Light bulb is about the only demo that works

Official Hardware Nano Family Nano Matter
1

Now that I know how to de-commission the Nano Matter, when trying different demos, I have found that almost none of them work- apart from the lightbulb, when using my Amazon Echo (newest version).I delete any found Nano device on Alexa, before going on to the next demo.

  1. Thermostat device- does not work at all- isn't even discovered, although the nano serial monitor shows that it has connected to Thread network OK.
  2. Occupancy sensor. I did get this to work once- it got discovered and Alexa would show the occupied state, which changes every few seconds in the demo. Later on, having tried other demos, I could no longer get this demo to work- or even be discovered.
  3. On-off outlet. I did get this to work once .
  4. Contact sensor. After many tries (re-flashing bootoader to de-commission between each try) I did get it to connect to thread network, but not discovered. Finally I did get it discovered, but Alexa always showed the contacts as being closed , even when the Nano board user switch was pressed. I added the code:
    matter_contact_sensor.set_state(true);
    and
    matter_contact_sensor.set_state(false);
    in the button press/release ISRs, but that didn't help.
  5. Flow sensor: never got discovered.
  6. Switch: will connect to the Thread network. Alexa will sometimes discover the Nano hub and display it, but not the actual switch.
    After trying all of these demos, now the only one that consistently works is the light bulb. Others that did occasionally work earlier, no longer get discovered.
    I realize that the lightbulb is the only demo certified for Matter, but what is the point of providing all of the other demos which don't work?
    I've looked at the demo code, as well as the .h files associated with the demo for each device, and can't see anything obvious there.
Matter_Contact_Sensor demo not working with Alexa
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If you look through the forum, you will see that your complaint is unfortunately typical and quite common these days.

The Arduino company has lately been pumping out incomplete, unpolished products, with minimal documentation, few examples, incomplete libraries and software that usually needs to be debugged.

It is hard to understand the rush, but perhaps they think of it as a challenge to new users.

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I agree with your comments. While I use the Arduino IDE with many MCUs on non-Arduino brand boards, this time I thought I'd give them a try with the Silabs MCU with Matter support, on the Nano Matter board. To be fair, I got an early board thru the Community Preview but I don't see the point of providing example programs that don't work- even at this early stage. Granted, all of the examples are written by Silabs staff and then ported to Arduino- maybe the Silabs demos running under the Simplicity Studio don't work either. Or, maybe they just don't work on the Alexa platform. But, I've built other IoT devices using ESP32 with the Arduino IDE toolchain, and they fine with Alexa. I guess I'll have to wait until Arduino gets this sorted out.

1 Like
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I downloaded the latest Silicon Labs board package (vers. 2.2.0) and have now tried out most of the Matter examples. They now work with my Alexa Echo devices :grinning:

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@bmillier - thanks for your posts. Also updated to BSP 2.2.0 in the Arduino IDE. However, unable to run any other demo beyond the matter_lightbulb (toggles the onboard red LED on/off ok via the ESP Rainmaker app on my iphone X).

Have you been able to run the matter_switch sketch?

Stuck on the following:

Matter switch
Waiting for Thread network...
Connected to Thread network

I have been able to decommission the previous matter widget by running the matter_decommission sketch -> then pressing for 10 seconds. Then reflashed with matter_switch but stuck with the above.

What gives? Welcome any feedback. Thanks.
Waiting for Matter device discovery...

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I've tried out most of the Arduino-supplied (but Silabs written) Matter demos and none of them work apart from the light bulb. There doesn't seem to be any activity on this forum topic so I doubt that this board is being used by anyone.
Any comments?

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If you post the required information, forum members might be able to help you fix problems with one or more of the demos.

Your experience is part of a pattern with the Arduino company these days, as recently, a number of products have been released that are largely unsupported.

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I've been playing around with door/contact sensor examples and homekit, works well enough for me.

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Thanks for your feedback. I just use amazon echo devices for various purposes, and any commercial or my own DIY devices have worked well with the Echo devices/Alexa. Echo/Alexa supports matter/thread but didn’t work with any Arduino examples apart from the lightbulb, which Arduino says is the only one that is “certified”.

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I'm testing more with it more now though and I'm uncertain about the reliability. The contact sensor works fine and triggers homekit alerts at first after a minute or two the console output from the example sketch still shows it connected and triggering but it doesn't seem to communicate with homekit after initially working.

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Thanks for the update. My experience is different, being on echo/Alexa, but I too noticed that things weren't consistent. Sometimes Alexa would discover the Nano Matter when I tried other profiles (beyond the light bulb), but often, it wouldn't or wouldn't until I tried over and over again. I believe I got either the switch or contact profiles to be discovered- but only if I told alexa that they were "other" matter devices and not a switch or contact. They would then be discovered, but would not do anything- or show any change in state in the dashboard- so basically useless,

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surprised there isn't more interactivity with Arduino staff and/or SiliconLabs as these are dev community boards. Or is the expectation that the community solves the issues ?

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A post was split to a new topic: Nano Matter help required

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@bmillier ,

Your two or more topics on the same or similar subject have been merged.

Please do not duplicate your questions as doing so wastes the time and effort of the volunteers trying to help you as they are then answering the same thing in different places.

Please create one topic only for your question and choose the forum category carefully. If you have multiple questions about the same project then please ask your questions in the one topic as the answers to one question provide useful context for the others, and also you won’t have to keep explaining your project repeatedly.

Repeated duplicate posting could result in a temporary or permanent ban from the forum.

Could you take a few moments to Learn How To Use The Forum

It will help you get the best out of the forum in the future.

Thank you.

15

@mon2: Yes, I have been able to get switch sketch working- as well as the following:
Air quality - OK
Occupancy OK
On-Off outlet OK
Temperature Sensor OK
Humidity Sensor OK
Switch OK
nano_matter_lightbulb_color OK This works with the on-board RGB LED

All these are with an Alexa device- I know about ESP Rainmaker- I couldn't get it to work when I tried it back when it was announced, and haven't any experience with it since then.
I see you have 4 Nano Matter boards. I only have one so far. But, I know that they all come up with the same 11 digit pairing code ( and presumably the same QR code). I know this because a colleague of mine has a Sparkfun Thing board with the MGM240 MCU, and his comes up with the same pairing code as mine: 34970112332
I doubt that it is possible to commission the 2nd, 3rd boards if they have the same pairing code as the 1st one.
I believe I've found the python code needed to provision the 2nd, 3rd, etc. boards with a different code, but can't be sure until I get another board. Please let me know if you can get more than one Nano Matter board working at the same time (on the same Thread hub) , using only 1 pairing code.
Cheers

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@bmillier, thank you for your reply. Yes, as of today, have 2 x Nano matter boards operating but using the matter_lightbulb_with_button sketch.

My setup is using the latest BSP of 2.2.0 which you noted in another thread (no pun) and 2 of these boards. Yes, it appears that the QR and/or pairing codes are the same for my setup which is unique and different than yours. Now understand that the process is as follows:

If the nano matter board was used with any of the matter examples, it must first be decommissioned using the matter_decommission sketch. Boot with this sketch and press the user button for 10 seconds and then the terminal UART port (115,200 bps) will report that the board is being decommissioned.

Only then can you repurpose these boards with another sketch project.

As noted, the matter_lightbulb_with_switch works very well. On my iphone, used the ESP Rainmaker app to commission these 2 x matter widgets. My newly purchased homepod mini is unable to detect these boards but will try again in a few minutes.

I am also testing the ESP32 based boards against the same setup of hardware. The ESP32-H2 (matter over thread based only) is able to be detected by Apple Homekit but according to Espressif, we cannot perform binding.

Binding is to allow say a matter_switch to be pressed and based on this action, toggle a specific matter_lightbulb. Espressif's Rainmaker offers this feature under 'automation' but when I enter that screen on my iphone, the screen is blank. Suspecting that this is because I am working with Nano Matter boards and not an ESP32 based board. Again, will try to sort out this madness in a few minutes.

All a somewhat fun learning curve. The ESP32 modules were running their factory and cloud based zerocode. Have not yet jumped into the low level C compilers and toolchains to further tweak this plug and play software.

Given that the matter_lightbulb_with_button also exposes the feedback of the pressed button, I am ok with using this sketch. Very strange that it is not working for me if using only the matter_switch sketch. It may be due to the Apple homepod mini. We also have an Alexa..somewhere.

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Update - matter_lightbulb_with_switch sketch works fine with Apple Homekit using homepod mini. This single nano matter board was originally paired to be used with the ESP Rainmaker so selected the '!' in their app and selected remove from their app. Then ran the Apple Homekit and a scan showed that there is a matter widget availble near my desk. Allowed the app to board it and the switch is now available through this app and also Siri is able to turn this matter lightbulb on/off using voice commands. Very cool. Not sure if BOTH Apple Homekit and Rainmaker can both toggle this light but will test that permutation very soon. Espressif noted that they offer more features in Rainmaker than Apple does with their Homekit but now I see automation is visible for this new lightbulb. Will test some ideas to act based on a keypress of the matter switch.

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Update - ok. Have it all working using matter_lightbulb_with_switch sketch running on 2 x nano matter boards. Commissioned each with Apple Homekit app and using the Apple homepod mini. Installed 2 automation scripts so that if the user button is pressed on one board, the local led as well as the remote board's led will turn ON. Press the user button again to toggle the leds to be off. The iphone app reflects the realtime status of the leds. Sometimes a bit of a small latency but is accurate on their states. Very very very cool. Next week will consider to mate with optically isolated relay boards to turn (AC powered) on/off using the same.

19

Thanks for the 2 updates. Yes, I knew about the De-commisioning. I find it quicker to just use the "burn the bootloader" command in the Arduino tools. That does the same thing.
Since I could not get Alexa to recognize my single Nano Matter when switching from one example sketch to another, unless I de-commissioned it in between, I just assumed that a second board, which uses the same pairing code/QR code, would not be recognized as a new, unique device, either. It would seem like a similar situation. But, I do know there is a lot of encrypted authorization code being exchanged between the two devices, and that is all hidden very deep in silabs matter stack.So, I'm not surprised if it works differently than I expected.
Have fun!

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Thank you. May I ask how you are burning the bootloader? This is using an external arduino which is acting like a jtag tool? Which wiring diagram is applicable for this nano matter board? Sounds like a great idea and will save future time. Another observation is that even if there is no code change to the sketch, attempting to upload to a new target board still demands the very lengthy wait time to compile the code (which was not changed) before flashing. There must be some flag to prevent this long process, if there is no source code change. Your feedback has been spot on. Thanks again for sharing.