Flair's Support for Matter
Are there any official comments on Flair's plans for the Matter and Thread standards? Before I buy in to something like this I want to make sure it's going to be a part of the smarthome ecosystems of the (near) future.
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Official comment
While we aren't ready to commit to matter/homekit development at the moment, we are actively working on changes that are aligned with compatibility for both.
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We don't have immediate plans for matter support although we may consider it if there is enough interest. As far as we are aware, there are no sub gigahertz specs for matter and our experience has been that longer range radios (aka, 915mhz) and good application level integrations are much more important than the sorts of connectivity options that are most convenient for light bulbs and smart plugs. Given that its still mostly pre-market, we are watching and listening closely.
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I would also be interested to hear about Matter support, and particularly in offline support. I've been using Flair just a few weeks and have already had trouble due to an apparent Flair server outage (could not even render the UI) and recently an Ecobee outage - not to mention occasions when my rural internet goes off.
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I have a large 5 bedroom home in Florida and would purchase a large Flair system if Matter is supported for my Homekit. I use Ecobee with room sensors. Chrissie
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I have a 17 vent/5 puck system tied into my Ecobee (w/ 12 room sensors) in my 5-bedroom house. We run both HomeKit and Google Home, and while the Google integration is great, it is unfortunate that there is no HomeKit support. Of course, Matter support would solve this too.
Has there been any developments since your last post regarding Matter or HomeKit?
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Chrissie Thanks for the update, much appreciated!
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I’ll echo this - I’ve got a 6 bedroom house, in the process of adding many vents and pucks. I’m currently using HomeBridge, but it’s a little clunky. Would prefer HomeKit and preferably Thread since it’s much more reliable than WiFi. But I’d take any flavor. I have seen some sub-GHz chatter for thread, so hopefully it’s something being added to the standard?
Love my Flairs, but one less app to go to would be preferable!
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I agree with David here, I would love to pick some of these up, but I am very much interested in having matter (thread optional) support before purchasing vents to update my whole house.
I believe that as of October 2023 the matter standard does have support for HVAC related entities, but I don't know if the vents would be appropriate in that category.
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I’m interested in Flair for my three-story home, but I’m not going to do it without HomeKit/Matter support. Honestly, that’s what will get me to buy. I just learned that our Ecovent system is now trash because the app is no longer available, and I’m not going to spend money on another set of smart vents unless I know that they’re based on a standard.
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I am also waiting for Flair to work with matter since the new nest thermostat 4th gen does. I do all google for my house and why spend $1500 on vent unless they are on a standard. I like the idea of the flair option though. I have a lot of kids at various ages and want their bedrooms to be comfortable
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We have been doing a bit of research and the Bridge and Bridge Pro should have a decent path to implementation. Our interest is in alternative connectivity path ways to certain types of equipment but I’m curious, what is your interest in matter compatibility. It’s worth noting that there is a distinction between having matter connectivity and fully porting cloud services to the edge, some of which can’t be.
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Please, please also implement Thread. Flair vents would gain a LOT of benefit from being Thread capable to reach those far off areas of people's houses without the need for a "booster" device of some kind. All my light switches are 100% Matter/Thread devices, and I don't need a booster. Our house was built in the 1920s and I have to run two WiFi access points in order to get full coverage. This of course meant I had to buy two Flair Bridges in order to get all my Vents working.
TLDR:
- Privacy - nobody can track how I use my devices or push unwanted advertisements (to be clear, Flair doesn't do that - *cough* AMAZON-GOOGLE ... excuse me).
- Security - With a properly configured and unified home automation ecosystem, you have a single point of ingress and egress to the Internet/Cloud. Smart home devices that require a Cloud presence increases the number of "access" points into your Smart Home Network.
- Cloud Independent - If the Internet dies... your Cloud dependent devices die with it.
These are the main reasons why it Matters that I much prefer a Matter device.
For me personally, I prefer not having a bunch of "bridges" or "hubs" plugged in all over the house. Supporting Matter allows the homeowner to unify all smart devices into a single ecosystem. Be it Home Assistant, which I use; and yes, there is an HA integration for Flair devices, but it's "tied" to a cloud API. I don't have direct/offline control over my devices. Or some other home automation ecosystem. Alexa is terrible! Their implementation of Matter/Thread is horrendous. Google... wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot cattle prod; like Amazon, they have NO concept of privacy. Don't even get me started on all the "phone apps" that are required to access advanced features. With a directly addressable device on a Matter network, I can create my own "advanced features" in HA.
Off topic: Reolink cameras, although not Matter devices, can at least operate "offline"; that is to say without the need for the Internet. All the addressable APIs are run from a local device via an NVR, or their Home Hubs. I would much prefer that vs using a "bridge" to address the APIs in the Cloud. Although technically the NVRs and Home Hubs are more or less bridges, but you still don't need the Cloud, and that distinction only really applies to their battery-operated cameras. The PoE cameras don't need an NVR or Home Hub. They can operate as standalone devices and integrate with HA just fine in that kind of a setup. My off-topic point here is that I'd personally much prefer a device that can operate over regular Ethernet/Wi-Fi and be fully addressable without the need for a Cloud account when Matter devices aren't available. I feel REALLY sorry for all the Blink users out there. My wife bought those and went in the trash on DAY ONE after we moved in together.
I know the current Flair Vents / Bridges operate in a sub-GHz spectrum... not sure if your radios in the Flair vents can operate in the 2.4GHz range. My only fear in all this is that I'll have to buy all new Flair vents. :D I have 10 of them and 2 Bridges. I'd love to get rid of the Bridges but if you push software that allows the Bridges to become Matter devices, I suppose I could personally live with that if that means we can ditch the phone apps and cloud accounts. ;) Again, Thread. Alongside Matter you could eliminate the need for Bridges used as boosters.
Aside from the 2 hubs laying around my house, which is my ONLY complaint... not really that, more of a disappointment than anything else. I'm extremely happy with my Flair vents. I have all the Cloud settings on manual and all the "features" turned off. I can control all the vents from within HA, but you still need the Cloud to send commands to your vents due to the location of where the API lives.
/Soap_box_off -
Todd mc Willeat - Sorry, I'm just NOW seeing this. For some reason I never received an email that someone was pinging me.
I'm using Inovelli White Series - aka Matter/Thread. They have no issues communicating with one another, even in the far reaches of my home. As I mentioned, this house is pre-war, and the outside walls are all solid concrete cinderblocks. A lot of the AC wiring is original, and the wiring receptacle boxes are made out of steel. Some of the internal walls are also cinderblock because there were a lot of modern additions added over the years. I'm not 100% sure but I believe the original owner who built this house used rebar inside the cinderblock walls. My point is wireless signals don't travel in our house like they do in a modern home, but these Inovelli switches work just fine mounted inside the steel wiring boxes... thanks to Matter/Thread and its mesh ability. And these IoT devices aren't clogging up my Wi-Fi network.
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We are currently focused on Puck 2 firmware (features that haven't released yet, and supporting the inevitable odds and ends that show up as more and more of these go live with customers). We have a handful of projects queued up for the year. We are eager to leverage matter as a means of supporting offline control elegantly and expect to squeeze that in this year.
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