Getting Home Assistant Matter Ready
Now that the matter smart home interconnectivity standard was released you will need to do some work to get your home assistant matter ready. The home assistant team has been working with hardware suppliers to create a new zigbee radio dongle that will be matter ready with a future firmware update. You can preorder the SkyConnect dongle at ameridroid.
The SkyConnect dongle is currently being released in batches while initial production runs are underway. New orders should ship in May of 2023 as of Mar 26.
Currently the SkyConnect is the only zigbee radio released that will be matter compatible. I'm sure the folks at zooz, aqara, sonoff and aeotec will be releasing their own versions in the coming month.
If you want to be matter ready with your home assistant setup soon though, the SkyConnect zigbee usb stick is currently your only and best option since it is supported by the home assistant team.
The support by the home assistant team will provide many benefits over other zigbee and future matter options. This will be one chip supporting zigbee and matter thread which will save you USB ports that can be in short supply on a lot of SBCs used for home assistant. Firmware updates to the stick will also be released with automatically as home assistant updates and it offers plug and play integration.
Users loyal to aqara, sonoff or aeotec hardware may have to wait to add matter support to their setup. There are currently no published release plans from these companies so we do not know if they will have an all in one solution like the SkyConnect. Updates and plug and play are also things to consider when looking for other ways to integrate matter into your setup.