I purchased switches for our entire home and installed the first three for testing. I can not seem to add them to apple home. I have read everything I can find, both here, Reddit, etc.
Using Apple TV 3rd generation 64gig that I confirmed is a Matter border router by Model.
Using Apple iPhone 15. I read the 16 is the first device that can be used to directly add Matter devices, but the AppleTV on the same network should work fine too.
Confirmed same network. My phone can control the Apple TV.
Needed to add a room to AppleTV settings to get past an initial error. Now I see this as a hub (along with my Hue bridge) in Apple Home.
I turned everything on and off again (AppleTV, wifi router, phone, switch). I tried this more than once at various times and order while trying everything else here).
I reset the switch to factory by holding the top 2 buttons until they went red.
I tried adding by QR code on the box. The light status bar flashes blue for awhile and it seems to timeout).
I tried adding by other > picking “innovelli switch” or “matter device” from the available devices (it seems to change sometimes, and I tried it with each more than once) and then manually entering the Matter code from the box next to the QR code. The light status bar flashes blue for awhile and it seems to timeout).
I tried all of this on a switch that is in the same room as the AppleTV with near direct line-of-sight (the AppleTV is behind the real TV but not in a cabinet or anything).
I tried the QR code on a different switch that is upstairs with the same result.
Do you have a different iOS or iPadOS device that you could try to use for pairing? For some reason my iPhone 15 Pro Max fails to do any home pairings (e.g., it also couldn’t set up a pair of HomePod minis), but my iPad (I forget which version) has had no issue setting up new devices. I keep meaning to figure out what the issue is, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet because the iPad workaround has worked for me and it only affects initial device setup.
I guess I don’t have any mobile devices to try and debug this.
I’ve tried everything else, even splitting my wifi 2.4GHz band to a different network. No luck.
The network and Home app can clearly communicate with the switch since the status bar light starts flashing, but it seems to time out after a long wait.
If you are referring to the blue pulsing of the LED bar on the switch, that does not mean the network and home app are communicating with it. It simply means that the switch is ready to pair.
When the switch first powers up, it should start pulsing blue. It will do that whether or not there is any network to communicate with.
Actually I don’t know where this comment got 3rd gen from. I have a 5th generation running iPadOS 18.3.2, and it says online that it supports Matter. So this didn’t work either.
You. In your initial post in this thread, you say “Apple TV 3rd generation 64gig”
That’s great, but do you have a Thread border router (TBR) device? The iPad can be used to onboard Matter stuff, but it is not a TBR (nor is the 64g Apple TV).
As bigDvette stated earlier, the 64g Apple TV 4K does not support Thread, so if that’s indeed the box you have, that’s the showstopper here.
Wow. I swear I punched in my actual model number and got a positive hit. This is fantastic if this is my only issue. I’ll run out and get one right now and try it!
I really wish the there was an more specific error message. If there is anyway for the switch to flash a code when it can’t find a border router that would have saved me ~5 hours
So you got a different Apple TV and it worked? If anything should give you the error message it should be the iPhone and not inovelli. New iPhones support matter natively so if appletv down you can still use matter devices but they aren’t TBR.