Matter devices are unavailable

[Doekse]

@Pascal_Nohl, also in regard to your previous message: unfortunately, at this stage we can’t really identify a specific issue. If we could, we’d of course be more than happy to look into it and work towards a solution.

As for the issue @deejayreissue is facing, we received a diagnostic report and identified two things:

@Doekse

First, you have a mix of IKEA, Aqara, and Eve smart plugs that together are generating more than 900 Thread messages per minute. This creates a very busy network, leaving little bandwidth for other devices to communicate.

What makes this worse is that when messages fail to reach their destination, devices automatically retry sending them. Those retries further increase network traffic, which can lead to a snowball effect where communication becomes increasingly unreliable.

We also see several errors indicating that Homey is occasionally unable to access the Zigbee/Thread radio channel. This could point to interference on the 2.4 GHz band, either within your home or from nearby wireless networks and devices.

Based on those findings, we’re implementing the following changes:

@Doekse

The improvements we’re currently working on are based on these findings, but they are not related to firmware v13.3.0 itself. Specifically, we’re:

1. Improving how the Thread network behaves when messages fail to reach their destination, helping to prevent devices from dropping off the network.

2. Adding a device setting that allows users to adjust how frequently devices send updates, making it easier to reduce unnecessary network traffic when needed.

So we are very much willing to help out here! Don’t get me/us wrong.

Since I can’t see your history with Support, I would suggest creating a diagnostic report and sharing it with my colleagues there. They’ll be able to take a detailed look at what exactly is going wrong, what the most likely culprit is, and whether it’s something we can address with changes on our side.

@Pascal_Nohl

Homey, however, only accepts certified Matter devices.

The same applies here. We didn’t allow this when we first launched our Matter implementation, but we listened to user feedback, and it has been possible to connect non-certified Matter devices for quite some time now.

We do listen

@Pascal_Nohl

Homey may be a good system for mainstream users who want a controlled and simplified environment. Power users, however, quickly run into artificial limitations and are likely to become disappointed once they try to go beyond the predefined use cases.

It’s certainly true that a large part of Homey’s user base probably couldn’t tell Zigbee from Z-Wave or Matter over Thread. Those are also users who buy Homey specifically because it’s an all-in-one solution that doesn’t require external dongles, antennas, or additional hardware.

For more advanced users, we have Homey Self-Hosted Server, which people can install on their own hardware and combine with external Zigbee coordinators through Zigbee2MQTT, for example.

(Although Homey Pro (2026) has been working fine for the power user that I am)

And yes, if you’re a real die-hard power user, it could very well be that Home Assistant is the better platform for you. And that’s completely fine. In the end, what matters is that you’re using a platform you’re happy with in your own home.

We’re able to offer that to almost a million users, but we also understand that there will always be users who are looking for something different or who have requirements that another platform is better suited to.

Since I can’t really add much more to this conversation without more information about the specific situation, I’ll check out for now. But if more data becomes available, such as a diagnostic report, please don’t hesitate to reach out. I’m always happy to help.