I recently installed White Series Fan Canopy VTM36 (1.0.0 firmware) with a White Series Dimmer VTM31-SN (1.0.5 firmware). Since Home Assistant now supports Matter bindings, I installed Matter Binding Helper (GitHub - cedricziel/ha-matter-binding-helper: A binding helper for matter) and set up the bindings between the Dimmer and Canopy. Here’s my binding setup:
The dimmer is in Dimmer+Single mode with Smart Bulb Enable mode. It is wired as per the diagram “Single Pole (W/Neutral Wire) Canopy Module Installation With An Inovelli Smart Switch” (power at switch) in the wiring docs.
As shown above, I have the paddles bound to the light endpoints on the canopy (I want to use the dimmer as I would a good-old dumb dimmer). It works as expected to power on/of and dim the lights, except…
If the canopy hasn’t had any commands in a while, it takes several seconds for it to start responding to the dimmer. I can power on, power off, dim up and down and see the dimmer status LED showing the changes, but there is no response at the canopy for several seconds. It’s almost as if the server code in the canopy module is asleep and has to wake up, and it takes it a very long time to do so. If I send a Matter command prior via either Home Assistant or Apple Home, it seems to wake up the canopy and it responds immediately to the dimmer.
Are we still in a state where the canopy and/or switch really don’t fully support Matter binding yet, or is something else amiss? Has anyone else had any similar (or contradictory!) experience? Am I missing something/misconfigured something?
For a comparison, I tried binding some other Smart Dimmers in my kitchen, and the same thing is happening. I have one main dimmer bound to two others, and when first set up they worked flawlessly. After getting up this morning (and after my morning automation had already turned on the lights), the paddles only controlled the main light. After quite a bit of time (unsure of exactly how long, but about 30-60 seconds), the dimmers all started working together, though their states were out of sync at first. It’s like whatever code that runs to make binding work has to “wake up.”
My understanding that the issue with the beta has been in setting up bindings, and particularly in un-binding devices, but that was I think resolved (can’t find a link now, tho). The Matter Binding Helper seems to work well for me in setting them up, but I haven’t needed to delete a binding, so haven’t run into that issue.
Since a Matter binding is a device-to-device function, it doesn’t depend on the server once set up (which is the whole point of bindings). To the best of my knowledge, my bindings are set up correctly, the controlled devices are just not responsive.
I have that configuration but I don’t see any delay at all. BTW HA also now supports matter binding natively so I did the binding setup without installing any additional software. I have an On/Off bound to the canopy (previously it was a Dimmer but it worked the same way). I also have two dimmers bound to each other. Again the delay is too small to measure.
I noticed the same thing. I have the White 2in1’s with a binding to some Aquara T2 bulbs. If they have not been utilized for some time, the response will be extremely slow. Kind of a bummer.
I think I may have finally discovered the problem, and it may not be the binding or Inovelli devices at all. Also, I didn’t redo the binding directly in the beta Matter server, so nothing confounding there.
What I noticed is that I have a couple of early edition Nanoleaf Thread bulbs and their connections are really flaky. I had one finally completely die yesterday but had not removed it from Apple Home until today (it was never in Home Assistant). When Apple Home tried to run my morning automation, it partially failed (the automation turns on the failed bulb). Later this morning I noticed that one of my Home Assistant automations triggered by another Inovelli dimmer was failing. That prompted me to consider a Thread network problem. So I looked at all my Matter devices’ history in Home Assistant.
I saw a few drops randomly yesterday and overnight after the Nanoleaf bulb failed, but nothing major. But after the morning Apple Home automation ran at 9:00 AM, there was a storm of devices dropping, and not just Inovelli devices.
As soon as I removed the offending Nanoleaf from Apple Home, all devices have stayed online (except the other early Nanoleaf in the entry console lamp). More importantly, the binding between my Inovelli Dimmer and Fan Canopy is working as expected this afternoon. I think these two Nanoleaf bulbs have been destabilizing my Thread network, which would explain random flakiness I’ve been experiencing for a while, especially with my door lock.
I’ll continue monitoring the switch and canopy binding, but I hope this is resolved. I’ll also replace that remaining early Nanoleaf bulb (it has failing RGB LEDs anyway), and it won’t be with Nanoleaf—which is no big deal since I don’t see Thread bulbs on their site anymore anyway. Probably Philips Hue bulbs to match the others in my main living area.
I’ll try to remember to follow up before this thread closes.
Ok, it’s been almost a week, and except at times when my Thread network is unstable, the binding seems to be working normally. After the removal of the one Nanoleaf bulb, the network has been much more stable.
That said, sometimes the new beta Matter server in HA gets weird and needs a reboot, and at one point I had the canopy completely drop out of both HA and Apple Home, needing a toggle at the breaker panel. That has only happened once in the entire time I’ve had the canopy, a few months now.
I’m beginning to think that Matter & Thread are still going through growing pains and just get unstable. It’s annoying, but hopefully will be sorted soon.
To make sure that my remaining Nanoleaf bulbs aren’t contributing to the problem, I’m replacing them with Hue Essentials. Think I’m done with Nanoleaf products.
At any rate, I’m chalking all of thus up to Matter/Thread instability, likely triggered by a bad node and an aggressive Apple Home border router.
I’ve removed the remaining Nanoleaf bulbs and my network is looking much, much more stable. I can’t 100% pin instability on them, but so far it looks great.
It’s more obvious now that you’re right—the canopy is pretty unstable itself. It briefly drops off the network a couple of times a day (looking at history in Home Assistant). And now, I have twice had it completely drop off, requiring a trip to the breaker panel to get it to reconnect.
