Unify Matter Protocol Controller User Guide

The Unify Matter PC is a Unify Protocol Controller that enables interaction between Unify network and a Matter fabric. For a more thorough description see the Unify Matter PC Overview.

This guide assumes that you have set up Unify SDK. Read the Unify Host SDK’s Getting Started Guide for information on how to set this up.

Once a Unify SDK is setup, the Matter PC can be started.

The following documentation assumes that you have built the Unify Matter PC application by following the Build Guide and have transferred the unify-matter-pc to your Raspberry Pi 4 (RPi4) running the 64-bit version of Raspberry Pi OS Bullseye.

Running the Matter PC

At start-up, the Matter PC needs to connect to the Matter Fabric as well as the MQTT Broker. It is therefore critical that you have access to port 1883, the default MQTT Broker’s port, as well as a network setup that allows mDNS through.

A few important runtime configurations must be considered, along with some other configuration options. A full list of command-line parameters is provided in the Command line arguments section.

Important Configuration Settings

  • Network Interface

    Specify the network interface on which the Matter Fabric runs. In a regular RPi4 setup it would be wlan0 for WiFi and eth0 for ethernet. Specify this with the ‘--mpc.interface’ argument, as such:

    uic-mpc --mpc.interface eth0

  • Key-Value store (KVS)

    The Matter PC uses a Key-Value store for persisting various run-time configurations. Make sure to have read/write access to the default path ‘/var/lib/uic-mpc/chip_unify_mpc.kvs’ or provide the path to where writing this data is allowed. If this file is deleted before start-up, everything is reset and the MPC will not belong to any Matter Fabric until it has again been commissioned.

    uic-mpc --mpc.kvs ./mpc.kvs

  • Unify DataStore

    The Matter PC uses a sql database for persisting attribute store contents. Make sure to have read/write access to the default path ‘/var/lib/uic-mpc/mpc.db’ or provide a path to where writing this data is allowed. If this file is deleted before start-up, all the information about previously discovered Matter device during past run will be lost. However, if the KVS is not deleted MPC is still part of a fabric and it will try and rediscover matter devices in the fabric.

    uic-mpc --mpc.datastore_file ./mpc.db

  • MQTT Host

    If you have followed the Unify Host SDK’s Getting Started Guide, your MQTT Broker should now be running on ‘localhost’. If you have decided to run the MQTT broker on a different host, you can tell the Unify Matter Protocol Controller to connect to a different host.

    uic-mpc --mqtt.host 10.0.0.42

  • Vendor and Product ID

    If you have access to the EAP and you want to use the Google Home App, you need to set a specific VID and PID for the Matter PC.

    uic-mpc --mpc.vendor fff1 --mpc.product 8001

Starting the Matter PC

Once the configuration parameters are set it is time to start the UMPC application. UMPC can be run in either standalone mode or service mode (if installed from debian package).

  • Standalone

    uic-mpc --mpc.interface eth0 --mpc.kvs ./mpc.kvs --mqtt.host localhost --mqtt.port 1337

  • Service Mode To run in service mode the configuration parameter are set in /etc/uic/uic.cfg as needed and then start uic-mpc.service.

    sudo systemctl start uic-mpc.service

Commissioning the UMPC to a Network

To include the UMPC in the Matter network, it must first be commissioned. The first time the UMPC starts it will automatically go into commissioning mode. After 10 minutes the UMPC will exit commissioning mode. If the UMPC has not been commissioned within this window, the application must be restarted to open the commissioning window again or the window can be opened by writing commission in the CLI when running the UMPC in stand-alone mode. The commission commands can also be used for multi-fabric commissioning.

The Unify Matter PC uses the “On Network” commissioning method. For now, there is no Bluetooth commissioning support.

The commissioning procedure requires use of a pairing code. This pairing code is written to the console when running the Matter Protocol Controller. Look for something similar to ‘MT:-24J029Q00KA0648G00’, used as the pairing code in the following example. This code can be used when commissioning with the CLI commissioning tool chip-tool.

[1659615301.367669][1967:1967] CHIP:SVR: SetupQRCode: [MT:-24J029Q00KA0648G00]

Another way to get the QR code is to look for an url in the console log similar to and copy the link into a browser. Note that two codes a printed at startup one for Standard Commissioning flow and one for custom commissioning flow. Be sure to use the standard flow with Eco system devices.

[1659615301.367723][1967:1967] CHIP:SVR: https://dhrishi.github.io/connectedhomeip/qrcode.html?data=MT%3A-24J029Q00KA0648G00

It should be noted that the commissioner must be on the same subnet/link-local as the Raspberry Pi. Note that by default the UMPC binds to the eth0 interface. If another interface is to be used, see the description of the command line arguments for setting Network Interface.

Using the chip-tool to Commission

In the following procedure make sure to use the pairing code taken from the console output, as described above. To commission the Matter PC with the chip-tool and assign the UMPC with Node ID 1:

chip-tool pairing code 1 MT:-24J0AFN00KA0648G00

Control an OnOff device

To send an OnOff cluster command to a Matter device you must first commission the Matter device to same fabric as UMPC and the device’s ACL must be setup to permit UMPC to control it.

./chip-tool accesscontrol write acl '[{"fabricIndex": 1, "privilege": 5, "authMode": 2, "subjects": [<UMPC Node ID>,112233], "targets": null}]' <Matter Device Node ID> 0

Once commissioned to same Matter fabric, UMPC will discover it from the mDNS advertisement and interviews its capability and publishes them into Unify network after allocating it a unique identifier within Unify network i.e. UNID. Now, log-on to Unify Dev-GUI to view the newly discovered device under Nodes section of the GUI. Unify Dev-GUI MPC Nodes If the device supports OnOff cluster then the actuator link for the same should reflect under Type column for that device Node. Click on the same to open Actuator page and select the command to be sent to the Matter Device. Sending Command from MPC

For more information on how to use Dev-GUI see the Dev-GUI guide.

For more information on how to use the chip-tool see the chip-tool manual on the Matter website.

Note: If the Matter device is thread device then Unify OTBR needs to be setup as described in Unify Multiprotocol Setup Guide. Run the below command to get the operationDataSet to be used in BLE-Thread commissioning:

ot-ctl dataset active -x

Command Line Arguments

The Unify Matter PC provides the following command line arguments:

Using –help displays the following text.

Usage: uic-mpc [Options]

Options:
  --conf arg (=/etc/uic/uic.cfg)        Config file in YAML format. UIC_CONF
                                        env variable can be set to override the
                                        default config file path
  --help                                Print this help message and quit
  --dump-config                         Dump the current configuration in a
                                        YAML config file format that can be
                                        passed to the --conf option
  --version                             Print version information and quit

The following options can also be in a config file. Options and values passed on the command line take precedence over the options and values in the config file.

--log.level arg (=i)                  Log Level (d,i,w,e,c)
  --log.tag_level arg                   Tag-based log level
                                        Format: <tag>:<severity>,
                                        <tag>:<severity>, ...
  --mpc.datastore_file arg (=/var/lib/uic-mpc/mpc.db)
                                        MPC datastore database file
  --mpc.interface arg (=eth0)           Ethernet interface to use
  --mpc.kvs arg (=/var/lib/uic-mpc/chip_unify_mpc.kvs)
                                        Matter key value store path
  --mpc.strict_device_mapping arg (=0)  Only map devices we are certain
                                        conforms to specification
  --mpc.vendor arg (=65521)             16 bit Vendor ID
  --mpc.product arg (=32785)            16 bit Product ID
  --mpc.discriminator arg (=4094)       12 bit Discriminator ID
  --mpc.pin arg (=9127271)              24 bit pin
  --mpc.report_max arg (=3600)          ceiled max interval for reportables (in
                                        seconds)
  --mqtt.host arg (=localhost)          MQTT broker hostname or IP
  --mqtt.port arg (=1883)               MQTT broker port
  --mqtt.cafile arg                     Path to file containing the PEM-encoded
                                        CA certificate to connect to Mosquitto
                                        MQTT broker for TLS encryption
  --mqtt.certfile arg                   Path to file containing the PEM-encoded
                                        client certificate to connect to
                                        Mosquitto MQTT broker for TLS
                                        encryption
  --mqtt.keyfile arg                    Path to a file containing the
                                        PEM-encoded unencrypted private key for
                                        this client
  --mqtt.client_id arg (=unify-matter-pc)
                                        Set the MQTT client ID of the
                                        application.