#Matter Server occasionally experiences mass timeouts and has to re-subscribe all devices

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tepid dome
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I have about 100 Matter over Thread devices in my home (dozens of Inovelli White switches, two Aqara smart locks, and a couple dozen Sunricher RGB controllers). I have two wired Apple TVs acting as TBRs that are Ethernet connected. I'm running the Matter Server on HAOS (a robust Beelink mini PC). I have a Unifi dream machine pro and full unifi network.

Most of the time, things work flawlessly. But occasionally, at any time of the day, all of the Matter devices become unreachable momentarily, and then a few minutes later devices start resubscribing one by one until, about 20-30 minutes later, things are running normally again.

I do not have auto updates on anywhere (including Apple TVs, Unifi and HA). I am not seeing any network timeouts or disconnects. Not seeing anything strange in the HA logs (except all of the activity in the Matter Server log). Unifi is not showing anything unusual that I can find. About 97 percent of the time, things work normally with little or no connection issues and then -- bam -- everything goes offline and Matter re-subscribes all devices. It's very similar to what I see when I reboot the HA machine or my Apple TVs -- except that's not happening.

Does anyone have any ideas of what might be causing this? Or, is there someplace you recommend I look to figure it out? It's a little frustrating to not be able to control the home for a half hour when this happens.

Thanks for any tips or help!

old solar
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I had something like this happening to my lights. I eventually realized it happened whenever I picked up my game controller, which was running on the 2.4GHz band. Low power devices tend to default to 2.4GHz because it requires very little power, but that means a more powerful 2.4GHz device can just blow them out of the water. Hell, even a neighbor’s poorly shielded microwave can effectively act as a jammer.

Adding a few strategically placed relays helped with the connectivity issues caused by my controller. The fact that everything goes offline at the same time makes me suspect that it may be some stray 2.4GHz signal (like a microwave) just totally jamming all of your devices. Especially if nothing is showing up in your hardware logs that would indicate your Thread antenna is the issue.

tepid dome
# old solar I had something like this happening to my lights. I eventually realized it happe...

Hey, thanks for this! I have definitely considered that. But I can't make any correlation to any devices. I thought it might be movie streaming at first, but then it often happens in the middle of the night. I have also cleared the Wifi channels near the Thread frequency. It's a good point, though... I'll keep looking for a culprit. But I have a feeling it's a networking thing... I just don't know if it's something I can adjust, or if it's just the way Apple TVs behave.

digital hill
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I have a similar setup of over 100 thread devices, about 60 or 70 of which are Inovelli devices.

My "theory" is that it may be because the Inovelli VTM31 users an early Matter 1.1 / Thread SDK which might be unreliable causing them to crash. I know Inovelli is working on an update to the Matter 1.4 / Thread 1.4 SDKs so I'm just waiting for that. I'm helping to beta test their devices and, based on current expectations / timelines, I'd guess 2 months until that comes out.

Note, it won't fix the connectivity issues, but there is an update to version 1.0.6 of the Inovelli VTM31 firmware available on testnet, but you have to know how to install beta firmware on Home Assistant to use it.

tepid dome
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Oddly, I'm noticing that these events often coincide with viewing content (like a movie) on the Apple TV. The last two events occurred right after watching content. I've also had it happen during a movie. Sometimes it's also when the ATV isn't streaming content, but it happens too often to be coincidence. Has anyone heard of this being an issue?

@digital hill I am hopeful the firmware update for the switches and the new TVos will improve things. Any idea when that firmware will come out? Last I heard was July.

digital hill