I know many of you have been waiting for quite some time for our promised Matter-capable firmware. We’re finally ready to share it with you!
To shortcut to the good parts:
- Install the Matter firmware for the Alarm Panel Pro at install.konnected.io
- Read new KB article Matter (experimental) for the Alarm Panel Pro with all the details.
Now for some context on where we are with Matter and the current state of things — the reason it’s taken so long to get out the door is that in my opinion, the Matter capabilities for a device like the Alarm Panel Pro are somewhat underwhelming. Without a Matter specification for a true “Alarm System,” which currently doesn’t exist, the best we can really do within Matter’s current capabilites is to bridge contact sensors and switches to the Matter fabric. So, that’s exactly what we’ve done and it works fine … I just don’t know how useful this really is.
I know that a lot of you all were anticipating Matter to bring your Alarm Panel Pro into
Apple Home / HomeKit. It does work — but maybe not in the way you may have hoped. Konnected’s Matter firmware does work great with Apple Home, but only bridging contact sensors and on/off switches falls short of the Alarm System accessory that Apple Home users typically want. The best approach for this, in my opinion, is still to use Home Assistant as a bridge.
We’ve tested the Matter firmware for the Alarm Panel Pro with Apple Home, Google Home, SmartThings and Home Assistant. Of these four, only Google Home requires us to pre-register your Google Account to participate in the beta. The other three can be tested freely just by acknowledging that the device is not certified.
Those of you who already filled out our Matter EAP application, I’ve activated your account for the Matter (beta) features in the Konnected app already. If you’d like to try the Matter firmware and haven’t filled this out yet, please do and we’ll update access regularly.
Matter simplifies the onboarding and local communication of devices with a Matter controller, but it doesn’t provide an interface for device settings management. We’ve added capability to the Konnected app to manage Matter devices, including adding/updating/removing zones from the device on-the-fly. Please share any feedback you have with this process!
This thread will serve as support/discussion for all things Matter related to the Alarm Panel Pro for the time being. Thanks for your patience and I’m eagerly anticipating your feedback!