My first Matter device - SwitchBot Hub 2

 

I was really quite excited to get this, the SwitchBot Hub 2. It is a Matter bridge, and therefore will act as a passthrough for their devices. Support out of the box were the build in temp and humidity sensors as well as passing through the SwitchBot Curtain motors. The Curtain motors were particularly important to me as I was currently running those through Homebridge, which was fine for me, but not my mother as I wanted to motorise her curtains as she's getting quite frail. Unfortunately, this didn't come quite soon enough as my mum recently had a fall whilst trying to close her curtains. Still, I'll be able to remove this as an issue in the future. So, yes, it is good enough that I have ordered more for my mum. Guess, I've ruined the plot a bit there!

<Update 31st August 2023>

The SwitchBot Hub 2 now supports more devices with firmware rev 1.0-09. I had to get the rev pushed to my device by support. However, as usual, SwitchBot support is very responsive and very helpful.

A list of supported devices can be found here.

This rev also updates the maximum number of devices supported by Matter. It has risen from 3 to 6.

I was particularly interested in the bot, thinking I could finally remove a module from Homebridge.... but no. SwitchBot chose to make their bots known to Matter as light switches. Whilst this will technically work in my home, it is not of any practical use..... as I can nolonger say "Turn on all the lights in the kitchen", or "Turn off all the lights in the kitchen" as that will then turn on/off the bots.

I've already passed feedback to SwitchBot and suggested that they either pass them through s configured in the SwitchBot app, or pass them through as power, then we can choose if we want them to be a light switch, a fan, or just power.

<EOU>

Installation

What do you get? Well, there are plenty of reviews out there you can go read/watch. Here's a link to one of my favourite channels, HomeKit News. Basically, though, you get a white plastic box, that has a kick panel out of the back so you can stand it up. The USB cord that powers it contains the temp and humidity sensors so they are far enough way from the hub that it won't affect the readings (hello HomePod).

It will act as a regular SwitchBot Hub so I will, eventually, be replacing my existing Hub.

Set up

Now, this is where life got interesting.

Initially all was very easy.

You enter the SwitchBot App and just follow the instructions to put the Hub 2 into pairing mode and then tell it what WiFi. network to join. Although it says 2.4 Ghz only, it worked just fine in my Eero mesh.

You then Select an existing room (I already had curtains in the Living Room) or create a new one. It ten tells you it is done, and then shows you the hub in the app. All in all, it was one of the easiest setups I've ever done.

Upgrading the firmware.

To get Matter support, even though it shows it on the app menu, you need to upgrade the firmware. You go into settings which, as usual, is shown by a cog. In this case in the top right hand corner of the device. You can then see "Firmware version" at the bottom.

You install the firmware, it shows you the percentage done (rather playfully I think) and then the upgrade is done and you have Matter support! Easy! Really!

Adding the Hub 2 to Apple Home.

Staying in Settings, you will see the Matter Configuration (Beta) option. I must admit, I was a tad peeved at seeing that as all of their advertising I had seen was that it would ship with Matter support.... not Beta support. Still, glass half full, and all that. Select that option.

It now shows you the QR code and the actual code. Unless you have another device to add the Hub with, the QR code is as much use as a chocolate teapot, so copy the code.

By pressing the "How to use Matter?" it steps you through what you need to do. One of those things is to press the "On" and "Off" buttons on the front of the bridge for about 15 seconds. It then goes off, and when it comes back on it should make a noise and you'll see a slowly flashing light at the top left of teh bridge screen next to the humidity display. You are now in Matter pairing mode. It also wipes out your WiFi config.

Now you need to go into the Home App, and add an Accessory as normal., you need to select "More Options" because you have the Matter Code from the SwitchBot settings (Haven't you? Because you followed the instructions, didn't you?). 

Now, you would think that you click on the Hub 2. DO NOT CLICK ON THE "HUB 2" ICON.

Select "My accessory isn't shown here", and then select enter code and then paste the code.

I found this out the hard way.

And then you see "Connecting to Accessory" and you get all excited and then I got "Unable to Add Accessory".

I went through days of trying to get this hub to connect, trying all kinds of combinations, including going down to one hub, removing HomeKit Secure Router, being on 2.4Ghz, being on one router. Clicking the icon, not clicking the icon. You name it, I tried it! Nothing!

SwitchBot support were great working with me, and it was them that gave me the magic formula of NOT selecting the icon, but still no go..... and then I upgraded from 16.5 dev Beta 1 to Public Beta 2.... and it all worked.

Give it a name, and it was added to my home. Yay!

You then go through the process of adding the Humidity Sensor. By now I had decided that I was putting the device in my under stairs cupboard, where all the rest of my hubs are.

And then the built in Temp sensor.

You are all done.

As you can see, from my Hubs and Bridges, I now have the switchbot 2 added, and it has two accessories, both in the Hallway Cupboard.

What you don't get, currently, is the integrated button or the infrared controls in Matter. I don't know if this will come later, or will never be supported. Apparently, the Beta also limits us to 6 devices.

Adding the Curtains

This, after all, was why I was going through all this.

You select the device you want to add to Matter. In my case I was doing the Guest Bedroom Curtains. You then select "more" and on the next screens and now you can control the curtains. You select the cog in the top right hand corner, to go into settings....

You MUST have cloud services switched on and you select the Switch Bot Hub 2. If you do not turn on cloud services, it will not work (Trust me, I tried as I'm deeply suspicious of Google and Amazon - even if I don't turn on the capability).

Then you go back into settings for the hub 2, select Matter Configuration, and you'll see "Secondary devices", select "Add" and you'll be given a list of devices that you have and are currently supported. I selected "Guest bedroom Curtains" and when I selected "OK", you'll note I now had one Secondary Device.

What I really like about this is that I didn't have to blow away the curtains and re-add them. Brilliant!

However, if you need the Cloud services to be switched on, why doesn't making them a secondary device do that for you? It would take out some unneeded steps.

This then gave me a "Matter Accessory" in my Default Room, which is where the temperature and humidity sensors are. 

I'm glad I didn't move all 3 curtains at once as then I'd have to go about trying to work out which one was which.

All good right?

Not exactly. Now this is not SwitchBots issue. Because I'm using the Homebridge plugin, the curtains have now appeared in my house twice.

Hiding the curtains from the Homebridge SwitchBot Plugin

By default, the Plugin just finds all your devices and then has default configs. You can override those configs, and one option is to hide the device.

So, you go into the plugin UI, you actually find the device in the "DEVICES" tab, and retrieve the "Device ID", then under SwitchBot Device Settings, you insert the Device ID, give it a name and select "Hide Device", "Save" and then restart the plugin and then the curtain disappears from Apple Home.

So, how does it look?

Pretty good actually. It's more responsive than through Homebridge, not that you generally want curtains to move immediately. It's just there is not that lag that makes you go "Did it understand me?"

The Light sensor that is in the curtain robot doesn't move into HomeKit, which is a bit of a shame as sensors are supported in Matter V1.0.

It has meant I've had to redo a few automations, but that's no big deal.

All in all, I'm quite happy. I was also impressed with the SwitchBot tech support. Even though I was running Beta iOS, there was no indication of them pulling backwards from supporting me.

I wonder what is coming next? I hope the light sensors and the bots. I really want to remove the plugin from homebridge.

Moving other devices to retire my original hub.

<updated 26th April 2023>

I wanted to retire my original SwitchBot hub, but I could not move the bots over to the new hub. Logging call with SwitchBot confirmed I was following the correct process, but they pushed two firmware updates to me:

• V6.4 for the SwitchBot bot and
• V0.8-0.6 for the Hub 2

I found that 2 of the 3 bots I have moved over easily to the Hub 2, but one would not. I found I had to reboot the hub and then the 3rd one moved over.

I can confirm I can still access the bots via the homebridge plugin without any changes to that bridge, or even a reboot.

Not all plain sailing...

<updated 6th May 2023>

To be very fair to SwitchBot, Matter support is still in Beta and it has been working very well.

However...... (you knew it was coming didn't you?)

I installed some V2 curtain bots to replace some V1 bots, as the V1's can deal with thicker poles when you have rings for your curtains. I needed the V1's for my mum's house.

I deleted the V1 bots from SwitchBot via the App, and added the V2's. The hub correctly showed that the V1's were no longer secondary devices. I added the V2's to the Hub 2, and they correctly showed up in HomeKit. However, the V1's were also still in HomeKit.

So, a bit of a bug. SwitchBot are looking at it.