Matter: Template

This sample demonstrates a minimal implementation of the Matter application layer. This basic implementation enables the commissioning on the device, which allows it to join a Matter network built on top of a low-power, 802.15.4 Thread network or on top of a Wi-Fi® network.

This device works as a Matter accessory device, meaning it can be paired and controlled remotely over a Matter network built on top of a low-power 802.11ax (Wi-Fi® 6) or 802.15.4 (Thread) protocol. Support for both Thread and Wi-Fi is mutually exclusive and depends on the hardware platform, so only one protocol is supported for a specific Template device. In case of Thread, this device works as a Minimal End Device.

You can use this sample as a reference for creating your own application. See the Adding clusters to Matter application page for an overview of the process you need to follow.

Requirements 

The sample supports the following development kits:

Hardware platforms	PCA	Board name	Board target	Shields
nRF54LM20 DK	PCA10184	nrf54lm20dk	`nrf54lm20dk/nrf54lm20b/cpuapp` `nrf54lm20dk/nrf54lm20a/cpuapp`	`nrf7002eb2`
nRF54L15 TAG	PCA20072	nrf54l15tag	`nrf54l15tag/nrf54l15/cpuapp`
nRF54L15 DK	PCA10156	nrf54l15dk	`nrf54l15dk/nrf54l15/cpuapp/ns` `nrf54l15dk/nrf54l15/cpuapp`
nRF54L15 DK (emulating nRF54L10)	PCA10156	nrf54l15dk	`nrf54l15dk/nrf54l10/cpuapp`
nRF5340 DK	PCA10095	nrf5340dk	`nrf5340dk/nrf5340/cpuapp`
nRF52840 DK	PCA10056	nrf52840dk	`nrf52840dk/nrf52840`

If you want to commission the Template device and control it remotely through a Thread or Wi-Fi network, you need to set-up the Thread Border Router (Matter over Thread only) and control it with the chip-tool, or use a commercial ecosystem controller. When this happens, you will also be able to control it through a Matter controller device configured on PC or smartphone. This requires additional hardware depending on the setup you choose.

Note

Matter requires the GN tool. If you are updating from the nRF Connect SDK version earlier than v1.5.0, see the GN installation instructions.

IPv6 network support 

The following development kits for this sample offer IPv6 network support for Matter:

Matter over Thread is supported for the nrf52840dk/nrf52840, nrf5340dk/nrf5340/cpuapp, nrf54l15dk/nrf54l15/cpuapp, nrf54l15tag/nrf54l15/cpuapp, nrf54lm20dk/nrf54lm20b/cpuapp, and nrf54lm20dk/nrf54lm20a/cpuapp board targets.
Matter over Wi-Fi is supported for the nrf54lm20dk/nrf54lm20b/cpuapp and nrf54lm20dk/nrf54lm20a/cpuapp board targets with the nrf7002eb2 shield attached.

To test this sample, you need the following hardware depending on the protocol you are using:

Compatible Nordic Semiconductor’s DK, see the table above.
nRF52840 DK or nRF52840 Dongle - for the Radio Co-Processor device (Thread)
One of the following:
- PC with Ubuntu (20.04 or newer) or macOS (11 or never)
- Raspberry Pi Model 3B+ or newer with Ubuntu (20.04 or newer) instead of Raspbian OS

For detailed requirements, see the Thread Border Router page.

Overview 

The sample starts the Bluetooth® LE advertising automatically and prepares the Matter device for commissioning into a Matter-enabled Thread network. The sample uses an LED to show the state of the connection.

Configuration 

This section describes the configuration options for the sample.

See Configuring and building for information about how to permanently or temporarily change the configuration.

The sample uses a prj.conf configuration file located in the sample root directory for the default configuration. It also provides additional files for different custom configurations. When you build the sample, you can select one of these configurations using the FILE_SUFFIX variable.

See Custom configurations and Providing CMake options for more information.

Note

If you are working with multiple devices, set a unique discriminator for each one, or commission them one at a time. See Matter device identification for more information.

The sample supports the following build configurations:

Template build configurations
Configuration	File name	FILE_SUFFIX	Supported board	Description
Debug (default)	`prj.conf`	No suffix	All from Requirements	Debug version of the application. Enables additional features for verifying the application behavior, such as logs.
Release	`prj_release.conf`	`release`	All from Requirements	Release version of the application. Enables only the necessary application functionalities to optimize its performance.
Internal memory only	—	`internal`	nRF54LM20 DK and nRF54L15 DK	Debug version of the application with external flash disabled. Enables the Template to work using internal memory only.

Note

The nRF54L15 TAG does not have external flash. Therefore, all configurations use internal flash only.

Advanced configuration options 

This section describes advanced configuration options that you can apply in this sample. Use the click to show toggle to expand the content.

Device firmware upgrade support

The sample supports device firmware upgrade (DFU) over-the-air (OTA) using the following protocols:

Matter OTA update protocol that uses the Matter operational network for querying and downloading a new firmware image.
Simple Management Protocol (SMP) over Bluetooth® LE. In this case, the DFU can be done either using a smartphone application or a PC command-line tool. This protocol is not part of the Matter specification.

In both cases, the MCUboot secure bootloader is used to apply the new firmware image.

The DFU over Matter is enabled by default. Additionally, you can enable the DFU over SMP by using the -DCONFIG_CHIP_DFU_OVER_BT_SMP=y build flag.

See Providing CMake options for instructions on how to add these options to your build.

The following platforms require external flash memory to perform the DFU:

nRF52840 DK
nRF5340 DK
nRF54L10 DK

You can run DFU without external flash memory on the nRF54L15 and nRF54LM20 DKs using the MCUboot image compression feature. To see if the sample supports this feature, check whether the internal build configuration is available in the build configuration table.

When building with nRF Connect for VS Code, add your desired dfu_build_flag to Extra CMake arguments. For example add -DCONFIG_CHIP_DFU_OVER_BT_SMP=y to enable DFU over BT SMP.

When building on the command line, run the following command with board_target replaced with the board target name of the hardware platform you are using (see Requirements), and dfu_build_flag replaced with the desired DFU build flag:

west build -b board_target -- dfu_build_flag

For example:

west build -b nrf54l15dk/nrf54l15/cpuapp -- -DCONFIG_CHIP_DFU_OVER_BT_SMP=y

Support for Trusted Firmware-M

The sample supports using Trusted Firmware-M on the nrf54l15dk/nrf54l15/cpuapp board target. The memory map of the sample has been aligned to meet the TF-M partition alignment requirements.

To build the sample with Trusted Firmware-M support, add the ns suffix to the nrf54l15dk/nrf54l15/cpuapp board target board target, and use the FILE_SUFFIX=tfm variable:

When building with nRF Connect for VS Code, complete the following steps:

set the board target to include the ns suffix (for example nrf54l15dk/nrf54l15/cpuapp/ns) in your build configuration.
Add -DFILE_SUFFIX=tfm to Extra CMake arguments in your build configuration.

west build -p -b nrf54l15dk/nrf54l15/cpuapp/ns -DFILE_SUFFIX=tfm

Factory data support

In this sample, factory data support specific to the nRF Connect SDK is enabled by default for all configurations. This means that a new factory data set will be automatically generated when building for the target board.

To disable factory data support, set the following Kconfig options to n:

To learn more about factory data, read the Factory provisioning in Matter user guide.

Custom board with Nordic SoC

To prepare the sample to work with a custom board, complete the following steps:

Refer to the Create your board directory Zephyr guide and create your board directory.

Modify the contents of the board.yaml file according to the Write your board YAML user guide.

Update the Write your devicetree (all .dts and .dtsi files) to match your board’s requirements.

Write Kconfig files to enable all required Kconfig options for your board.

If you want to build your custom board with nRF70 Wi-Fi support, set the CONFIG_CHIP_WIFI and SB_CONFIG_WIFI_NRF70 Kconfig options to y.

If your device uses external flash, add its devicetree definition under the board/<board_name>_<soc_name>.overlay file, and set nordic,pm-ext-flash in the devicetree’s chosen configuration.

Refer to the Advanced Matter Kconfig options user guide, create your list of advanced configurations for your board, and apply the selected Kconfig options in the prj.conf file.

See the list of threads used in Matter application and adjust stack sizes according to your board and project requirements.

A custom board does not have support for LEDs and buttons by default. Therefore, you need to provide your own implementation of the nrf/samples/matter/common/src/board/board.cpp board file.

For more information, see the following guides:

Board Porting Guide and Custom Board, Devicetree and SOC Definitions to learn how to create a custom board directory.

Optimizing memory usage in Matter applications to learn how to optimize memory on your board.

Advanced Matter Kconfig options to learn about Matter configuration.

Matter hardware and memory requirements to learn about hardware requirements for Nordic Development Kits and to use as a reference when planning your custom board.

Internal memory only

For the nRF54LM20 DK and nRF54L15 DK, you can configure the sample to use only the internal RRAM for storage. It applies to the DFU as well, which means that both the currently running firmware and the new firmware to be updated will be stored within the device’s internal RRAM memory.

The DFU image fits in the internal flash memory if you use MCUboot image compression.

This configuration is disabled by default for the Matter Template sample. To enable it, set the FILE_SUFFIX CMake option to internal.

To build the sample for the nRF54LM20 DK with support for Matter OTA DFU and DFU over Bluetooth SMP, and using internal RRAM only:

Add -DCONFIG_CHIP_DFU_OVER_BT_SMP=y -DFILE_SUFFIX=internal to Extra CMake arguments in your build configuration.

west build -p -b nrf54lm20dk/nrf54lm20b/cpuapp -- -DCONFIG_CHIP_DFU_OVER_BT_SMP=y -DFILE_SUFFIX=internal

To build the sample for the same purpose in the release configuration:

Add -DCONFIG_CHIP_DFU_OVER_BT_SMP=y -DFILE_SUFFIX=internal -D<sample_name>_EXTRA_CONF_FILE=prj_release.conf to Extra CMake arguments in your build configuration, replacing <sample_name> with the actual sample name (for example light_bulb or matter_bridge).

Replace <sample_name> with the actual sample name and run:

west build -p -b nrf54lm20dk/nrf54lm20b/cpuapp -- -DCONFIG_CHIP_DFU_OVER_BT_SMP=y -DFILE_SUFFIX=internal -D<sample_name>_EXTRA_CONF_FILE=prj_release.conf

In this case, the size of the MCUboot secondary partition used for storing the new application image is approximately 30-40% smaller than it would be when using a configuration with external flash memory support.

User interface 

This section describes the user interface available on the development kit in this sample.

Buttons and LEDs map 

This section explains the names of Buttons and LEDs visible on a board depending on the development kits that are used in this sample user guide.

Buttons and LEDs map
DK family	First LED	Second LED	Third LED	Fourth LED	First Button	Second Button	Third Button	Fourth Button
nRF52 and nRF53 DKs	LED 1	LED 2	LED 3	LED 4	Button 1	Button 2	Button 3	Button 4
nRF54 DKs	LED 0	LED 1	LED 2	LED 3	Button 0	Button 1	Button 2	Button 3
nRF70 DKs	LED 1	LED 2	Not available	Not available	Button 1	Button 2	Not available	Not available
nRF54L15 TAG	Red LED	Green LED	Blue LED	Not available	Button 1	Not available	Not available	Not available

Development kit interface 

This sample implements the following interface available on a development kit. While reading the names, refer to the Buttons and LEDs map.

First LED:

Shows the overall state of the device and its connectivity. The following states are possible:

Short Flash On (50 ms on/950 ms off) - The device is in the unprovisioned (unpaired) state and is waiting for a commissioning application to connect.
Rapid Even Flashing (100 ms on/100 ms off) - The device is in the unprovisioned state and a commissioning application is connected over Bluetooth LE.
Solid On - The device is fully provisioned.

First Button:

Depending on how long you press the button:

If pressed for less than three seconds:
- If the device is not provisioned to the Matter network, it initiates the Simple Management Protocol (SMP) server and Bluetooth LE advertising for Matter commissioning. After that, the Device Firmware Update (DFU) over Bluetooth Low Energy can be started. Bluetooth LE advertising makes the device discoverable over Bluetooth LE for the predefined period of time (1 hour by default).
- If the device is already provisioned to the Matter network, it re-enables the SMP server. After that, the DFU over Bluetooth Low Energy can be started.
- If pressed for more than three seconds, it initiates the factory reset of the device. Releasing the button within three seconds of the initiation cancels the factory reset procedure.

SEGGER J-Link USB Port:: Used for getting logs from the device or for communicating with it through the command-line interface.

Building and running 

This section describes how to build the sample and commission it to the Matter network.

This sample can be found under samples/matter/template in the nRF Connect SDK folder structure.

To build the sample, follow the instructions in Building an application for your preferred building environment. See also Programming an application for programming steps and Testing and optimization for general information about testing and debugging in the nRF Connect SDK.

Note

When building repository applications in the SDK repositories, building with sysbuild is enabled by default. If you work with out-of-tree freestanding applications, you need to manually pass the --sysbuild parameter to every build command or configure west to always use it.

When building this sample with Sysbuild for an SoC that has a network core, the IPC radio firmware is automatically applied to the build. The IPC radio is one of the companion components in the nRF Connect SDK and allows to use the radio peripheral from another core in a multicore device. If needed, you can modify the IPC radio configuration in the prj.conf source file in the sample’s sysbuild/ipc_radio directory.

Before starting the commissioning procedure, make sure that the device is discoverable over Bluetooth LE. The device becomes discoverable automatically upon the device startup, but only for a predefined period of time (one hour by default). If the Bluetooth LE advertising times out, enable it again.

Advanced building options 

Building the Matter over Wi-Fi variant on nRF54LM20 DK with nRF7002-EB II shield

To build the Matter over Wi-Fi sample variant on nRF54LM20 DK with nRF7002-EB II attached, perform the following actions depending on the build tool:

When building an application as described in the nRF Connect for VS Code documentation, follow the steps for setting up the build configuration.
In the Add Build Configuration screen, click the Add argument button under the Extra CMake argument section.

Add the following Kconfig options:

-DSHIELD=nrf7002eb2 -DSB_CONFIG_WIFI_NRF70=y -DCONFIG_CHIP_WIFI=y

Use one of the following options:

west with the following command (nrf54lm20a SoC variant is also supported):

west build -p -b nrf54lm20dk/nrf54lm20b/cpuapp -- -DSHIELD=nrf7002eb2 -DSB_CONFIG_WIFI_NRF70=y -DCONFIG_CHIP_WIFI=y

CMake with the following command:

cmake -GNinja -Bbuild -DBOARD=nrf54lm20dk/nrf54lm20b/cpuapp -DSHIELD=nrf7002eb2 -DSB_CONFIG_WIFI_NRF70=y -DCONFIG_CHIP_WIFI=y -DAPP_DIR=*app_path* *path_to_zephyr*/share/sysbuild
ninja -C build

Flashing the Matter over Wi-Fi sample variant

In the Matter over Wi-Fi variant of this sample, the portion of the application code related to the nRF70 Series Wi-Fi firmware is stored in the external memory. When you program the sample onto your development kit, the build process automatically includes the Wi-Fi firmware patch and programs it into the external memory.

By default, using the west flash command erases the entire external flash memory before writing the new Wi-Fi firmware patch. This full-chip erase ensures that the patch is written to a clean memory area, but it can significantly increase the programming time - sometimes taking several minutes, especially if the external flash is large.

To optimize the programming process and reduce the time required, you can instruct west flash to erase only the specific memory ranges that will be overwritten by the Wi-Fi firmware patch. This is done by adding the --ext-erase-mode=ranges argument to the command. With this option, only the necessary sections of external memory are erased, making the programming process faster.

To speed up programming, use the Flash button instead of Erase and Flash to Board in the Actions View. Using Erase and Flash to Board erases the entire external flash and can take several minutes.

Run the following command to program the sample and minimize the erase time:

west flash --ext-erase-mode=ranges

To disable storing the Wi-Fi firmware patch in the external memory, complete the following steps:

Remove the Wi-Fi firmware patch partition from the partition list.
Set the SB_CONFIG_WIFI_PATCHES_EXT_FLASH_STORE Kconfig option to n.
Set the SB_CONFIG_DFU_MULTI_IMAGE_PACKAGE_WIFI_FW_PATCH Kconfig option to n.
Set the SB_CONFIG_MCUBOOT_UPDATEABLE_IMAGES Kconfig option to 2.

To learn more about the Wi-Fi firmware patch, see the Adding nRF70 Series firmware patch partitions user guide.

Testing 

This section shows how to test the sample. You can test it using your PC and the CHIP Tool for Linux or macOS or commercial ecosystem that supports Matter.

Testing with CHIP Tool 

Complete the following steps to test the Template device using CHIP Tool:

Prepare Matter network

To set up the Matter network, configure your environment according to the protocol you are using. Choose the appropriate tab below and follow the corresponding steps to prepare your Matter network.

Configure the Thread Border Router. See the Running OTBR using Docker section on the Thread Border Router page.
Download the prebuilt CHIP tool package from the Matter nRF Connect releases GitHub page. Make sure that the package is compatible with your nRF Connect SDK version.

Prepare your DK

To flash your DK with the sample and prepare it for testing, complete the following steps:

Connect the kit to the computer using a USB cable. The kit is assigned a serial port. Serial ports are referred to as COM ports on Windows, /dev/ttyACM devices on Linux, and /dev/tty devices on macOS. To list Nordic Semiconductor devices connected to your computer together with their serial ports, open a terminal and run the nrfutil device list command. Alternatively, check your operating system’s device manager or its equivalent.
Open a serial port connection to the kit using a terminal emulator that supports VT100/ANSI escape characters (for example, the Serial Terminal app). See Testing and optimization for the required settings and steps.
If the device was not erased during the programming, perform the factory reset procedure.

To restore the device settings and state to its factory set press the First Button for six seconds to initiate the factory reset of the device.

Commission to Matter network

To commission the device to the Matter network complete the following steps:

Obtain a Thread active dataset from OTBR:

Connect to the Raspberry Pi through USB or SSH.
Run the following commands:

sudo ot-ctl
> dataset active -x

Run the following command:

sudo docker exec -it otbr sh -c "ot-ctl dataset active -x"

The output should look like:

080000000000000000000300001735060004001fffe00208deadbeefcafe12340708fd123456789abc00000510112233445566778899aabbccddeeff00030a54657374576f726b3031010211220410aabbccddeeff00112233445566778899aa0c0402a0f7f8
Done

Run the following command and fill the <thread dataset> argument obtain in the previous step:
```
chip-tool pairing ble-thread 1 hex:<thread dataset> 20202021 3840
```

Collect the following parameters of your Wi-Fi access point:
- <ssid> - SSID of your Wi-Fi network.
- <password> - A password to your Wi-Fi network associated with the SSID.
Run the following command and fill the <ssid> and <password> arguments:
```
chip-tool pairing ble-wifi 1 <ssid> <password> 20202021 3840
```

Read basic information

To see if the communication with the device is working, run the following command to read the basic information from the device:

chip-tool basicinformation read product-id |node_id| 0

See the output and verify that the product ID is set to 32768 (0x8000 in hexadecimal).

Testing with commercial ecosystem 

Note

The sample sample, in its default configuration, is not recognized or supported by any major Matter ecosystem. This is because it does not use a standard Matter device type that ecosystem controllers expect or can interact with. To make your implementation compatible with a specific ecosystem, you must add an endpoint and assign a device type that is officially supported by that ecosystem. For detailed instructions on how to add supported clusters and device types, refer to the Adding clusters to Matter application user guide.

Before starting testing, ensure that the ecosystem supports the device types enabled in this sample. See the ecosystem manual page for instructions on how to use it.

When you start the commissioning procedure, the ecosystem controller must get the onboarding information from the Matter accessory device. The onboarding information representation depends on your commissioner setup.

For this sample, you can use one of the following onboarding information formats to provide the commissioner with the data payload that includes the device discriminator and the setup PIN code:

Template sample onboarding information

QR Code

QR Code Payload

Manual pairing code

Scan the following QR code with the app for your ecosystem:

MT:K.K9042C00KA0648G00

34970112332

When the factory data support is enabled, the onboarding information will be stored in the build directory in the following files:

The factory_data.png file includes the generated QR code.

The factory_data.txt file includes the QR code payload and the manual pairing code.

This data payload also includes test Device Attestation, with test Certification Declaration, Product ID, and Vendor ID. These are used for Device Attestation within commissioning, and you can generate your own test Certification Declaration when you work on Matter end product.

Dependencies 

This sample uses the Matter library that includes the nRF Connect SDK platform integration layer:

Matter

In addition, the sample uses the following nRF Connect SDK components:

The sample depends on the following Zephyr libraries: