Home Assistant Can Finally Show Matter Cameras. Here's What That Takes

Matter 1.5 added cameras to the standard. Until this week, that didn't mean much if you ran Home Assistant, because Home Assistant had no way to show you one.

That changed on October 21, when pull request #176080, "Support Matter cameras," merged into Home Assistant Core. It's tagged "noteworthy," and it should be. It adds a camera platform for Matter 1.5 cameras, with live video and still snapshots in Home Assistant's normal camera views.

How it works

The short version: Home Assistant asks the Matter server to set up a stream, and then gets out of the way.

From the PR: it's "built on the Matter server's camera API (schema 14)," and "Media then flows directly between browser and camera." Snapshots come from camera_snapshot as JPEG. Home Assistant forwards its configured ICE servers to the camera, "including Nabu Casa TURN, when available," which helps the video find a way through when a direct connection isn't possible.

I like that design. Video doesn't detour through a vendor's cloud or get re-encoded by your Home Assistant box. It goes camera to browser. For a local-first setup, that's the right shape.

It depends on the Matter server update

Here's the catch. The PR says cameras "are discovered only when the connected server reports at least that schema." Schema 14 is the camera API that arrived in the OHF Matter Server 1.5, which I covered when it shipped.

So it's a two-part chain. You need a Home Assistant release that includes this PR, and a Matter Server new enough to report schema 14. If either piece is older, the camera won't show up, and nothing will tell you why. If you add a Matter camera and see nothing, check the Matter Server version before you blame the camera.

There's a second wrinkle on the server side. OHF Daily reported on October 22 that a Matter.js Server migration bug "left devices unavailable with empty readings after moving from the Python Matter Server." Version 1.5.0 "could create a new controller identity instead of using the identity the devices already trusted," and OHF Daily says a fix landed. The part to remember: "Failed migrations from version 1.5.0 require restoring a backup and trying again." If you're still on the old Python server, take a backup before you migrate. That advice was true before. It's more true now.

What testers ran into

The PR thread is worth skimming because it shows real hardware, not a spec sheet. A tester, mkerstner, tried an Aqara G350 on experimental firmware in July and reported "Livestream: Throws error." After Aqara's 4.5.70 firmware, the August report was "Verified and still works," apart from a "known snapshot / websocket control topic that needs to be settled."

That tells me two things. Camera firmware matters as much as Home Assistant does here. And the first Matter cameras on the market will probably be uneven for a while.

Apollon77 also made a call in the thread that should help long term. His read: "there will be no certified Matter camera on the market that does not support the new 'stream ID lists' fields," so Home Assistant should use them and allocate streams when that hasn't already happened.

One more detail for the cautious: the PR's dependency check shows the Matter Python client moving to a pre-release build (1.5.0a0.dev202610160251). That's normal mid-development. It's also a reason to let the first release settle.

Two-way audio is coming too, separately

A different change, reported in OHF Daily on October 23, adds two-way audio to Home Assistant's camera viewer. A Talk control "starts a new WebRTC stream with a return audio channel." Reolink is the first integration to support it, for RTSP cameras. OHF Daily calls it "A Labs preview," so expect it to be marked experimental.

That one isn't Matter-specific. It's the same idea, though: talking to a camera from Home Assistant instead of opening the camera company's app.

When can you use it?

Home Assistant ships monthly, and this merged on October 21. If nothing changes, it should be in the next monthly release. I'm not going to promise a version number before the release notes say so.

There's also a docs gap. A reviewer noted the linked documentation PRs were closed without merging, so the user docs may trail the feature.

Should you buy a Matter camera now?

Not yet, at least not because of this. The plumbing is in place, but the one camera in the PR thread needed new firmware to work, and that's the only real-world report I've seen. I'd wait until a few cameras show up with clean reports from Home Assistant users.

What I would do now: if you're shopping for a camera this fall, add "Matter 1.5 camera support, now or promised" to the list next to local storage and RTSP. It's the first time that checkbox has meant something for Home Assistant.