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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I'm not sure of the overlap of folks who'd love local access and those who would use HA or something similar (though I imagine it would be a smaller subset of the local control population), but I would plan to implement either of those forms of local control if it was available. I feel that would open the door for someone capable of creating an integration for those less inclined. Exciting to me either way!
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Modbus/BACnet would be a welcome addition, especially if the existing Bridges could receive it through an OTA firmware update and the Home Assistant integration could be updated to use that local interface. With my ecobee also connected locally to HA, HA could then coordinate the thermostat and vents during an internet outage.
For long-term cloud independence, I’d want local operation to continue indefinitely, including after rebooting the Bridge, without needing to authenticate against Flair’s servers. Would the proposed interface provide that, and which control functions would still depend on the cloud?
I also think adding Matter support to the Bridge would offer a practical benefit beyond branding: a standard local integration path for Apple Home, Google Home, HA, and other Matter ecosystems. I recognize your concern about differences in supported device types and features, so I wouldn’t assume Matter would expose everything. But the Bridge could translate supported functions while continuing to communicate with the existing vents and Pucks using your current proprietary protocol. That could complement Modbus/BACnet.
Thread on the individual devices seems like a separate, longer-term hardware question. Your vent specifications list a 915 MHz radio, whereas Thread uses 2.4 GHz IEEE 802.15.4, so I wouldn’t expect those radios to support Thread through firmware alone. Future Matter-over-Thread devices could potentially eliminate the need for a Flair-specific networking bridge, using a standard Thread border router instead. They could also benefit from an existing Thread mesh, although battery-powered vents wouldn’t necessarily extend that mesh themselves.
For my existing equipment, though, reliable local control through the current Bridge would already be a substantial improvement.
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