I’m a software developer learning electronics as a hobby, and I’m trying to build a small battery-powered Matter project on the XIAO MG24 - a DIY motorized roller blind controller, similar in concept to the Aqara Roller Shade Driver E1. The plan: a small DC motor, a 3D-printed enclosure, a Li-ion cell, controlled from Home Assistant via Matter-over-Thread. The XIAO MG24 looked perfect for this - until I started looking at battery life.
This is where I hit a wall. As I understand it, the Arduino Silabs core builds the Matter stack as a Full Thread Device (FTD), which keeps the radio always-on. Real-world idle current ends up around ~5-8 mA, which gives roughly 2 weeks on an 18650 battery.
What I actually need is Matter ICD - ideally SIT for ~1 s response time, which is fine for a blind. The underlying Silabs Matter SDK supports this (CHIP_CONFIG_ENABLE_ICD_SERVER), and I can see all the conditional code for it in the package, but it’s compiled out in the Arduino core’s prebuilt gsdk.a and there’s no API exposed in the Matter library to configure poll intervals.
There’s an open GitHub issue requesting this from over a year ago with no progress: SiliconLabs/arduino#154.
My questions to the Seeed community and to anyone here from the Silabs Arduino team:
Is ICD/SIT support on the roadmap for the Arduino Silabs core? Even basic SIT with a couple of Matter.setSlowPollInterval() style API calls would unlock a huge class of hobbyist battery projects on the XIAO MG24.
For someone who isn’t a professional embedded engineer, is Simplicity Studio really the only path? I’ve looked at it and it’s a serious step up in complexity - different build system, ZAP editor, J-Link debugger required. Is there a middle ground?
Or would you recommend a different chip entirely? I have ESP32-H2 boards on hand and esp-matter set up, but real-world measurements I’ve found (Tomas McGuinness’s blog) suggest ~190–650 µA average on the SuperMini even with ICD enabled, so MG24 still seems like the better target if I can get to ICD. Or is there something else (Nordic nRF52840 with Zephyr?) that’s a saner middle ground for hobby battery Matter?
My use case is dead simple - open/close a blind on command, idle most of the time, run for months on a battery. This feels like it should be a 10-line config change, not a full migration to a professional toolchain. Hoping to hear from anyone who’s been down this road.
So, While I agree in spirit with your POV, however when it comes to comfort zones yolo, stretch a little and you’ll grow a lot.
The Nordic nRF54L15 is widely considered the superior choice for high-efficiency battery projects, especially for Matter-over-Thread devices. While the XIAO MG24 is an excellent board, the nRF54L15 represents a newer generation of silicon specifically designed to solve the exact “Matter battery life” problem you are facing.
Here is a comparison of why the Nordic system generally wins on battery life and efficiency for this use case:
1. Massive Efficiency Gains (22nm Process)
The nRF54L15 is built on a 22nm process node , which is much more advanced than the previous generation chips.
Radio Power: The nRF54L15 pulls approximately ~3.4 mA in RX and ~4.8 mA in TX (0 dBm). In comparison, the MG24 datasheet lists roughly ~4.4 mA RX and ~5.0 mA TX.
Processing Efficiency: The nRF54L15 has a 128 MHz CPU that is significantly more efficient than the nRF52840 or MG24. It can complete tasks (like encrypting a Matter message) much faster and return to sleep sooner, which is the “golden rule” of battery life.
2. Mature Matter ICD (Sleepy Device) Support
The biggest pain point you mentioned with the MG24 is the Arduino core compiling out the ICD (Intermittently Connected Device) features.
Nordic’s Advantage: Nordic’s nRF Connect SDK is built on top of Zephyr RTOS , which has native, first-class support for Matter ICD and SIT (Short Idle Time) .
Granular Control: Unlike the current Arduino Silabs core, the Nordic toolchain gives you direct access to poll intervals. You can easily set a 1-second poll (SIT) to ensure your blinds respond quickly while the device draws only ~20–60 µA on average.
Real-World Data: Users have reported achieving over 1.5 years of battery life on small 240mAh batteries with the nRF54L15 by optimizing interrupts and using the Matter ICD configurations.
3. The “XIAO” Specific Trade-off
If you are specifically using the XIAO nRF54L15 board, there is one small caveat:
The Antenna Switch: Some versions of the XIAO nRF54L15 include an on-board radio switch (FM8625H) that can draw about 100µA if left powered on. To get the “ultra-low” micro-amp sleep, you have to ensure your code toggles this switch off during sleep periods.
Comparison Table: Nordic vs. Silicon Labs (MG24)
Feature
Silicon Labs MG24 (Arduino)
Nordic nRF54L15 (nRF Connect)
Ease of Use
High (Arduino IDE)
Medium/Low (VS Code / Zephyr)
Matter ICD Support
Limited / Compiled Out
Full / First-class
Active RX Current
~4.4 mA
~3.4 mA
Sleep Current
~1.9 - 5 µA
~0.6 - 0.8 µA (SoC level)
Toolchain
Simplicity Studio (Heavy)
nRF Connect SDK (Professional/Flexible)
Summary Recommendation
If your goal is months or years of battery life for a motorized blind: Yes, the Nordic nRF54L15 is the superior choice.
The hardware is more efficient, but more importantly, the software stack (nRF Connect SDK) actually allows you to use the power-saving features that are currently “locked away” or difficult to access in the MG24’s Arduino core. While the learning curve for Nordic’s SDK is steeper than Arduino, it is the standard for professional-grade battery-powered Matter devices IMO.
Ordered the XIAO nRF54L15 Sense (regular version was out of stock). Going to try it with this new chip too, so wish me luck.
I do still keep thinking about my MG24 boards though, since they’re sitting on my desk and the hardware is solid. Any chance you could point me at how to actually add SIT support to the SiliconLabs/arduino fork and build it locally?
Since the MG24 supports Zephyr you could get started on the code for the XIAO nrf54L15 while waiting for your parts to arrive.
Still a little bit of learning curve however. But I have heard there is excellent documentation and lots of videos to watch to get you “fully informed”.
I haven’t found a “complete how to” post on the forum or wiki yet. Perhaps the “experts” can help with that.
Adding in here, that while the nRF54L15 is definitely more efficient, the nRF52840 is also extremely power efficient as well. I have a SHT41 sensor coupled to a XIAO nRF52840 board as an outdoor temp/RH% sensor using Matter over Thread (and ICD/SED) and its going on 3-4 months of runtime so far on a single 2200mAh 18650 and its still showing 99% battery life. I’m guessing it will be 2 years before it needs to be charged.
Similarly I have a small ePaper dashboard that updates the clock portion of the display once a minute and fetches a sensor data payload every 5 minutes over Thread CoAP and its going to have at least a year of runtime, I estimate.
I’m not a coder at all, I’ve been using GPT Codex for all the code, and Zephyr/Nordic NCS for the dev platform and its been fairly smooth going. Most of the issues stem from me learning about code along the way and having to steer the agent on what to do. I chose the 52840 because I figured it would be easier to build off of other peoples work and have more documentation and help in forums than the newer 54L15. Maybe thats true maybe its not, but either way it met my needs and then some.
But yea, amazing devices, and big props to Seeed for making such excellent tiny little boards!
Will need to dig into some tutorials and start the Zephyr / NCS learning curve now. Hoping the onboard USB programming on the XIAO will be enough and I won’t need an external debugger, but if so I’ll figure it out
So my MG24 boards → which I was convinced were the epic find of the year → go in the drawer for now, waiting for a better use case. Or maybe someone will eventually export those ICD functions in the Arduino core
I think with a software developer background you may find developing Matter (Zigbee, BLE, Z-Wave etc) code with Simplicity Studio may be easier than expected.
Personally, I find it much easier than using the Zephyr/Nrf development paradigm.
I have created a simple walkthrough for another user here…
I use the XIAO MG24 for many projects, even for Home Assistant and Zigbee2MQTT as a Zigbee Coordinator.
PJ 
