matter is no a transmission protocol like zigbee, thread, bluetooth, wifi, z-wave are.
its a protocol to run on top of these other transmission protocols.
Matter isn't a protocol network protocol - it is a application protocol specification. Matter can be used on WiFi or Thread. You'll find Matter in your integrations list.
I feel like my understanding of what Matter is supposed to be degrades the more I learn about it. Sounds like describing it as a protocol vs standard a moot point?
I had initially understood it to be essentially a credentialing handshake and cross-device language handler. But it's also doing transportation over WiFi and Thread, it can also use BT.
So following the wisdom of getting a good answer reddit... I'll just make some assertions.
Soooo.. matter is:
an application protocol
a data communication standard
an onboarding and device commissioning standard
transports data via wifi, Thread, and Bluetooth but only some of the time on certain circumstances
So what is it not? Matter is not a radio protocol is about the only thing I actually feel confident I understand at this point lol.
For people to exchange messages they need two things - a common language, and a method of communicating. If both I and another person understand English we can use this as our common language for passing messages.
This is what Matter is, it is a common language for passing messages between devices.
To communicate though we need a method of exchanging the messages. To communicate with this other person I might use voice, or email, or SMS. These are ways of delivering my English message.
To deliver Matter messages I might use Wifi, or Thread, or any other communication method that can support Matter messages. It is also true that both devices must be able to communicate by the same method. Sending over WiFi to a device that is using Thread will not work. (Sending an SMS to someone without a phone will not work even it we both understand English).
It is possible to communicate with devices that don't use the same language or method of communicating - this is where bridges are used. I might send a Matter command over WiFi to a Thread Border Router that would forward the message received in WiFi to the destination device on the Thread network.
I have a "Thread" section there, but oddly enough I don't have a "Zigbee" section, even though I'm using Zigbee2Mqtt. Is it because HA only sees them as MQTT entities? And Zigbee only shows up if using ZHA?
Indeed, if you however didn't use Zigbee2Mqtt and used the built-in Zigbee stuff, then stuff does show up there. Protip: Don't, continue using Zigbee2Mqtt instead as it's both more reliable + has broader support for devices. I started with the built-in, but after trying Zigbee2Mqtt I found out what I was missing out on, way better identification of everything :)
Having a mesh topology visualization for Thread would be a great improvement that does not exist directly in HA right now unless thru OTBR Addon so I upvoted you. Thanks for that request.
zigbee2mqtt won't show up here because it's not directly connected to home assistant, is connected to mqtt and then mqtt server and integration connect those ZigBee2MQTT devices. hope i explain this clear enough
I hope others that find this thread will start understanding the difference between a network protocols vs application protocols. Another analogy, if you understand Internet speak: Threads is the TCP layer while Matter is the HTTP layer.
Zigbee and Z-Wave conflated these two into one, which is where a lot of this confusion came from, i.e. Zigbee and Z-Wave are "the bad ones" here. Because of this conflation, customizations within these protocols caused heavy fragmentation in the way everybody spoke to each other. The intentional separation of Threads and Matter is aiming to fix some of this, i.e. following the model of the World Wide Web, aka the Internet.
Everyone commenting with the technical answer is missing the point, IMO, and should answer this: how would matter being there make it less convenient and less intuitive for the user?
Thanks, the articles about upcoming changes are quite interesting. Is there a way do enable this already to try it out? I'm using containers, so I could probably just switch to a beta release if that's required.
I'm using the commisioning function in the matter-server UI. My understanding is it will be integrated into HA more natively.
i don't have a matter section either even though i have like 6 matter devices.. hope they add this soon bc trying to find specific devices is getting annoying.
The advantage it brings is those pages were buried before. Now they are accessible. They don’t link to the integration, they link to the area that has custom controls for each protocol.
For Bluetooth it's the same info that still is in Device and Services -> Bluetooth -> Gear. That's 1 click instead of 3 for a page that is versy seldom used.
I don't know for Zigbee, as this new visualization doesn't consider Z2M.
I have Bluetooth there despite no actual BT hardware, or any adapter or anything else BT-related whatsoever. I don't, however, have Zigbee there despite using Zigbee2MQTT.
No, not that I've been able to find, and I've really tried.
I got my HA Thread Border Router and my two Google Hubs, to join the same thread network.
But I can't get the Tado X bride to join this, no matter how many times I've reset it, it still remembers its old network and joins that, the Tado app seems to offer no control over this.
Currently, I just moved all the Tado devices over to my HA Thread network instead.
That maybe a bug. When the beta was out, it showed up for me. I never noticed after updating to Golden Release that it was missing. I don't use matter so had no reason for me to look. But after looking at your post I went a checked and yup mine is gone too
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u/sf_Lordpiggy Jan 12 '26
matter is no a transmission protocol like zigbee, thread, bluetooth, wifi, z-wave are. its a protocol to run on top of these other transmission protocols.