Hey all,
With Venus OS v3.60 out and about, I thought to have some fun and do an experiment with Matter (see Google for what that is 
), and thought I’d share the steps - also to see who else would be interested.
Matter is gaining more and more traction is seems to be fulfilling its quite ambitious promises better and better.
What interests me is that it might turn out to be a single protocol to solve it all, for us as a manufacturer. Ie, make sure we support Matter really well; and then its easy to integrate Victron into the many smart home platforms out there. And the other way around, integrating switches and other systems, and automating from within Node-RED is similarly interesting ofcourse.
Now to the first small results. a first “hello world” attempt that I did and turned out to be super simple. It took less time than writing up this post 
. So for anyone that wants to get involved with Matter, I thought I share the results here.
I did the integration using Node-RED (details here). After reading around a bit, my conclusion is that there are two relevant modules to install:
- @sammachin/node-red-matter-bridge: use this to make your Victron system controllable from a Matter compatible platform, ie. Apple Home, Google Home, Alexa etc.)
- @sammachin/ node-red-matter-controller: use this one control Matter devices from Node-RED.
Both are popular and receive regular updates. That is one box ticked.
My hello world task was to have a GX relay controllable from my iphone.
Steps:
- In Node-RED, install the node-red-matter-bridge
- Add an on/off light node from the new Palette, and configure that
- Add a Victron node for the relay
- Connect it using a function, you need to convert msg.payload.state (boolean) into msg.payload (0 or 1).
And on the iPhone, go through the steps of adding the switch.
Now, this works only when I’m home, since there is no HomeKit or Home-apple-thing installed in my house yet - thats next. Either an Apple TV or HomeAssistant, or both. Its about time I get up to speed on all that.
Any thoughts, suggestions, ideas - very welcome!
Next up for me is reading into the matter standard to find out what they already support with regards to battery and PV profiles.
See screenshots at the bottom of this post.
Matthijs
Ps 1. Recommended video
For those that want to learn about Matter, Thread, Alexa, Google Home, and so forth and so forth, I recommend this video:
Ps 2. screenshots:
Screenshot 1: Flow:
Screenshot 2: Configuration of that Matter node:
Screenshot 3: Configuration of the Matter Bridge.
Where I painted a red cross was first a QR code. After linking that to my phone, it disappeared. Apparently it can only be connected to one matter fabric or controller at the time.
