I don’t use Apple devices so I don’t know how it works with iOS, but pairing my Hue bridge with eWeLink CUBE or Homey SHS doesn’t work.
I use a Homey Pro 2019 (doesn’t support Matter) as my main smart home controller, and it connects to my Hue bridge via LAN and my other ZigBee devices directly. The many Tuya devices are integrated via the cloud.
The only device I got to work correctly is an old WiZ bulb, but since I’ve migrated my entire lighting system to Philips Hue, I don’t need to use it anymore. I got it to work with eWeLink CUBE, which I could then integrate with Homey via the CUBE Open API. But for me, that’s just way too much effort for a device that can also be linked natively to Homey via the cloud.
Strategies may vary. I personally never use devices that require the cloud to function.
Homey itself is already borderline in that regard: while it can work locally in its final execution, without the cloud you lose easy access to apps — and without apps, you lose features. That’s an important trade-off to be aware of.
That said, Matter and Thread are often accused of being unreliable or unfinished, but in my experience this criticism is frequently misplaced. The issue is usually not the Matter or Thread standards themselves, but rather devices or hubs that advertise Matter compatibility without being fully certified or closely following the specification.
Even Homey, for example, is still not Matter-certified, whereas all Apple devices are. That certification difference matters. It’s one of the main reasons I have a higher level of confidence in Apple’s implementation — and in my setup, it has proven to be reliable and stable.
In short: when Matter or Thread “don’t work,” it’s very often an ecosystem and implementation problem, not a protocol problem.
