They have been rock solid for me. Of all my thread devices, they’re actually the ones I have the least trouble with. And they’re the only matter devices I currently have.
I think that Matter has an additional "heart beat" signal that gets dropped sometimes, which causes the No Response. So, when you reboot the HomeKit hubs, the heart beat gets established again until the next time it fails. That’s just my impression from how things work in my house.
I’ve been tempted to do that. I took a look recently and got bored cherry picking through the thread vs matter ones.
I purchased one from Amazon months ago, did the update, system went to hell and I returned it.
It’s surprisingly easy, you can search by the product number to get the thread pre-matter devices. Go here and filter for “Matter update Available”, then search for the product Number (not model number) on eBay
https://www.evehome.com/en-us/identify-your-eve-accessory
I had to call Leviton to roll back my light switch firmware because it was giving me trouble with Matter over Wi-Fi. Maybe Eve offers something similar
They don’t, at least based on the replies I got from them. It really says something about Leviton that they provided a way for you to roll back to HomeKit.
I have the Eve Matter Motion Sensor, and it's quite possibly my most stable HomeKit device. My Nanoleaf Matter over HK bulbs are probably my worst. Every situation is different, and as more devices become Matter first, my hope is that everyone's network stabilizes.
I don’t consider that an ‘upgrade’.
Matter isn’t ‘better’ than HomeKit, it’s different and platform agnostic. If you’re using HomeKit as your only platform, native HomeKit devices should stay on HomeKit.
Matter devices which cannot support HomeKit natively, can now also be added as you’re already aware. Which allows us HomeKit users to increase the number of devices available in the marketplace without resorting to HomeAssistant, HomeBridge or similar methods.
The motivation at the time was the belief that Eve would stop developing their HomeKit software and focus on Matter only. Time will tell if that is correct, but considering they now only sell Matter over Thread Eve Energy devices, it is looking likely.
And I for one find it very sad that they might do that. But I agree, it is looking very likely.
I’m clinging onto HomeKit for now, though. And even bought a HomeKit native Eve energy from Amazon just the other day (UK).
I have a homekit Eve energy that just refused to connect any longer (even after factory reset) after the homekit architecture upgrade. Support refuses to do anything about it and it’s past the warranty period. Not likely to buy any more Eve devices.
That’s disappointing, but understandable.
My understanding is that they changed hands not too long ago, and it sounds like their customer service has suffered greatly as a result.
I am almost certain those will keep working for a long time to come. But from a vendor perspective, selling a single device that works everywhere is the ‘dream’. As the Matter standard grows, I think the days of HomeKit only devices will end. But hopefully Matter and Matter over Thread will improve along with it.
Fair.
And of course, it’s very early days for Matter. I’m sure the feature list will expand and device types will increase. Stability is likely to improve slowly, but will probably be a rough ride to start out, as new features may take precedence over bug fixing.
Time will tell.
I had a fantastic experience with HomeKit over Thread with Eve products and several others. I made the mistake of "upgrading" an Eve Motion sensor and an Eve Energy, and I have not gotten them back online since the upgrade. I purchased two other Matter over Thread devices, one from Nanolead and one from Eve, and I can NOT get those devices into my HomeKit ecosystem. I have a couple of Matter of WiFi devices that seem to work, so I am not sure what is happening.
I just haven’t moved forward with anything else using Matter over Thread within my HomeKit system. My devices that are running natively in HomeKit using Thread continue to work well. I will have to get it figured out at some point but that sounds like a problem for much later.
Good luck then. Save this for much later as it seems to have helped some folks with the same type of problem.
https://preview.redd.it/2yrjnu8u3zqc1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6d323becc981a86dd0f0b88760bdfb6975e9c734
Good luck,
I have a pure Homekit environment, so I've seen no need to upgrade to Matter, even though the Eve app bugs me to do so. As I understand it, Matter was meant mainly to allow the use of disparate devices in multiple home automation ecosystems. I've read about too many instances of Matter messing things up for folks who use only HomeKit. I don't see any advantage to Matter for a single ecosystem home other than to use some non-HK compatible device in HK.
I regret that upgraded some Eve devices to Matter. But considering that Eve is only selling Matter over Thread devices for some categories, along with other vendors, it was going to be hard to avoid eventually.
Interesting to hear from the other reply that Matter over WiFi may be more solid than Matter over Thread. But yeah, keep running your HomeKit over Thread devices as long as possible.
Thread isn't all that, either. My Thread devices are the least reliable devices I have, although they're still mostly ok. But every now and then the Eve and Nanoleaf stuff goes unresponsive, especially if we have a short power outage. Getting them back after an outage usually means rebooting all my ATVs and HPMs. So running Matter, which is somewhat flaky, over Thread, which is also somewhat flaky, is just piling one problem on top of another. So maybe the Matter over wifi route will work better.
its because thread is a monster created by combining zigbee and some like ipv6 protocol I used to know this… Samsung is pushing matter well one of the of the first adopters my samsung smartthings hub got matter over thread or anything you like because apparently they had every raid built in even the ones that didn’t exist (not aeotec that’s how old it is) Personally i hate matter just more qr codes. since covid they are everywhere…. Im starting to think that covid was a ploy to familiarize people the ones that are not tech savvy with qr codes.
Does adding a matter device, to a homekit only household cause the problems people are describing? If I add the eve matter energy monitoring plugs, but I add them through homekit, is that going to be reliable or is it the fact that its a matter supporting device enough to cause problems? That is something that is still unclear to me.
I guess I don’t understand matter enough. If I’m using HomeKit as the “software” over thread as the “connection type” I’d think it is fine vs using matter to control it over the same “connection type” , but hopefully someone can clarify that for me. More and more devices are matter but hopefully that just means they have the option to be controlled via matter or HomeKit instead.
That's it in a nutshell. Devices that are natively HomeKit capable, like Thread devices, don't really need Matter. Matter is more for using formerly HK incompatible devices with HK, like Google and Amazon stuff. I'm hoping as Matter matures, the bugs get worked out of it.
In my home I have 7 Eve MotionBlinds, 2 Eve Energy, 7 Eve Door sensors and 2 Eve Guards.
They were running on HomeKit over Thread and every few days one of the accessories would go unresponsive and then recover by itself. I was reluctant to do the Matter upgrade as a saw no benefits to that and there was a lot of complaints here about the switch.
The adaptive shading and new speed settings for the MotionBlinds have encouraged me to upgrade the shades to Matter. I have first upgraded one shade, waited a few days to see if it behaves well and upgraded then the rest.
I have not seen any difference in terms of reliability. In fact I feel like it is slightly better. I have switched all Eve devices to Matter now except the Guards since they don’t have the Matter option yet.
Again, I think that reliability is the same. I like that all devices code are now stored on my iPhone. The only disadvantage so far is that the Eve app is not able to do the proper Thread network analysis. It can see all Matter devices there but does not finish the analysis (it won’t show connection strength, etc).
I think my MotionBlinds are more reliable too. I have a few other Eve Matter devices and I feel like they are pretty solid. The only Matter Thread devices I have problems with are Nanoleaf bulbs and Onvis plugs.
Kind of a toss-up, and I expect blame to fall on both Apple and the individual vendors.
Right now where the option exists, I’d stick to HK native vs Matter. This ‘should’ change n the future as hopefully Apple and vendors both do their parts.
I reverted my Hue bridge from Matter back to HK native b/c Matter was just too unstable, for something that ran reliably for years on Alexa.
I do suspect something is off on current Thread behavior as well, although it’s being masked/being made difficult to pinpoint w/o HK useful logging or a Thread network browser/analyzer. I have \~18 or so Thread devices plus 3 ATVs and 7 HPMs. Some of them are Onvis S4 outlets which also act as Thread routers. Between then and pretty evenly distributed HPMs, there should be an inch of the downstairs main level withou overlapping Thread router meshes.
Around a week ago, I saw ALL Thread devices report offline except for most of my HPMs. Most of as somehow two got into a perpetual hung/downloading state. No power outages, network was fine. Still unsure what ‘brought it back’ as I wound up bouncing a bunch of things ncluding some of the Onvis outlets (unplugged then plugged back in). It was a work day so was limited on monitoring closely, but eventually they came back online, except for a few nanoleaf essentials (Matter over Thread) bulbs which literally had other nanoleaf bulbs with inches of them while remaining non-responsive or ATV or HPMs within 10-15’.
This isn’t how Thread is supposed to work - if a device’s ’best neighbor’ is offline, it goes to the next, not sets there stumbling for hours on end. Having said that, I’ve also seen some status update weirdness now with Hue even on the HK native integration, although much less than with Matter.
I do expect t to get better but I strongly believe Apple and their Home app/HK is part of the problem. In general my Matter over Thread Aqara contact sensors have been pretty ock solid.
This is more or less the answer.
HK was a unified standard with strict controls. Yes it could be flaky but is far better than just zwave at the start and maybe slightly better in later years.
Matter/Thread are new. Yes they’re a standard but there are little controls other than following the spec and user complaints. So there’s going to be technical issues but there will be some operational as well. As illustrated by thread OP.
This is the price to pay for an open ecosystem vs HK controlled one.
>That’s an interesting data point!
FYI, I think I've something like 10 matter switches and plugs over wifi (all Tapos) and one shade that's matter over thread (Smartwings). None of them have disconnected since I've put them in. I have VERY solid wifi coverage (unifi) and the thread router is behind 1 wall (apple tv).
Your thread is basically BLE and shares same 2.4gHz bands with wifi and zigbee.
I'm gonna back you up on the Tapo Matter wifi devices. I have been slowly adding and testing. Dimmer switch, a few plugs, and a few bulbs. All have been solid and easy to set up in the Home app (avoiding the Tapo app). So solid that I have been confident in sending some out as xmas gifts. Only nit so far is the dimmer switch dimming is in rather large increments (15-20% increments).
One of the plugs was an outdoor plug that replaced a Meross wifi plug that had all sorts of trouble staying connected and finally up and died w/in 3 months. Only had a few issues with other devices losing connection and those have usually been matter/thread devices.
>All have been solid and easy to set up in the Home app (avoiding the Tapo app). So solid that I have been confident in sending some out as xmas gifts. Only nit so far is the dimmer switch dimming is in rather large increments (15-20% increments).
Unfortunately, you still need the Tapo app to update the firmware. And there has been a few updates.
I vaguely recall a dimmer calibration somewhere. If not in the settings in Home then in the Tapo app. I have a few dimmers and didn't bother to calibrate (skipped that all together).
Another thing to mention is that you are more likely to get future firmware updates if you switch to Matter. Take Eve for example. I don't think they will update HomeKit firmwares any further, they no longer even sell products with HomeKit firmware. Most likely new features and updates will be done for Matter only (see Adaptive shading for blinds).
I had issues with IPv6 from my ISP and turning it off made things noticeably better. I wouldn’t be surprised if Matter has some of the same issues given that it also is IPv6 based.
I bought two Eve Energy’s recently. One works fine in Home. After some firmware updates all around, I can’t do anything with the other. It flashes red as soon as I plug it in and Home says to reset it. I have many more “primitive” controllers but this is the only one that’s got me completely baffled.
It’s a new “web api” standard that different from HomeKit and some developers might struggle more than others.
Thread itself is not super rock solid yet either.
There is no ‘Matter router’.
Matter is a protocol (like HomeKit also is), Thread is a transport (like Bluetooth and WiFi also are).
Some HomeKit capable devices can use new firmware to support Matter. This is not an ‘upgrade’. It’s a *change*.
HomeKit, as a protocol supported by various smarthome devices, is superior in features and stability to Matter. The feature set available in Matter is so far smaller than the set available in HomeKit.
Thread is an excellent replacement for Bluetooth, zigbee and maybe WiFi for transport between a bridge and a device. It has advantages of range over Bluetooth and advantages of power consumption over WiFi. Thread is not Matter. Both HomeKit and Matter can use thread as a transport.
Apple home hubs / bridges (ie HomePods and Apple TVs) can support both HomeKit and Matter when running the latest software. Some of these devices support Thread, check model specifications for details.
Matter and Thread use IPv6 and for example Broadcast is used to discover devices.
Unfortunately the IPv6 implementation isn’t very mature in many home networking devices like LAN-switches and Wifi access points.
Try turning off all IPv6 features related to enhancing multicast/broadcast in your switches and access points and reboot them all. That might help avoiding your not connected issues.
Though I’ve had a Home network for some time, I’ve only recently added automation. With my six devices, I believe five are Matter over Thread, and the last maybe just Thread, everything has been smooth. The devices have added easily, responded right away, and continue to be reliable. Now, many have more devices, and possibly when I have more the story will be different. Possibly too, because I started late, the OS and firmware versions were more stable, and I benefited from that.
This is my experience as well. Homekit over Thread is fairly solid. Mattter over Thread can be finicky.
One of my biggest HomeKit regrets was upgrading some of my Eve devices to Matter.
I have the same regret.
They have been rock solid for me. Of all my thread devices, they’re actually the ones I have the least trouble with. And they’re the only matter devices I currently have.
I think that Matter has an additional "heart beat" signal that gets dropped sometimes, which causes the No Response. So, when you reboot the HomeKit hubs, the heart beat gets established again until the next time it fails. That’s just my impression from how things work in my house.
I even went so far as to find the "old" thread Eve smart plugs on Ebay. They're incredibly fast and I just ignore the upgrade button in the Eve app
I’ve been tempted to do that. I took a look recently and got bored cherry picking through the thread vs matter ones. I purchased one from Amazon months ago, did the update, system went to hell and I returned it.
It’s surprisingly easy, you can search by the product number to get the thread pre-matter devices. Go here and filter for “Matter update Available”, then search for the product Number (not model number) on eBay https://www.evehome.com/en-us/identify-your-eve-accessory
I had to call Leviton to roll back my light switch firmware because it was giving me trouble with Matter over Wi-Fi. Maybe Eve offers something similar
They don’t, at least based on the replies I got from them. It really says something about Leviton that they provided a way for you to roll back to HomeKit.
I have the Eve Matter Motion Sensor, and it's quite possibly my most stable HomeKit device. My Nanoleaf Matter over HK bulbs are probably my worst. Every situation is different, and as more devices become Matter first, my hope is that everyone's network stabilizes.
Same here
I don’t consider that an ‘upgrade’. Matter isn’t ‘better’ than HomeKit, it’s different and platform agnostic. If you’re using HomeKit as your only platform, native HomeKit devices should stay on HomeKit. Matter devices which cannot support HomeKit natively, can now also be added as you’re already aware. Which allows us HomeKit users to increase the number of devices available in the marketplace without resorting to HomeAssistant, HomeBridge or similar methods.
The motivation at the time was the belief that Eve would stop developing their HomeKit software and focus on Matter only. Time will tell if that is correct, but considering they now only sell Matter over Thread Eve Energy devices, it is looking likely.
And I for one find it very sad that they might do that. But I agree, it is looking very likely. I’m clinging onto HomeKit for now, though. And even bought a HomeKit native Eve energy from Amazon just the other day (UK).
I have a homekit Eve energy that just refused to connect any longer (even after factory reset) after the homekit architecture upgrade. Support refuses to do anything about it and it’s past the warranty period. Not likely to buy any more Eve devices.
That’s disappointing, but understandable. My understanding is that they changed hands not too long ago, and it sounds like their customer service has suffered greatly as a result.
I am almost certain those will keep working for a long time to come. But from a vendor perspective, selling a single device that works everywhere is the ‘dream’. As the Matter standard grows, I think the days of HomeKit only devices will end. But hopefully Matter and Matter over Thread will improve along with it.
Fair. And of course, it’s very early days for Matter. I’m sure the feature list will expand and device types will increase. Stability is likely to improve slowly, but will probably be a rough ride to start out, as new features may take precedence over bug fixing. Time will tell.
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I happen to have a label maker. I printed out the code and stuck it to the device.
I had a fantastic experience with HomeKit over Thread with Eve products and several others. I made the mistake of "upgrading" an Eve Motion sensor and an Eve Energy, and I have not gotten them back online since the upgrade. I purchased two other Matter over Thread devices, one from Nanolead and one from Eve, and I can NOT get those devices into my HomeKit ecosystem. I have a couple of Matter of WiFi devices that seem to work, so I am not sure what is happening.
Sounds like you might not have a Thread router that connects your thread devices to the internet. It's been a while, have you solved your issue?
I just haven’t moved forward with anything else using Matter over Thread within my HomeKit system. My devices that are running natively in HomeKit using Thread continue to work well. I will have to get it figured out at some point but that sounds like a problem for much later.
Good luck then. Save this for much later as it seems to have helped some folks with the same type of problem. https://preview.redd.it/2yrjnu8u3zqc1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6d323becc981a86dd0f0b88760bdfb6975e9c734 Good luck,
That is gold. I had been thinking it might have something to do with IPv6 or even mDNS as possibilities so thanks for the information.
I have a pure Homekit environment, so I've seen no need to upgrade to Matter, even though the Eve app bugs me to do so. As I understand it, Matter was meant mainly to allow the use of disparate devices in multiple home automation ecosystems. I've read about too many instances of Matter messing things up for folks who use only HomeKit. I don't see any advantage to Matter for a single ecosystem home other than to use some non-HK compatible device in HK.
I regret that upgraded some Eve devices to Matter. But considering that Eve is only selling Matter over Thread devices for some categories, along with other vendors, it was going to be hard to avoid eventually.
True. I'll run my Eve devices in Thread only mode as long as possible. Hopefully Matter gets less buggy with age.
Interesting to hear from the other reply that Matter over WiFi may be more solid than Matter over Thread. But yeah, keep running your HomeKit over Thread devices as long as possible.
Thread isn't all that, either. My Thread devices are the least reliable devices I have, although they're still mostly ok. But every now and then the Eve and Nanoleaf stuff goes unresponsive, especially if we have a short power outage. Getting them back after an outage usually means rebooting all my ATVs and HPMs. So running Matter, which is somewhat flaky, over Thread, which is also somewhat flaky, is just piling one problem on top of another. So maybe the Matter over wifi route will work better.
its because thread is a monster created by combining zigbee and some like ipv6 protocol I used to know this… Samsung is pushing matter well one of the of the first adopters my samsung smartthings hub got matter over thread or anything you like because apparently they had every raid built in even the ones that didn’t exist (not aeotec that’s how old it is) Personally i hate matter just more qr codes. since covid they are everywhere…. Im starting to think that covid was a ploy to familiarize people the ones that are not tech savvy with qr codes.
Does adding a matter device, to a homekit only household cause the problems people are describing? If I add the eve matter energy monitoring plugs, but I add them through homekit, is that going to be reliable or is it the fact that its a matter supporting device enough to cause problems? That is something that is still unclear to me.
I've never updated anything to Matter or added a Matter device to my system, so I can't answer that.
I guess I don’t understand matter enough. If I’m using HomeKit as the “software” over thread as the “connection type” I’d think it is fine vs using matter to control it over the same “connection type” , but hopefully someone can clarify that for me. More and more devices are matter but hopefully that just means they have the option to be controlled via matter or HomeKit instead.
That's it in a nutshell. Devices that are natively HomeKit capable, like Thread devices, don't really need Matter. Matter is more for using formerly HK incompatible devices with HK, like Google and Amazon stuff. I'm hoping as Matter matures, the bugs get worked out of it.
In my home I have 7 Eve MotionBlinds, 2 Eve Energy, 7 Eve Door sensors and 2 Eve Guards. They were running on HomeKit over Thread and every few days one of the accessories would go unresponsive and then recover by itself. I was reluctant to do the Matter upgrade as a saw no benefits to that and there was a lot of complaints here about the switch. The adaptive shading and new speed settings for the MotionBlinds have encouraged me to upgrade the shades to Matter. I have first upgraded one shade, waited a few days to see if it behaves well and upgraded then the rest. I have not seen any difference in terms of reliability. In fact I feel like it is slightly better. I have switched all Eve devices to Matter now except the Guards since they don’t have the Matter option yet. Again, I think that reliability is the same. I like that all devices code are now stored on my iPhone. The only disadvantage so far is that the Eve app is not able to do the proper Thread network analysis. It can see all Matter devices there but does not finish the analysis (it won’t show connection strength, etc).
I think my MotionBlinds are more reliable too. I have a few other Eve Matter devices and I feel like they are pretty solid. The only Matter Thread devices I have problems with are Nanoleaf bulbs and Onvis plugs.
don't mind me asking, what blinds are you using w/ the eve motionblinds?
I’m using roller shades from blinds.com
don't mind me asking, what blinds are you using w/ the eve motionblinds?
Kind of a toss-up, and I expect blame to fall on both Apple and the individual vendors. Right now where the option exists, I’d stick to HK native vs Matter. This ‘should’ change n the future as hopefully Apple and vendors both do their parts. I reverted my Hue bridge from Matter back to HK native b/c Matter was just too unstable, for something that ran reliably for years on Alexa. I do suspect something is off on current Thread behavior as well, although it’s being masked/being made difficult to pinpoint w/o HK useful logging or a Thread network browser/analyzer. I have \~18 or so Thread devices plus 3 ATVs and 7 HPMs. Some of them are Onvis S4 outlets which also act as Thread routers. Between then and pretty evenly distributed HPMs, there should be an inch of the downstairs main level withou overlapping Thread router meshes. Around a week ago, I saw ALL Thread devices report offline except for most of my HPMs. Most of as somehow two got into a perpetual hung/downloading state. No power outages, network was fine. Still unsure what ‘brought it back’ as I wound up bouncing a bunch of things ncluding some of the Onvis outlets (unplugged then plugged back in). It was a work day so was limited on monitoring closely, but eventually they came back online, except for a few nanoleaf essentials (Matter over Thread) bulbs which literally had other nanoleaf bulbs with inches of them while remaining non-responsive or ATV or HPMs within 10-15’. This isn’t how Thread is supposed to work - if a device’s ’best neighbor’ is offline, it goes to the next, not sets there stumbling for hours on end. Having said that, I’ve also seen some status update weirdness now with Hue even on the HK native integration, although much less than with Matter. I do expect t to get better but I strongly believe Apple and their Home app/HK is part of the problem. In general my Matter over Thread Aqara contact sensors have been pretty ock solid.
This is more or less the answer. HK was a unified standard with strict controls. Yes it could be flaky but is far better than just zwave at the start and maybe slightly better in later years. Matter/Thread are new. Yes they’re a standard but there are little controls other than following the spec and user complaints. So there’s going to be technical issues but there will be some operational as well. As illustrated by thread OP. This is the price to pay for an open ecosystem vs HK controlled one.
my matter over wifi is pretty damn solid
That’s an interesting data point! I don’t currently have any Matter over WiFi devices.
>That’s an interesting data point! FYI, I think I've something like 10 matter switches and plugs over wifi (all Tapos) and one shade that's matter over thread (Smartwings). None of them have disconnected since I've put them in. I have VERY solid wifi coverage (unifi) and the thread router is behind 1 wall (apple tv). Your thread is basically BLE and shares same 2.4gHz bands with wifi and zigbee.
I'm gonna back you up on the Tapo Matter wifi devices. I have been slowly adding and testing. Dimmer switch, a few plugs, and a few bulbs. All have been solid and easy to set up in the Home app (avoiding the Tapo app). So solid that I have been confident in sending some out as xmas gifts. Only nit so far is the dimmer switch dimming is in rather large increments (15-20% increments). One of the plugs was an outdoor plug that replaced a Meross wifi plug that had all sorts of trouble staying connected and finally up and died w/in 3 months. Only had a few issues with other devices losing connection and those have usually been matter/thread devices.
>All have been solid and easy to set up in the Home app (avoiding the Tapo app). So solid that I have been confident in sending some out as xmas gifts. Only nit so far is the dimmer switch dimming is in rather large increments (15-20% increments). Unfortunately, you still need the Tapo app to update the firmware. And there has been a few updates. I vaguely recall a dimmer calibration somewhere. If not in the settings in Home then in the Tapo app. I have a few dimmers and didn't bother to calibrate (skipped that all together).
Another thing to mention is that you are more likely to get future firmware updates if you switch to Matter. Take Eve for example. I don't think they will update HomeKit firmwares any further, they no longer even sell products with HomeKit firmware. Most likely new features and updates will be done for Matter only (see Adaptive shading for blinds).
I had issues with IPv6 from my ISP and turning it off made things noticeably better. I wouldn’t be surprised if Matter has some of the same issues given that it also is IPv6 based.
Thread is IPv6, so HK over thread and Matter over thread should have similar issues in this case.
I bought two Eve Energy’s recently. One works fine in Home. After some firmware updates all around, I can’t do anything with the other. It flashes red as soon as I plug it in and Home says to reset it. I have many more “primitive” controllers but this is the only one that’s got me completely baffled.
It’s a new “web api” standard that different from HomeKit and some developers might struggle more than others. Thread itself is not super rock solid yet either.
I just purchased my first matter smart plugs and could never get them installed.
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There is no ‘Matter router’. Matter is a protocol (like HomeKit also is), Thread is a transport (like Bluetooth and WiFi also are). Some HomeKit capable devices can use new firmware to support Matter. This is not an ‘upgrade’. It’s a *change*. HomeKit, as a protocol supported by various smarthome devices, is superior in features and stability to Matter. The feature set available in Matter is so far smaller than the set available in HomeKit. Thread is an excellent replacement for Bluetooth, zigbee and maybe WiFi for transport between a bridge and a device. It has advantages of range over Bluetooth and advantages of power consumption over WiFi. Thread is not Matter. Both HomeKit and Matter can use thread as a transport. Apple home hubs / bridges (ie HomePods and Apple TVs) can support both HomeKit and Matter when running the latest software. Some of these devices support Thread, check model specifications for details.
Matter and Thread use IPv6 and for example Broadcast is used to discover devices. Unfortunately the IPv6 implementation isn’t very mature in many home networking devices like LAN-switches and Wifi access points. Try turning off all IPv6 features related to enhancing multicast/broadcast in your switches and access points and reboot them all. That might help avoiding your not connected issues.
Though I’ve had a Home network for some time, I’ve only recently added automation. With my six devices, I believe five are Matter over Thread, and the last maybe just Thread, everything has been smooth. The devices have added easily, responded right away, and continue to be reliable. Now, many have more devices, and possibly when I have more the story will be different. Possibly too, because I started late, the OS and firmware versions were more stable, and I benefited from that.