this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2023
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Home Automation

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Discussion about general home automation ideas and projects, home automation protocols like Z-wave, Zigbee, Matter, etc, and home automation software and hubs like HomeSeer, Home Assistant, OpenHAB, Homey.

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Does Matter matter (compared to devices flashed with third-party open source firmware)? (self.homeautomation)
submitted 1 year ago by grue to c/homeautomation
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I'm just getting into home automation, so I don't really know what I'm doing. I care a lot about supporting open standards (which is partly why I never bothered with it until now that Matter is coming out), but I also very much like the idea of having everything I own running Open Source firmware instead of whatever potentially untrustworthy stuff it comes with.

So anyway, I got some TP-Link Kasa smart plugs (KP125MP2), but have since been doing some more research and found that some folks don't think there's actually much, if any, advantage to Matter devices compared to older wi-fi devices that've been flashed with Tasmota or ESPHome. So now I've also got some Sonoff S31 smart plugs and a USB to serial adapter to flash them with, and I'm wondering which set of things I should actually keep.

I kinda feel like I need to try installing and using them to know which I prefer, but I'd also feel bad about returning stuff after it's got provisioning info stored on it (or worse, flashed firmware). So maybe I can decide based on advice y'all give me instead?

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[–] grue 1 points 1 year ago

Follow-up:

I decided to try both provisioning the Matter smart plugs and flashing the non-Matter ones with ESPHome. Provisioning the Matter plugs in Home Assistant was incredibly easy (aside from requiring the use of my wife's phone, which is newer than mine -- my Home Assistant app wasn't connecting via Bluetooth correctly for some reason). In contrast, even following this guide, flashing ESPhome on the non-Matter plugs was a bit of a challenge to get right.

Nevertheless, I was left with nagging doubt that the Matter plugs, being on OEM firmware, weren't completely trustworthy, and I liked that the Home Assistant integration for the ESPHome smart plugs was more full-featured than the Matter one, including energy use readings etc. So I ended up keeping the ESPHome plugs and factory-resetting and returning the Matter ones.