Alright, so here’s the situation—I’ve got a pretty chill smart home setup running with a couple of Matter devices. Everything was working fine until one random evening, my smart plug just gave up on life. Unresponsive in both the app and through voice control. Totally ghosted me.
First thought? “Okay, easy fix—just reboot.” Nope. Nothing.
Tried deleting and re-adding the device through my controller (I’m using Home Assistant with a Thread border router). Still no luck. The plug was just sitting there, blinking like it wanted attention but had no idea what it wanted from me.
What finally worked? I figured it had to be a Thread issue. Long story short: the problem was interference. I moved my border router a few feet away from my Wi-Fi router (they were basically hugging each other), and boom—everything came back to life. Apparently, Thread does NOT like to be that close to Wi-Fi, especially if they’re on overlapping channels.
I also double-checked that my firmware was up to date on both the plug and the SmartThings hub (which I was using as a secondary controller), and after all that jazz, it’s been solid ever since.
Posting this because I nearly went nuts trying to figure it out. If your Matter device is acting possessed, check for channel interference, especially if it uses Thread. Saved me a lot of headache.
Anyone else run into similar phantom issues and figured it out? Curious what tricks saved your setups.