Things that Matter: Are network protocols hanging by a Thread?

Alex -

I promise that all bad puns have already been done in the title, so don't click away, please :) Have mercy on a non-native speaker trying to make bad puns.

My non-hidden motives for this blog entry

  • I wanted to make an entry on the blog (it has been a while)
  • I wanted to express my alignment
  • I wanted to encourage people to follow this new ecosystem --either with their skill, their wallet or their network

But before diving in, let me put my experiences and current state-of-mind in context.

I have a couple of entries, very DIY-ish, that address certain aspects of OpenThread: I prepared a nRF52840 dongle and configured a border router. This is the An OpenThread Quest series that can be considered in hiatus.

Why a hiatus?

I have been toying around with ZephyrProject which is an excellent framework (is that the right word) for devices such as nRF52840.

However, having to implement all the application layer by myself seemed an herculean task. I considered Lightweight M2M, a protocol that sounds like a silver bullet but... it is not supported out-of-the-box in Home Assistant. And existing LwM2M projects feel old and legacy. I considered the option to build a LwM2M bridge to Home Assistant and take advantage of all the bells and whistles of the protocol but... my real-life life and finite hobby time says that this is not feasible.

I went a step towards minimalism and I looked into CoAP, a simple transport layer that promises to be adequate for low-power devices and IoT in general. In fact, LwM2M uses that by default. CoAP feels as if somebody liked REST and decided to adapt it to the IoT low-powered devices: use UDP, small binary packets, flat-ish structure. It should be a good fit, but still requires a lot of work on my end and building some kind of bridge or integration on Home Assistant.

What's the Matter? Why are you not pursuing those things?

Yeah, Matter is what happened. I have been promised a new shiny thing that both Apple and Google back. And hell is not even frozen yet!

The Project CHIP has some rebranding issues, let me quote themselves:

Matter (formerly Project Connected Home over IP, or Project CHIP) is a new Working Group within the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA, formerly Zigbee Alliance).

I use ZigBee on my home but I personally loathe that for DIY and open projects. It's... not exactly an open standard. It's something strange. And manufacturers tend to do non-standard things that hinder a cross-vendor network --Xiaomi, I am looking at you and your strange packet cadences!

However, now that ZigBee alliance rebranded themselves and promised a New&Better Thing(TM), I might give it a shot. There are already certain products in the market that use Matter. Certain chips that are out there using ZigBee may be able to use Matter after a firmware upgrade. At the moment, I believe in Matter.

I hope for Matter to make three things happen:

  • A reliable border router (with a usable up-to-date Android app for pairing).
  • An application layer to simplify messaging between devices (available as an SDK or built-in on ZephyrProject)
  • A flexible integration / ecosystem of integrations on Home Assistant.

If that happens, only then I will start to buy some Matter devices. I also plan to program my nRF52840 devices to tinker with that.

Until Matter succeeds (or fails), I will wait.