Matter enrolling needs to improve

If I have spent more than 5 minutes connecting a device, I consider that a loss.

The great thing about smart homes is that they make life easy. Better integration means more convenience, and time to focus on life.

What it doesn’t mean is that you spend an hour trying to enroll a smart plug with two Matter controllers and failing with both. That, I think you’ll agree, is a massive disappointment.

Yet this happened to me today as I explored the improved Matter support on the IKEA Dirigera. The issue didn't directly concern that device, but was due to a smart plug, previously connected to SmartThings, that refused to correctly connect.

With Matter becoming more prominent as a smart home solution, enrolling needs to get better.

Joe Public and the Matter smart home

You’re in IKEA and you see a Dirigera hub. It’s priced attractively, so why not buy it – a couple of bulbs, and you’ve got a basic smart dynamic in your smart home. Then you visit your big box electronics store and see a smart plug, or some window blind or curtain controllers, or a thermostat. Great options to build some excellent automations.

Ma dirigera hub

And, thanks to a quick fact check via Google on your phone, all you need to do is snap a QR code and these devices are all added.

Child’s play, right?

Of course, it should be. But with the issues Matter device enrollment can have, Joe Public is very like to stick everything he bought at IKEA in a drawer. Enrollment might be secure, but it’s simply not reliable enough to trust for a quick setup.

So, what is the problem here?

Was a better update required?

My experience with IKEA’s smart home hardware has generally been pleasant. That’s in sharp contrast to the SmartThings environment. I’ve previously explained my frustration at our Samsung TV’s habit of forgetting it is a Matter controller, or requiring a power cycle (or worse), so having the option of the Dirigera as a controller was welcome.

So, why didn’t the Tapo smart plug work with the Dirigera? Was it a problem with the IKEA Matter controller?

Or is the issue actually with Tapo?

Try another smart plug

As our smart bulbs are attached via the Dirigera already (and as such, functional over Zigbee), I didn’t see much point in disrupting their association with the hub. However, I had a spare smart plug, the EIGHTREE Matter Smart Plug (UK).

Would this connect to the Dirigera over Matter?

Matter-compatible smart plug

Happily, yes.

The big question is, what is the problem with the Tapo device? I’ve chatted with colleagues here at Matter Alpha, and all of us have experienced connectivity challenges with the TP-Link Matter hardware.

The problem with enrolling

Connection dropping and compatibility issues are only one aspect of the problem with enrolling Matter devices. The process has several points of failure:

You don’t know if the device is already recorded as enrolled: A previously enrolled device may still be associated, or it may not
You don’t know if the device reset procedure has been successful
App feedback is terrible: I’ve waited over 10 minutes for a device to connect; I’ve waited the same amount of time for the process to ultimately fail.

I think that last point is perhaps the one that will affect most people. The messaging remains the same throughout the enrolling/pairing process, regardless of where it ultimately fails or succeeds.

Who wants to wait around for that, only to find it doesn’t complete the process? In my view, that is going to put off anyone who isn’t playing around with smart home tech for fun or money.

Reset, then reset again

A Tapo smart plug would, you might imagine, be easy to connect to a smart home system. After all, it’s produced by TP-Link, one of the world’s most well-known providers of networking hardware.

Yet, my experience with this P110MA smart plug today was one of complete frustration. Half enrolled on the Dirigera, not even seen by Samsung SmartThings, resetting the device didn’t work. Nor did reverting to factory settings. In fact, removing Samsung SmartThings from the TV (the equivalent of a reset) didn’t work either.

And, despite heavy resetting despite no prior relationship with the Dirigera, the smart plug did exactly what it doesn’t say on the label, and played dumb. Tapo smart plugs and switches need to be more reliable; at the very least, a minimum requirement of fast and verbal connectivity status during enrollment should be enforced.

Because if this was someone’s first experience of Matter, it won’t take long for them to turn anti-Matter.