Matter Smart Home Hub, Thread & Tuya Zigbee, Control Your Connected Devices

The hub arrived on time and was easily integrated into my HomeKit set up.

5 hours in. Still does not work. What a complete nightmare. Instructions are a joke. Pairing with their app took 23 attempts. That updated the unit which continues to not work at all.

Works to find some of my Zigbee, still needs that last matter update that's out there.

Setup was easy enough once I found a USB brick to plug it into. I was surprised to find out that it did not include one and at this price point, it should.

I am finally able to get 20 tuya blind motors into homekit with no hassle. Extremely happy and reliable. Easy to set up and add the hub into smart things/homekit. All the tuya devices added to smart things get’s added to the hub as sub devices and shows up in the homkit. Need to explore adding more tuya products.

I want to be able to control the Nanoleaf lights in the bedroom from Siri. I had it working, then the two Nanoleaf bulbs started to fail. They'd go dim and flicker, then sometimes would ignore input from the Home app or Siri - both would think the bulbs were off, but they'd still be lit up. Sounds like a power supply issue in the bulb.The least expensive thing would be to simply get a new set of bulbs from Nanoleaf, which I did. Except Nanoleaf has changed the design of the bulbs to ONLY supporting Thread, and not WiFi. I don't have a Thread edge/border router to enable a Matter/Thread network. We don't use a TV, and the Apple TV box is way old - does not function as a Thread router, and we don't leave it plugged in anyway. Our HomePods are version 1. And our home mesh network works really well - it would be expensive to upgrade that to Eero or some such.This cute little box looked like the ticket. It seems it's supposed to be a Thread/Matter hub. It cost about half of the next cheapest option, an Apple HomePod mini - and I don't need another speaker. I ordered one and it arrived the next day. The ZemiSmart M1 hub is well packaged, and the design is simple - an Ethernet port with cable, a USB-C port for power with USB-A to USB-C cable, a "paperclip style" probe for resetting the box, and simple instructions.I installed the "Smart Life" app from the App Store and got that going, as per instructions.So I connected it to an Ethernet port on a convenient access point in my LAN, connected power, then spent many hours resetting and resetting and resetting it. I finally got it connected to the LAN as a bridge, and even connected into Apple Home as a bridge. I found there was a firmware upgrade, and did that in the app.Then I tried to connect a Nanoleaf lightbulb. It wouldn't - from either the Apple Home, or the Zemismart "Smart Life" app. You need to use your iPhone (or iPad?) and scan QR codes - a lot. Both simply said I needed a Thread border router. Hello? Isn't that what I have? So lots of power-cycles of the lightbulb, resetting the router, and the same result.I noticed that much of the app does not even mention Thread as you go through the menus and Q&A. It has options for BlueTooth, Zigbee, and some other protocols, but not Thread. The box the router came in DOES talk about Thread.It's looking a lot more like I'll need to send it back - I'd love for it to work! Then spend another $50 and get an Apple HomePod mini, and only use it as an edge router/bridge.It's the weekend - I'll try to contact the company next week. Before I package it up and return it.

Unable to use with thread device, I would have to purchase additional hardware in order to use. It seems to be best for Zigbee devices.

I decided to pair up this smart home hub with a smart blind motor from Tuya and it seems to work well with this hub. Everything got connected smoothly and I am able to access my smart blinds from Google Home which I like. Although I have quite a few other smart home devices in my home as well, I've stuck to using devices that can connect to Wi-Fi on their own and haven't given thought to Zigbee or Matter devices until now, so I am definitely excited to see what else I can pair up with this hub. One thing to note though is that, from all the documentation that I can find, this hub is intended to be used with Tuya devices first and foremost so non-Tuya zigbee devices may not work at all which might be a dealbreaker for some. I am just diving into the world of Zigbee and Matter though so I will update this review as I try out new devices to use with this hub.