Connecting to Matter device on iOS 16

Did you find a way to connect with an iOS 16 device in the meantime?

I am trying to get an iPad OS 16 device connect to the bridge-app example, in already-on-network mode (DNS-SD/Bonjour) without BT or Wifi. I haven't succeeded yet, but at least the iPad starts communicating with the bridge app (same with lighting app), when I do the following:

• enable iPad as a Home Hub (Settings -> Home)

• call the bridge app (running on Linux) with the vendor/id according to docs/examples/discussion/PID_allocation_for_example_apps.md and capabilities==4 (which means already-on-network only, no BT or WiFi) like:

  chip-bridge-app --vendor 0xFFF1 --product-id 0x8002 --capabilities 4

• make sure the linux system only has a ethernet connection to the LAN (iPad could not reach the bridge app when both WiFi and Ethernet were enabled. I haven't tried yet with Wifi only)

• after starting the example app, find the log line with the URL to the online QR-Code converter, open it in a browser and now try adding accessory in the Home app on the iPad.

Doing this, I see the iPad connecting to the bridge app (same with lighting app) and starting a conversation, but then the Home app reports "Unable to Add Accessory - pairing with accessory failed" :-(

[Update: the same chip-bridge app started exactly as show above can be paired successfully using chip-tool]

Update: using iOS 16 beta 2 and current connectedhomeip master I was able to commission the bridge-app such that the devices appeared in the Home.app! 😀

There was a protocol breaking change on April 14th (57a2df3) which made all matter builds before that not working with builds after that (all ReadRequests failed). Before beta 2, iOS apparently had a build from before April 14th. Beta 2 now again has build which is compatible with current connectedhomeip version.

However, what does not yet work well is actually controlling the bridged devices from Home.app after commissioning. This is most probably because a Home Hub needs to be involved, which means an AppleTV or a HomePod. There's no mechanism yet to update the latter with beta firmware, so no big surprise that it does not work yet. With an AppleTV running tvOS 16 beta 2, I could manage switching bridged devices with a lot of lag and quite unreliably, and Home app often complaining about not being able to reach the accessory.

Note that both AppleTV and iPad need to have the "Enable Matter" profile installed, which is labelled for iOS 15.x but apparently also works for iOS16. Worked, that is, because that profile expired today, and I could not find an updated version yet.

Would you happen to know which Matter device profiles are supported in the Beta 3? I tried six different ones, the only one I could get working was the lighting-app example. I was surprised that light-switch-app was unrecognized.

I don't know, but my experience with the bridge-app is the same: only lights are recognized, not the switches (which are also part of the bridge-app example).

In the example for endpoint_config.h Apple gives in the "EnableMatter_Instructions.pdf", they only list 0x0100 (On/Off Light) and 0x0016 (Matter Root Node). They do not say the stack is actually limited to those, but for the moment, it seems like that's pretty much the case as far as conrete devices are concerned.

The beta3 however already has a firm understanding of the meta-devices like "matter bridge" (0x000E) and "matter bridged device" (0x0013) - the home app shows a single accessory (the bridge) which can be opened to show the contained lights, including the option to dissolve this grouped presentation into separate accessories.

Maybe they are concentrating on the common basics for all device types right now (which is not smooth yet with beta3) because that's most important, and avoid the complexity of too many matter-to-homekit device types for the moment - and will add device types later when the foundation is really solid?

You can install Matter profile.

Here is the link to the document: https://github.com/project-chip/connectedhomeip/blob/ab028397daec2c3053998bf56624aa40da76a7fa/docs/guides/darwin.md