I’ve only recently come across Matterbridge, which allows you to add a wide range of smart home devices as if they supported the Matter smart home standard, even if they don’t. Once installed, it runs as a server that acts as a bridge between whatever devices you have, and your choice of smart home ecosystem using Matter.
Whilst I have a handful of Matter devices – some Wi-Fi and Thread smart plugs, and a smart light bulb, many of my devices don’t support Matter. They’re either older Wi-Fi devices, or use Zigbee. To make those devices available to Google Home, I’m currently using Home Assistant and Homeway, but Matterbridge offers an alternative.
If the Matterbridge interface looks familiar, it’s because it’s derived from Homebridge. Whilst Homebridge is designed just to work with Apple Home, Matterbridge will work with Google, Alexa, Samsung Smartthings and Apple Home, amongst others.
Installing Matterbridge
I’m using Matterbridge alongside Home Assistant, and so I’ve installed it as a Home Assistant App (formerly known as an add-on). If you run Home Assistant Container, then you can also install Matterbridge as a Docker image, or you can install it using Node Package Manager (NPM).
It’ll take some time to install and run the first time, but once done, you’ll be able to open the interface inside Home Assistant and will get a screen similar to that in the screenshot. However, it won’t do very much until you install some plugins
Install the Home Assistant plugin
If you want Matterbridge to see the devices added to Home Assistant, then you’ll need to install the Home Assistant plugin. This is true even if you install Matterbridge as a Home Assistant app.
Most of the default settings should be fine, but you’ll need to provide a ‘long lived access token’ for your Home Assistant user account. In Home Assistant, click your user profile at the bottom of the left hand menu, select the ‘Security’ tab, scroll to the bottom, and click ‘Create token’. Give it a name, like ‘Matterbridge’, and then copy the token text and paste it into the Home Assistant Matterbridge plugin settings. Then, restart Matterbridge using the restart button at the top right of the Matterbridge interface. You don’t need to restart the whole app for this.
Once Matterbridge has restarted, it’ll bring all of your Home Assistant devices in. On the right hand side, next to each device, is a tickbox, so you can untick them to hide those devices that you don’t available via Matter. If you have lots of devices, but only want to share a few, then the plugin settings includes a ‘Whitelist’ feature that may be quicker than unticking hundreds of devices.
One other thing I had to do for some devices was hide some entities. Otherwise, the device showed up as two (or more) separate devices in Google Home; Apple Home was a little better and grouped these per device. Again, this is done in the Home Assistant plugin settings.
Optionally install the Zigbee2MQTT plugin
Another of Matterbridge’s plugins supports Zigbee2MQTT. This is the app that I use to add my Zigbee devices to Home Assistant, however, Matterbridge can connect to it directly using MQTT. There’s a couple of good reasons to do this:
- It means Home Assistant isn’t an additional intermediary. Say I want to use Google to turn on a Zigbee light: this request would go from Google, to Matterbridge, to Home Assistant, to Mosquitto (my MQTT broker), to Zigbee2MQTT and finally to the device. By connecting directly, you skip that third step.
- The Zigbee2MQTT plugin is more mature, and pulls in data such as how the device is powered.
Pair Matterbridge to your other ecosystems
Once you have your devices set up, it’s time to scan that big QR code on Matterbridge’s home screen, using the smart home app of your choice. How this will work will depend on the app:
- In Google Home, it’ll add all the devices in an ‘In Your Home’ section at the bottom, for you to then allocate to rooms
- In Apple Home, you’ll be asked to configure each device in turn, including setting a custom name allocating them to rooms.
After this initial setup, any new devices added to Matterbridge will automatically appear in the other apps.
Advantages over other options
Using Matterbridge as a way of bridging your Home Assistant devices to other smart home ecosystems has a number of advantages. Previously, I was using Homeway, but by using Matterbridge:
- It’s free – I don’t need to pay a third party for this.
- It retains local control, so if I decided that I didn’t want Homeway any more, my devices would still work.
- It’s a lot easier than setting up Google Assistant manually in Home Assistant.
- Once configured, devices work in both Google Home and Apple Home – you don’t need to configure them separately.
- Whilst Homeway used to be really reliable, in recent weeks it has randomly disconnected from Google Home without warning. So far, I’ve been using Matterbridge for about a month, and have not had any significant issues with it.
To this end, I’ve disabled Home Assistant’s built-in HomeKit integration, and I’m just using Matterbridge now. So far, so good, although I don’t tend to use Apple Home very much.
In terms of disadvantages:
- Not all types of device are supported. Some may appear as switches rather than their actual device type, such as a washing machine or dishwasher.
- It will only work with Amazon Alexa if you have an Echo device with Alexa on it. Although I have the Alexa app on my phone, and use it on Fitbit Versa, Alexa requires a physical Echo device to manage Matter devices. It won’t use another vendor’s Matter server. However, Homeway’s Alexa support seems more stable than its Google Assistant support, so this doesn’t really affect me.
Other plugins
There are a number of other plugins available for Matterbridge. These include plugins for Shelly and Somfy devices, that allow Matterbridge to connect to these directly. In time, more of Homebridge’s plugins could be ported to Matterbridge, which would enable devices from the likes of Tuya/Smart Life or Philips Hue. But, for now, you can use these devices via the Home Assistant plugin.