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Google Nest instability with a large number of Matter devices

aafaber
Community Member

Been trying to fix this issue for 2 months now and I’ve run out of ideas so would really appreciate new ideas!

Two months ago I bought a device called 1Home Server from 1Home.io This device exposes KNX devices (which I have in my house) as Matter devices so that Google Home and Apple Home can operate the devices via Matter. I really like that the Google Home device is then only used for voice recognition, while operating the devices themselves happens locally without some cloud service being in between. This means faster response time, better reliability and higher privacy. In theory…

The issue: when I expose all 113 KNX device as Matter devices in Google Home it becomes unresponsive after about half an hour or so. Oddly, the Apple Home is completely stable. I’ve been in touch with the customer service from 1Home a lot, they’re awesome, but together we ended up concluding the issue is most likely with Google Home. Google uses the same API to the 1Home device as Apple does apparently.

If I only enable a few devices it will stay stable, but it’s on a gradual scale. For example, enabling half of all devices means it becomes unstable a bit later than if I enable all devices. A lot of those 113 devices are sensors or temperature devices, so I don’t really miss them if they’re disabled.

Rebooting the 1Home device doesn’t make the devices come back to life. It really requires the right Google device to be rebooted (with the right Google device I mean the device that is acting as the hub, which is usually a Nest Hub gen. 2 device connected via 5Ghz via an excellent connection).

My Google devices: 2x Nest Hub Gen. 1, 2x Nest Hub Gen. 2, 2x Nest Audio, 3x Nest Mini Gen.2, 1x Nest Mini Gen.1, (1x original Google home, disabled), 1x Chromecast Audio. The Nest Hub (displays) are on Fuchsia version 14.20230831.4.72

My network equipment: Unifi UDM SE, Unifi Switch 24 (during the process I upgraded from a CloudKey Plus, USG and Cisco router hoping this would make a difference), 2x Unifi access point UAP-AC-Pro, 2x access point U6 Lite

Other Matter devices: Apple TV 4K with Thread support, several Matter (incl. Thread) devices from Eve, Home Assistant on a RPI

Other devices: as you probably suspect I have many home automation devices, each are a potential suspect, some connected as a Google service.

Current network settings are according with what 1Home recommends (incl. explanation why, mostly related to mDNS): https://www.1home.io/docs/en/server/matter-networking#unifi, which is:

    1. Disable wireless meshing
    2. Disable Multicast Enhancement and Multicast and Broadcast Control
    3. Disable Multicast DNS
    4. Disable IGMP snooping
    5. Disable meshing

IPv6 is enabled on the network, while IPv6 is not yet supported externally by my ISP. I don’t have a VLAN configured. I have no firewalls rules enabled yet. I would prefer to re-enable meshing for a remote access point, but can live without it for now. The Matter integration with Apple is currently disabled. 

In the log file of the 1Home device there’s sometimes a warning about mDNS resolution failing but only once per every couple of hours, so this doesn’t seem to be the issue. There’s not much other stuff in the log while there are issues with the Google device.

Here’s a list of what I’ve tried over the last 2 months without success, trying to systematically narrow down the issue. I’m probably forgetting some things and not mentioning the combination of each of these things:

  1. Changing the network settings to what 1Home recommends for Unifi (see above)
  2. Changing the network settings to other variations, including the settings recommended in this source for mDNS, Unifi and Matter: https://tomasmcguinness.com/2023/02/10/matter-unifi-and-mdns/
  3. Upgrading the Unifi network
  4. Enabling / disabling IPv6 on the network
  5. Variations of Google devices (e.g. only 1 Nest Hub or only 1 Nest Mini).
  6. Reset Google devices to factory settings
  7. Use an entirely fresh Google account on a factory reset Nest Hub, without connecting other services to this Google account
  8. Replaced the Unifi network with an Apple Airport Extreme router and a Cisco unmanaged switch
  9. Disabling all Sonos devices (which also use mDNS and is notoriously bad at it)
  10. Analysed traffic with Wireshark to the best of my limited abilities with this tool, there doesn’t seem to be an mDNS packet storm as far as I can tell
  11. Disabled Home Assistant (which also supports Matter)
  12. Disabling some of the more dubious smart lights
  13. Changing the wireless network to 2.4Ghz
  14. Search the entire Internet and scream at the computer

I’ve recently subscribed 2 devices to the Google Preview Program, hoping that Google will fix this at some point.

No other customers from 1Home have this issue and they’re not able to reproduce my issue with a similar amount of devices. I have not found anyone with a similar issue so far, but perhaps not many people are trying the Google devices with 120 Matter devices. Obviously Matter is still in its infancy at this point, but my other Matter devices are stable since the Matter 1.2 release. 

My wife has become frustrated with Google replying ‘something went wrong’ most of the time to voice commands. Any more ideas for things to try would be greatly appreciated!

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