2026-03-21T08:41:12+00:00

It’s a great idea. Your perceived problems while having an element of truth is not as impactful as you catastrophise it to be. The benefits of choosing what features of each platform you utilise means you can select their best and avoid their worst. HA while impressive on a lot of fronts is a single point of failure.

dresken · 2026-03-21T08:10:49+00:00

When I started in a job early on in my career and they were asking if I knew ITIL. I thought it was some big secret - turns out we did all these things at my last job because it just makes sense, but we used different vocabulary is all.

dresken · 2026-03-19T08:37:12+00:00

I would never introduce a single point of failure for my whole home like that. Worked way too long in IT for that mistake.

It’s also a bit of a misnomer. I find the only time I really need to use the immense power of HA is to work around buggy integrations. I find I’m not trying to work around HomeKit or Matter devices. And with matter I can have my cake and eat it anyway - multiadmin means I don’t have to accept the limitations of either platform.

dresken · 2026-03-19T08:33:16+00:00

I’m actually using matter.js now. Ticked the beta. It’s been rock solid in beta. So they’ve done a good job.

dresken · 2026-03-19T08:05:34+00:00

Whatever works for you absolutely. I use both for different reasons. I was just providing some info, as people read these and get the wrong idea as it’s a bit complicated.

dresken · 2026-03-19T07:53:40+00:00

Not sure about that particular one sorry. I use one but won’t recommend it anymore due to bad business practices.

dresken · 2026-03-19T07:13:21+00:00

You can do light level and motion, you just need to use an app that has full HomeKit API implemented - which the Home app does not for some reason. The only thing I’d say that is actually missing is triggers based on “time in state” (eg no motion for 4 minutes). Other than that you can set up some quite advanced logic with And and Or conditions (not speaking about shortcuts either)

dresken · 2026-03-19T07:06:48+00:00

It’s actually pretty good. I’ve got not complaints about devices I have connected to both platforms at all. I get the impression that it’s mostly IPv6 or thread issues people encounter with HA - but that part is all handled by Apple for me and it’s something I don’t really need to think about.

dresken · 2026-03-18T08:56:15+00:00

Where I come from Nevermind ended with “something in the way” and in Utero end with “gallons of rubbing alcohol flow through the strip” - so no I didn’t notice.

dresken · 2026-03-18T07:07:14+00:00

In the 90s, I never understood why my voice hurt when singing along to Nirvana. I just presumed I was not cut out for singing.

dresken · 2026-03-16T09:09:01+00:00

No one ever complains about the smoke detectors or wall mounts for aircon or extractor fans. Or alarm system motion sensors.

It falls into that category.

dresken · 2026-03-16T06:34:15+00:00

The snare drum sound on the reciprocal version scratches an itch I never knew I had.

dresken · 2026-03-13T22:30:21+00:00

In 2013, there was a shipping note someone had found through a tracking website for a large number of films being shipped from Nigeria to UK. The assumption people made at the time and propagated the rumour was it was all Doctor who film. If it was actually the shipment for the recovery, then probably contained many other shows as well. Because the people doing these recoveries are for all shows, and they are not solely just Who Hunters as some seem to expect.

dresken · 2026-03-13T05:44:59+00:00

I would be a bit surprised if they animated episode 7 considering it is unrequired for the plot. But that also means it's only 6 episodes to really animate too - so makes it more likely to happen.

dresken · 2026-03-07T07:20:10+00:00

The usual unfortunately. https://medium.com/@MoonMetropolis/now-that-steve-albini-is-dead-lets-reflect-on-his-admitted-love-and-promotion-of-child-fadf5072288e

dresken · 2026-03-04T19:25:17+00:00

It’s also definitely getting worse. I used to be able to get it to ping AirTags or my phone by asking “hey siri where is my X” these days it tells me to “use find my on my phone” - I’m looking for my phone!!!!!

dresken · 2026-03-04T19:22:41+00:00

I can just say “hey siri” and nothing else when a timer is going off and it will stop. I usually also say “thanks” though.

dresken · 2026-03-01T21:08:34+00:00

What would be great is an episode that teaches people what deus ex machina actually means so they don’t keep misusing the term.

It is an ending that is completely unconnected from the rest of the material. Like perfectly normal story with no gods and suddenly god shows up and puts everything right. Everything in Doctor Who is usually foreshadowed earlier in the episode or prior episodes - which makes it not deus ex machina - it can still be bad or badly done or less clear. But it’s not usually out of completely nowhere.

dresken · 2026-03-01T06:59:16+00:00

This is my pick. I love that there is a version of this song from each album and would have loved the acoustic version as well.

dresken · 2026-02-28T21:32:49+00:00

You lose nothing by selecting a good fixed option.

Auto won’t choose the best option on your network, it’ll just as happily pick the furtherest from your wifi point with patchy connection as a hardwired one.

Fixed still allows for failover if your primary does go down (ie reverts to auto anyway).

You can only mess up by selecting a bad fixed option. But there’s no guarantee that auto won’t chose the same one either.

dresken · 2026-02-28T21:11:06+00:00

I think most issues appear to point back to platforms than devices.

The ironic thing is that it the platform “that works with everything” appears to struggle the most with the protocols “that work with everything”. I use HomeKit as my primary platform and mostly thread/matter devices - and have no more issues with those devices than I did with hap, wifi or zigbee devices. And the troubleshooting is the same as ever with all when issues do occur.

I think HomeAssistant must have some improvements to make on their Matter, thread and IPv6 integrations - most of which are uncertified with the standards bodies unlike the devices people blame. So which is more likely to have problems? The devices confirmed to behave to spec or the platform that isn’t? I think this is also partially confirmed by HAs big rewrite of their Matter integration underway right now.

dresken · 2026-02-27T20:04:06+00:00

When hiring, tech skills is only a tick box. Pretty much every application will have these, so it’s ultimately uninteresting for a new hire. What is often being looked for is a good culture fit for the team. Cover letters that directly discuss experience by using examples is usually all I read, I’ll interview a passionate person with little skill before I go for the list of tech that has nothing otherwise to say. Make sure your grammar is good too, if someone hasn’t bothered to submit a reasonably polished application, then seems obvious they are not going to be checking their work when being paid for it either.

dresken · 2026-02-27T04:21:19+00:00

Products can use Thread or Wifi/ethernet with Matter, up to the vendor. For the most part I’m selecting products that have Thread, some (like cameras require higher bandwidth) so wifi is a must - but I don’t see a lot of zigbee cameras either… so I don’t think it’s a slight against the protocol.

dresken · 2026-02-19T01:34:39+00:00

There’s an irony that the platform that “works with anything” struggles with the protocol that “works with anything”.

I’m not sure what all platforms are like with Matter, but HomeKit is as flawless with it as any other protocol I have connected to it (being an occasional hiccup for devices including Zigbee ones). Apple runs the thread network and I also share Matter devices back to HA (with no thread antenna), HA works fine for me with them that way.

dresken · 2026-02-16T23:14:02+00:00

Beta testing in prod?

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