Project Update:
It’s taken me almost 2 years at this point, but I have some great news for all you Thread/Matter enthusiasts. I’m going to self-fund this project (ie: personal, non-Inovelli money) and I’ve kicked it off with the manufacturer!
Tentative delivery time is February 2024.
–
Since Thread/Matter is much different than Z-Wave and Zigbee, this switch will be a lot more basic than the Blue/Red Series, so I want to set those expectations up front. It will have the same hardware as the Blue Series 2-1, but it will not have all the bells and whistles and I’m working with the engineers to determine what all can be accomplished right now.
The good news is the same guy who’s written the firmware for our Blue and Red Series 2-1, also has just gone through Matter training and he’s really excited to start this project.
In fact, he has been writing some Matter firmware as a side project for himself.
Here’s a video he sent me the other day with our switch connecting to a HomePod directly (look at the 7 LED’s changing on the left)
–
Just some back story for those that are new to this thread:
Over the course of a couple years, we’ve gotten requests almost weekly to come out with a Thread/Matter switch and I’ve had to turn it down due to resources, and lack of real understanding of Thread and even moreso Matter.
I had been thinking about this switch one day randomly in August and at the same time someone IM’d our chat bot and simply said, “Matter” and I thought, “oh boy, another person I have to turn down, this stinks”. But he and I had an awesome conversation which lead me to start researching again what all it would take to start this switch.
Then a couple days later @jvm33 started posting about Matter and he and I have had some incredible conversations with him also providing us a ton of knowledge around Thread/Matter and what it can do.
The final straw was when I started talking to the firmware engineer and I found out this was a passion project for him and he’s already gone through Matter training and actually has been messing around with our switches and HomeKit.