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The ideal intelligent home perfectly anticipates your needs and responds instantly to commands. You shouldn’t have to open a device-specific app or remember the precise combination of voice command and voice assistant that launches the latest episode of your favorite podcast on the nearest speaker. Competing smart home standards make operating your devices unnecessarily complicated. He’s just not very… well, smart.
Tech giants try to transcend standards by offering their voice assistants as an upper layer of control, but Alexa can’t talk to Google Assistant or Siri or control Google or Apple devices, and vice versa. (And so far, no ecosystem has created the best devices.) But these interoperability issues could be fixed soon. Formerly called Project CHIP (Connected Home over IP), the open source interoperability standard known as Affair arrived in 2022. With some of the biggest names in tech, like Amazon, Apple, and Google, on board, seamless integration may finally be within our reach.
Updated May 2024: Added news about the release of the Matter 1.3 specification, progress with major players, a section on what you can do with Matter, and more details on potential features.
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What’s going on?
Matter allows different devices and ecosystems to work well. Device manufacturers must comply with the Matter standard to ensure their devices are compatible with voice and smart home services such as Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Google Assistant, and others. For people building a smart home, Matter, in theory, allows them to buy any device and use the voice assistant or platform they prefer to control it. (Yes, you can use different voice assistants to talk to the same product.)
For example, you can buy a Matter-compatible smart bulb and set it up with Apple HomeKit, Google Assistant, or Amazon Alexa, without having to worry about compatibility. Right now, some devices already support multiple platforms (like Alexa or Google Assistant), but Matter will expand that platform support and make setting up your new devices faster and easier.
The first protocol runs on Wi-Fi and Thread network layers and uses Bluetooth Low Energy for device configuration. While it supports multiple platforms, you must choose the voice assistants and apps you want to use; There is no central Matter app or assistant. Because Matter works on your local network, you can expect your smart home devices to be more responsive and should continue to work even when the internet goes out.
What makes matter different?
The Connectivity Standards Alliance (or CSA, formerly Zigbee Alliance) maintains the Matter standard. What sets it apart is the breadth of its membership (more than 550 tech companies), the willingness to adopt and merge disparate technologies, and the fact that it is an open source project. Interested businesses can use the royalty-free software development kit (SDK) to bring their devices into the Matter ecosystem. This is much simpler than certifying devices individually with each smart home platform.
Emerging from the Zigbee Alliance gives Matter a firm footing. Bringing the main smart home platforms (Amazon Alexa, Apple HomeKit, Google Home and Samsung SmartThings) to the same table is an achievement. It’s optimistic to imagine seamless adoption of Matter across the board, but it has enjoyed a groundswell of enthusiasm with many smart home brands jumping on board, including August, Schlage and Yale in smart locks; Belkin, Cync, GE Lighting, Sengled, Signify (Philips Hue) and Nanoleaf in smart lighting; and others like Arlo, Comcast, Eve, TP-Link and LG.
When did the material arrive?
The issue has been in process for years. The first launch of Project CHIP was scheduled for late 2020, but was delayed until the following year, renamed Matter, and then promoted for a summer launch. After another delay, the Matter 1.0 specification and certification program opened in 2022. The SDK, tools and test cases were made available and eight authorized test labs were opened for product certification.
The first wave of Matter-compatible smart home devices went on sale in fall 2022, and we’ve seen a steady trickle since then. The first update to the specification, Matter 1.1, arrived in May 2023 and consisted primarily of bug fixes. Announced in October 2023, Matter 1.2 added support for nine new device types, including refrigerators, robotic vacuum cleaners, and air purifiers, along with improvements to existing categories.
The Matter 1.3 specification was released in May 2024 and adds power management, electric vehicle charging, and water management along with support for new devices including ovens, stoves, and clothes dryers. It also brought improvements to Matter Casting, so in addition to being able to cast from your phone to your TV, other smart devices, like your robot vacuum, can send messages to your TV to warn you if they’re stuck, for example.
