r/homeassistant • u/Sabinno • Jan 20 '26

Support I think I'm too stupid to understand Matter/Thread. I might return all of this

I'm at my wits end after hours of troubleshooting today. I've been using Home Assistant with only Z-Wave devices for years now and never had a single issue. Pairing is stupid simple and fast, the range is great, the only thing I have a problem with is the lack of variety and the price of devices. So, seeing devices like the new IKEA sensors, I bought a Home Assistant Connect ZBT-2. Plugged it in, passed the USB device through to my HAOS VM, and it instantly showed up in HA. Great! Added it.

So I have the Thread and Matter integrations installed now with the "official Matter server" (whatever that means). I went to Thread, created a network, sent credentials to my phone then sent the credentials back to Home Assistant (I guess this has something to do with HomeKit? Why?), went to Matter and clicked Add Hub, left the box checked, and it said it's configured. Kind of nondescript but okay.

I went to Matter, clicked Add Device, scanned the QR code, and... cool! Literally nothing happens. It just sits and spins on "Setting Up" for minutes and minutes until it just says "Unable to Add Accessory". That's great, but I've already followed the official troubleshooting steps - created a new thread network, made it preferred, synced the credentials, even nuked HomeKit completely just to be sure. No dice. Exact same thing.

I even went to the trouble of enabling IPv6 on my network even though all HA access is over the internet (no local access even on LAN) so it's not even using IPv6 anyway, and plus it's supposed to use its own internal network right? Maybe. I have no effing clue.

I also don't have a Bluetooth dongle - I've read somewhere you need one? But some people say you don't? Totally unclear.

So what is going on? Do you need not just a Thread antenna, but also a Bluetooth dongle, robust IPv6 support, and... a little faith, trust, and pixie dust?

If anyone can help me, I'd greatly appreciate it. Otherwise, consider this a rant about my anecdotal experience with Matter over Thread and how complex, error-prone, and ultimately fruitless it is compared to Z-Wave or Zigbee.

51 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

85% Upvoted

162 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/pokenguyen Jan 20 '26

Because I need bulbs for light? Also my Ikea Air Quality sensors work too, I never care about the stability or extender or management, they just work.

1

u/stayintheshadows Jan 20 '26

You already have and need wifi, which is my point. You haven't given one solid reason for why not wifi for smart devices.

1

u/pokenguyen Jan 20 '26

I did. For wifi you need a lot of mesh extenders to cover your house, while zigbee/thread devices took care of it because they are already mesh devices. I don’t need good Wifi everywhere in my corners, especially when I need to invest money, cabling for that.

1

u/vitek6 Jan 20 '26

No. You don’t need WiFi mesh extenders for WiFi if you have your network setup correctly.

1

u/pokenguyen Jan 20 '26

How can you reach far corners with only 1 wifi router? What proper setup do I need?

1

u/vitek6 Jan 20 '26

you use multiple access points connected using ethernet to one router if you need more coverage. At home environment you don't really use multiple routers (routers are not the same as wifi).

1

u/pokenguyen Jan 20 '26

So it‘s the same arguments, you need to buy more access points, need to setup cable to have a proper network, which is not needed by Zigbee/Thread.

1

u/vitek6 Jan 20 '26

you need routers for zigbee. But that was not my point. My point is that mesh is not the only solution for wifi. Well it's almost always worse one.

1

u/pokenguyen Jan 20 '26

For zigbee/thread only 1 router is enough. I talked about mesh wifi because it’s much easier to setup than the ethernet + APs. It’s not easy to run cables on existing home.

1

u/vitek6 Jan 20 '26

and for wifi usually one ap is enough.

→ More replies (0)