In this guide, step-by-step instructions are given to commission a Matter device onto the Matter network and control it using the Android™ chip-tool. It can be used to test Matter applications using an Android™ 8+ Smartphone.
Features of the Android™ chip-tool are:
- Scan a Matter QR code and display payload information to the user.
- Commission a Matter device.
- Send echo requests to the Matter echo server.
- Send on/off cluster, level control cluster requests to a Matter device.
- Sensor cluster read outs (Temperature, Pressure and Humidity).
- Multi-admin cluster functionality (basic commissioning and enhanced commissioning)
- Reading out the supported/commissioned fabric count.
- Basic cluster information read outs.
WARNING: the CHIPTool Android application is a development tool developed and maintained within the Matter community, its features are limited and do not represent a final product. It is still in a development phase so some instability while using the application might be seen.
The setup to be achieved will look like the picture below:
To commission and control the Matter device in the network following actions will be done:
- The smartphone scans the Matter device's QR code.
- A secure Bluetooth LE connection is setup using the QR code information.
- Thread network credentials are passed to the Matter device.
- The Matter device joins the Thread network.
- The smartphone can now communicate via IP over the QPG7015M based WiFi/Ethernet-Thread router and control the Matter device.
Required Hardware:
- Qorvo's QPG7015M Gateway development kit.
- Qorvo's QPG6105 Matter development kit.
- Smartphone with Android 8 or later.
- Access point/Router to connect your Smartphone and Gateway development kit to the same network. Note that a WiFi Access point can be enabled on the Raspberry Pi that runs the OpenThread Border Router. See Enable a Wifi access point on RPi4 how this can be achieved.
The Android chip-tool can be downloaded from here. Transfer this apk to your smartphone and install it. You may need to grant permission to install unknown applications.
Also make sure your smartphone is connected through WiFi in the same network as the OpenThread Border Router will operate on.
Alternatively, you can build the Android chip-tool from source. Instructions how to do this can be found here.
See the guide How to setup the OpenThread Border Router.
Now a Thread network is created. Proceed to step 3 to prepare the Matter device for joining the network.
Make sure the Matter software is flashed on the development kit and the serial console application is running. See Building and flashing the example applications and Enable serial logging for instructions.
If you already commissioned the device before, perform a factory reset first. Performing factory reset is dependent on the Matter applications you are using:
- Factory reset of the Matter Light
- Factory reset of the Matter Lock
- Factory reset of Matter Base application
After reset of the Matter light application or Matter base application, the device will start Bluetooth LE advertising automatically and is ready for commissioning in the Matter network.
The Matter lock application does not start advertising automatically because of security reasons for a lock device.
Therefore, a manual trigger is needed to initiate advertising. Shortly press SW5
on the development board to trigger the
advertising. Now the Matter lock device is ready for commissioning in the Matter network.
Open Android chip-tool on the smartphone and click PROVISION CHIP DEVICE WITH THREAD
:
This will open the camera to scan the QR code. To retrieve the QR code you need to check the serial output of the Matter device. This will print a URL at start-up where you can find the QR code. Output should be something similar as:
[P][SVR] https://dhrishi.github.io/connectedhomeip/qrcode.html?data=MT%3AY3.13AUB00KA0648G00
To display the QR code, open a web browser and navigate to the URL. This website generates the required QR code to commission the device with.
Now, make sure your Matter device is advertising (for the Matter light and base, it starts advertising automatically after reset,
for the Matter lock, you need to press SW5
short to trigger the advertising). Next scan the QR code (action 1 in the
figure on top) and the chip-tool will ask to enter the credentials of the Thread network. If you have used
the defaults during the formation of the Thread network on the Border Router, you can use the defaults here as well.
Otherwise make sure to update them accordingly.
Next, the chip-tool will start Bluetooth LE scanning to find the Matter device. If it finds the device, a
Bluetooth LE connection will be triggered (action 2 in the figure on top), and commissioning will start automatically.
During the process, the Matter device will receive the Thread network credentials via Bluetooth LE (action 3 in the
figure on top). Finally, the Matter device will join the Thread network and the message commissioning completed
appears shortly at the bottom of the screen.
Now the Matter device is fully commissioned in the Matter network and you can start controlling the Matter device using the Android chip-tool. This will be explained in the next step.
To start controlling the Matter device, navigate to LIGHT ON/OFF & LEVEL CLUSTER
.
A slider, Toggle
and ON
/OFF
controls are shown:
You can now operate your Matter device using the controls:
- For Matter Light, it controls the RGB led on the development board (Dimming using the slider,
Toggle
andOn
/Off
commands can be used). - For Matter Lock, the lock is emulated using the cool white led (LD1) (
Toggle
andON
/OFF
commands can be used, the slider is not used for the lock application).
You can also read the status of the Matter light or lock. Therefore you can use the Read
button. The Subscribe
button
can be used to poll the status of the Matter light or lock at a defined time interval.
- if the Android chip-tool crashes during commissioning, disable Bluetooth on the smartphone, then re-enable it again before retrying. You can also try killing all applications running in the background using Android task manager.
- After a reset of the Matter device, trigger 'Update address' on the control screen. This will update the address again in the Thread network.
- After a reset of the OpenThread border router, it is advised to reset the SRP server by executing following commands in RPi's terminal:
docker exec -it otbr_eth sudo ot-ctl srp server disable
docker exec -it otbr_eth sudo ot-ctl srp server disable
Also trigger 'Update Address' on the control screen. This will update the address again in the Thread network.
- After a force kill of the application, trigger 'Update Address' on the light control screen. This will update the address again in the Thread network.