I’m choosing devices based on how good they work with zha and HA and usually have to browse a bit before settling for something. If they manage to implement this properly, I’m all here for it.
Maybe they should talk to the zigbee device compatibility repository people (or maybe they already have).
+1 for ThirdReality. They’re a little pricey but I’ve generally had good luck with them.
I’ve also had pretty good luck with cheap Matter-over-wifi bulbs. Pairing them can be a little finicky and needs to go through an Android or iOS process, but after pairing you can block Internet access for them and they work great local-only.
There’s a bug in some wifi matter bulbs where they crash, especially when going from off to a desired brightness/color state (as in, “light on” works but “light to 50%, 3000K” will crash the bulb).
I think I’d rather do matter over thread, primarily because I really don’t want any devices connecting to my Wi-Fi network, because then I know that they have the ability to access the internet.
Fair enough; I have a dedicated SSID which is VLAN’d off from the rest of my network with no Internet access. Only my HA server can talk to those devices.
I’m also a little concerned about matter devices, because they all seem to require an app setup, and that app is not open source, and so I don’t have the desire to install that app on my device, ever. My home assistant just finds my Zigbee device and I don’t have to have any closed source proprietary applications to connect them.
Yeah, good point. The “app setup” is built into android and iOS as far as I can tell (generating matter credentials, etc.). Better than 3rd party IMHO but not ideal, and a nonstarter for a lot of folks. Hopefully HA will come out with their own onboarding process at some point.