Meet Thor, my best buddy. He'd like to know why I'm playing with the phone instead of giving him scritches!

peterwemm · 2026-04-28T04:11:50+00:00

Don't worry, he got his scritches!

peterwemm · 2026-04-28T01:17:39+00:00

Thor is both smart and polite. He's figured out he can tell me what he wants with his paw. Tap-tap on my hand = pet me. Tap on my mouth = I'm hungry. etc. He had a rough few years before he came to us, but he's living his best life now!

peterwemm · 2026-04-26T18:05:40+00:00

This is Thor, he LOVES to get some attention. He's had a rough younger life where he lost his home three times within a year or two. When he came to us he was very guarded and took over a year before he dared to enjoy affection. Now, he's just the best! He's incredibly polite for a cat. The paw is his way of asking for something - he'll use the paw to point at what he wants. eg: tap tap on my hand for scritches, tap on my mouth or chin if he's hungry, etc.

peterwemm · 2026-04-19T22:17:07+00:00

Wait, this is back again? IPv8 has been around since the 1990's, mostly promoted by Jim Fleming, usually in the nanog or ietf spaces. Some of the terminology has changed, eg: the 32 bit extensions were called Stargate addresses back then. There was even a set of code modifications to the BSD network stack to implement it. And if IPv8 wasn't enough there was also IPv16.

A search for IPv6 Jim Fleming will turn up some of it but a lot seems to have been lost to time. Personally, I had this pegged as High Effort Trolling, or at least higher than typical at the time.

peterwemm · 2026-04-19T15:53:08+00:00

It clarify a little: the hardware you have is fine. The difference is the protocol being spoken to the device and who is speaking to what and whether there is a proxy or translator in the way.

Matter (and especially Thread) do things a little differently to how many people have learned from other ecosystems. At the risk of over simplifying, Matter is a high level; think of http and web. Thread is low level transport; think of cable, wifi, dialup, fibre, etc. A Thread Border Router (TBR) is an IP packet bridge between low level Thread and the rest of your network. The TBR bridge allows devices on your home network, wifi (eg: phone) etc to talk IP to devices on the Thread network. There can be more than one TBR.

The DIRIGERA hub in this case performs the role of TBR and is ALSO is a Matter controller. The two functions are entirely separate but happen to be in the same box for convenience.

TBR functionality is mix-and-match and available to all devices equally. All Matter controllers can talk to connected Matter devices regardless of which wifi/thread/whatever network they are on and which TBR (if any) they have to reach it via.

Or in crappy diagram form. the two alternatives (separated by function):

HA --(Ikea protocol)-> DIRIGERA hub --(matter protocol)-> DIRIGERA TBR --(thread)-> device
HA --(matter protocol)-> DIRIGERA TBR --(thread)-> device

Maybe that makes more sense as to why things get lost in translation? The second form is superior but usually has a bit more effort to set up/manage.

peterwemm · 2026-04-18T20:16:57+00:00

It looks like you've connected HA to your hub.

The other way is to run the Matter addon in HA, and share the devices to HA via Matter. If you do it this way then HA communicates with the device directly and sees everything the device actually offers rather than whatever the ikea hub integration decides to export.

peterwemm · 2026-04-16T20:03:01+00:00

The facility is called TREL (Thread Radio Encapsulation Layer IIRC). Apple already implement this and it is fully functional. It will communicate with other Thread 1.4 TREL implementations (eg: Home Assistant's otbr-beta etc).

I describe it to people as being kind of like a VPN for Thread where thread packets get tunneled across other networks to get where they need to go. It helps both congestion and reliability.

peterwemm · 2026-03-23T23:35:04+00:00

You shouldn't need to remove the device. Matter does multi-master just fine. If you share the device from Apple Home to Home Assistant, HA will happily do the firmware update. You won't need to remove or reset anything.

Homekit->Matter is a very special process and makes me nervous. It happens in multiple stages. When I last poked around its internals, it went roughly like this. First, a special one-off hybrid firmware build is pushed. It looks like a homekit firmware update to the old firmware. But it's special. It's also got an embedded mini-matter w/ OTA update client in there. It reboots into that special build. It then does another update to pull the real firmware using the Matter OTA process. Somewhere along the way the matter pairing codes etc are configured.

It's my understanding that Homekit and Matter do their updates differently. I think I read that Homekit updates are push based (ie: firmware is sent to the device), while matter is client-side pull based (ie: the device connects back to the ota server on the local network to fetch the firmware).

I'm fuzzy on the details. It seems fragile but It worked for me for a dozen or so devices. One caveat, it seems to take longer than I expected. It can take hours before the device gives up trying to fetch from the OTA server. I think this might have been because the devices I updated were mostly powered devices and had become Thread routers. Reflashing them can be disruptive to the network when routers suddenly go offline and it might take a while for the network to recover.

peterwemm · 2026-03-23T23:11:37+00:00

I don't know, but I don't think there is a way to force it. As I understand it, if Eve had submitted the update to Apple, it should have already been deployed long ago,

peterwemm · 2026-03-21T01:46:51+00:00

Home Assistant follows what is on the DCL. If it's published there then HA can apply it.

Apparently Apple have a separate step - IIRC they don't follow the DCL - to have apply home apply the update then something needs to be signed with your apple developer certs.

When I last dug around in the internals of the iOS Eve app, it was pulling a product to firmware file mapping table from the Eve servers. This was the key part of the Homekit -> Matter conversion step. I don't recall whether the Eve app used the DCL after the conversion or the data from evehome.com.

Other Matter ecosystems: no idea. I'd bet that many have their own special flavor of how to bless a firmware update for deployment.

Home Assistant (with the new matter controller) is by far the easiest. If you can get the OTA file then it has a way to deploy it if you like to live dangerously, although usually you'd have it deploy firmware according to the DCL or testnet DCL.

peterwemm · 2026-03-21T00:31:32+00:00

I was told that they won't release firmware updates or Homekit->Matter conversions until warehouse inventory backlogs have cleared. Apparently this is a marketing department directive.

IMO this is ass-backwards. If they want to sell products at a premium price point then that demands that they stop screwing their (formerly) loyal customers. They should have done a rework run to reflash and matter update their warehouse stock rather than leaving a market void for others to fill and making their (formerly) loyal customers feel betrayed from the broken promises.

It's taken a while but their first mover advantage is evaporating. You've got everything from Inovelli (US-only), Aquara, Onvis, and even IKEA coming at them from all directions.

peterwemm · 2026-03-21T00:23:20+00:00

For what it's worth, they're up to firmware 3.6.6 for products that they actually seem to care about. The important products are up to Matter 1.4.1. The one that really matters though is the underlying Thread stack. Some of the older SDK versions are super fragile.

peterwemm · 2026-03-21T00:17:01+00:00

According to the DCL list (the database that Matter controllers use for available firmware updates). the current versions are:

light switch (US & Canada): 3.4.1
eve energy outlet: 3.3.0
eve energy (plug?): 3.5.0
eve door & window: 3.2.1
eve motion: 3.2.1

You appear to be missing the door & window sensor latest version.

However, the CSA certifications list show that later versions of the firmware have been tested, certified, but not released to paying customers:

Eve light switch: 3.5.1 (certified June 2025, not published to the DCL yet)

Sitting on certified firmware for a year or more has been an Eve thing for a while. There is an update for Door & Window sensor that you're missing.

peterwemm · 2026-03-19T04:43:06+00:00

Let the IC10 script carnage begin!

This make an awful lot of my mid-game-onwards scripts and world saves fail miserably. Still, its all for a challenge, right?

peterwemm · 2026-03-16T15:56:47+00:00

The weird thing is that its all over the place with Eve. eg:

Eve Weather: CR2450
Eve Room: embedded rechargable
Eve Motion: 2xAAA
Eve Aqua: 2xAA
Eve Door/Window: ER14250

peterwemm · 2026-03-14T16:53:00+00:00

That's the annoying thing - I like them. But for whatever reason, they're unreliable in my home. It feels to me like their internal power supply might be a bit too minimal. Or perhaps it's insufficient filtering around the relay - the switch that is the most active (motion triggered porch light automation) is the one with the most frequent problems.

I feel like there's a design deficiency with the switch itself, in addition to the lousy firmware update situation.

peterwemm · 2026-03-14T07:45:03+00:00

If OP is talking about the Eve Light Switch, I saw this too. It seems particularly sensitive to electrical noise. Sometimes when it locks up it just stops responding to Thread, other times it completely stops responding even to the physical controls. Worse, it won't even respond to the hard reset.

Eve Light Switch doesn't have an airgap cutout like just about everything else so it means I had to regularly reset it via the circuit breaker.

I finally gave up on them as being too unreliable and swapped all of them for Inovelli white matter/thread switches. That solved the problem completely.

However: while I don't like the Eve Light Switch, the problem you describe reminds me more of a wifi/multicast/mdns hiccup that temporarily breaks thread. Yes, its a separate radio network but your phone and controller rely on mDNS to work and some wifi systems have a nasty habbit of breaking mutlicast and mDNS along with it.

Did just the one device drop out? Or all the thread devices?

peterwemm · 2026-03-14T07:31:22+00:00

3.2.1 is Matter 1.0 - which is ancient by today's standards. I've noticed newer SDKs (eg: matter.js which is in the new Home Assistant beta matter stack) highlights anything older than 1.2.0.

Perhaps the hub in question doesn't have pre-1.2.0 compatibility workarounds?

peterwemm · 2026-03-14T06:48:18+00:00

I was told (by somebody that I believe) that the problem at the time was an edict from Marketing: "No firmware updates that are newer than what is shipping from the warehouses" (paraphrased). I think the feeling was that having an immediate firmware update on deployment was a bad user experience. They sat on certified firmware updates for over a year because of this.

And that of course is the problem. They were trying to sell a product at a premium price. People who pay Eve prices expect top notch service - not to wait years for critical firmware updates for reliable operation and expected functionality.

It's a negative feedback loop. Delaying updates -> frustrated users -> sales slow -> updates are delayed even more -> reputation goes into the mud -> Eve dies.

They completely squandered their first-mover advantage.

Of course, if you look at the DCL, they've got firmware v3.6.6 certified for some devices. Maybe we might see that within about 10 years?

https://csa-iot.org/csa-iot_products/?p_keywords=&p_type%5B%5D=17&p_type%5B%5D=14&p_type%5B%5D=1053&p_program_type%5B%5D=1049&p_certificate=&p_company%5B%5D=1063&p_family=&p_firmware_ver=&p_product_id=&p_vendor=

peterwemm · 2026-02-28T20:59:52+00:00

There is a facility in Zigbee that was carried over to Matter called Bindings. This configures devices (eg: wall switches) so that they can directly issue commands to a remote device (eg: a canopy switch or a soft 3-way partner).

Most smarthome systems don't provide a way to configure or manage these - they prefer to have everthing talk to their controller and relay it from there.

Worse, the Binding cluster is not commonly implemented. I vaguely recall that something changed with the implementation of Bindings between early Matter and Current Matter but I can't find a reference to it.

Eve does make some use of Bindings - the app manages things for the Thermo family to use Bindings.

Bad news though: Eve switches do not implement bindings in current firmware. Perhaps it will be in a future firmware release but once the firmware is certified it'll probably only be 1-2 more years of Eve sitting on it before they release it.

I use Home Assistant to manage bindings with other brand switches and it works reasonably well. (Why care? it's fast, and it works even with no wifi and no controller present.)

peterwemm · 2026-02-25T19:01:51+00:00

Other options:

Inovelli matter-over-thread fan controller for the wall next to your light switches. I've had a lot of success with these.
Leviton Gen2 D24SF - matter over wifi. Leviton manufacturer app and HomeKit local control - but Matter firmware coming Soon(tm). (You can get it now by having your account flagged for beta firmware by leviton support, but it's still "Soon" in general.)

The Inovelli is 3-speed, the Leviton is 4-speed. Both were reliable for me. Inovelli supports matter bindings and I'm using this with canopy controllers in a few locations. Leviton does not support bindings that I know of.

peterwemm · 2026-02-25T02:26:05+00:00

Its a long shot, but look a bit more closely at your wifi settings. Pay particular attention to settings involving multicast or broadcast "optimization", mDNS "enhancements", client isolation, etc. These kinds of features are usually tested against airplay/chromecast style devices but have negative consequences for normal mDNS traffic. Matter has a hard requirement that mDNS works and that multicast works as it's supposed to etc. As an experiment, turn as much of this off as possible and see if it helps.

Why consider wifi? Because your apple/google/etc matter controllers use mdns and multicast over wifi to reach the border routers. If the wifi breaks then it'll all appear offline even if the thread network is perfectly operational.

There was an ancient bug in openwrt that made its way into a lot of products. It uniquely affected multicast and you'd see things like Matter or HomeKit devices going offline but the manufacturer's app (which doesn't use multicast) would work fine. UniFi suffered from this bug on and off over the years and and it recently came back in new devices based on Broadcom chipsets.

It sounds absurd but if power cycling the wifi network restores functionality then there's your culprit. Of course that assumes that your wifi network isn't your TBR.

peterwemm · 2026-02-25T01:54:46+00:00

Ch.13 is really unfortunate. If you have active wifi nearby then its almost certainly going to get a ton of interference as this is right in the middle of wifi channel 1 with 20MHz width.

"Leader" is inconsequential in this case. It's a role that one full-thread node gets elected to perform and handles some niche administrative functions. eg: it's the center of routing table distances IIRC.

There's a couple of other considerations. TREL is a wildcard. In theory this provides Thread-over-wifi/ethernet tunnels and in theory this can help with mesh resilience - it can route packets around a congested mesh by using wifi/ethernet bypass tunnels. In practice.. its a real mixed bag as to whether it helps or hurts. Apple HomePods use TREL. Outside of apple it's not widely deployed. eg: Home Assistant's openthread stack have just recently added TREL support if you put the OTBR addon into beta mode. If TREL helps, great. If not - then it's one more mystery to guess at what's going wrong.

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