Amazon announced five new Alexa devices on 28 October 2026: a new Echo Dot, Echo Studio with Home Camera, Echo Time, Alexa Photo Frame and a redesigned Echo Show 16. For smart home users the Dot is the interesting one, because it is the first Echo Dot with a built-in smart home hub.
The boxes in the smart home aisle carry three logos that look like rivals: Zigbee, Thread and Matter. Only two of them compete. Zigbee and Thread are radio networks that move small messages between low-power devices. Matter is a language devices use to describe themselves and accept commands, and it runs on top of Thread, Wi-Fi or Ethernet. Once yo
A smart plug is the cheapest way to automate something and the easiest way to find out what a device really uses. It is also the product category where it is easiest to buy the wrong thing: a plug that only works through an app and a remote server, a relay too weak for a heater, or a metering chip that reports once a minute when you wanted live dat
A fresh Home Assistant OS install on a small board will no longer pull in the Matter Server app on its own. Pull request #188890 by RaHehl was merged into the development branch on 27 October 2026 at 17:00 Polish time. That branch is numbered 2026.11.0.dev0, so the change is headed for Home Assistant 2026.11.
Samsung finished rolling out SmartThings hub firmware 0.62.15 on 26 October 2026, ending a 0.62.x update cycle that took almost two months. The release covers the SmartThings Hub v2 (2015) and v3 (2018), the Aeotec Smart Home Hub and Smart Home Hub 2, and the ThingsOne Smart Home Hub. 0.62.15 itself only brings "minor bug fixes and performance impr
Sharing a Matter device from Home Assistant with Apple Home has always involved a small detour. Home Assistant opens a commissioning window and shows a QR code and a sharing code, and you then type the code into the Home app or scan the QR code with a second phone. Three pull requests merged on 26 October 2026 remove that step for people who use th
Nanoleaf's Matter-over-Thread bulbs, downlights, GU10s and lightstrips have a new firmware, 5.1.45, and this week the company's app caught up with it. Version 12.0.0 of the Nanoleaf app, which its release notes say adds "support for firmware 5.x.x on Nanoleaf Matter over Thread devices", started rolling out on Android on 20 October and on iOS on 21
The matter.js-based Matter Server, which Home Assistant's Matter integration talks to, reached version 1.5.5 on 24 October 2026. It is the third release in two days, after 1.5.3 and 1.5.4 on 23 October. The main fix is for systems where, after an upgrade to the 1.5 series, only part of the Matter devices came back after a restart.
Ubiquiti has an unannounced UniFi access point at the FCC that carries a Thread radio. The device is the U7 Mesh Wall (FCC ID SWX-U7MW), a wall-mounted Wi-Fi 7 access point, and the grant was issued on 16 October 2026. Matter Alpha spotted the filing and wrote about it on 23 October.
