Apple, Amazon, Google, Samsung, and even IKEA all support the Matter standard, which aims to standardize the connected home. But what is it and why should you care? kwgeek reveals everything you need to know about the new standard in the smart home.
To summarize:
What is the IoT Home Standard?
Project Matter was announced in late 2019 by the Amazon, Apple, Google and Zigbee Alliance as “a royalty-free connectivity standard to improve compatibility between connected home products”. Originally called the Connected Home over IP (CHIP), the standard uses the Internet Protocol (IP) to interconnect disparate devices, ecosystems, and applications.
In a way, it’s USB for connected home devices. While “universal” ports have mostly done away with serial (DE-9), parallel (DB-25), game ports (DA-15), and more recently DisplayPort (DP) and even charging standards, the Matter standard attempts to end the Having to choose between Siri, Alexa or Google Assistant to control the device, or even Z-Wave, Thread or Zigbee to communicate is skeptical.
Of course, this leads to the classic situation best illustrated by xkcd’s famous comic. But the weights of all the companies involved suggest that the Matter standard will eventually dominate the market.
Most major companies in the connected home space support the Matter standard / © Matter
When will Matter standards be available?
The Matter standard was originally scheduled to launch in 2021, but has been pushed back to “Summer 2022.”
Similar to the situation with the Wi-Fi standard, companies are already using a draft version of the standard and are conducting some preliminary validation tests. Nonetheless, no product announcements are expected until the final version of the standard is released. So don’t expect to see a Matter-compliant product until Q4 2022.
What types of devices will the Matter standard support?
Just like USB, the Matter standard will define many product categories (or classes). At launch, it will be compatible with:
- Doors and Access Control
- Connected lighting (bulbs, switches, shutters, blinds)
- Security (door and window sensors, motion and contamination detectors)
- temperature control
- TVs and Media Players
Additionally, Google has announced that it is working on streaming capabilities for security cameras, smart displays, and video doorbells. After the first standard release, we should see the ecosystem expand into categories like air purifiers, robot vacuums, connected weather stations, and more.
Will current equipment be compatible with Matter standards?
unnecessary. Products need to be certified to the new standard, some of which require firmware updates. Amazon and Google, as well as device makers such as eWeLink, Ledvance, Sengled, TP-Link, Graffiti and Lifx, have announced that many devices will receive firmware updates to be compatible with the Matter standard. The tentative list includes plenty of Echo, Nest, SmartThings devices, and, of course, Alexa and Google Assistant.
In some cases, it only takes one device in the home to update the firmware, such as the Matter standard update Signify announced for its Philips Hue Bridge, which integrates existing lights into a new ecosystem. Likewise, Samsung has announced that some of its connected TVs/displays and even its refrigerators will act as Matter hubs for controlling compatible devices.
I’ve always been skeptical of smart refrigerators, but Samsung seems to have gotten on board / © Samsung
How do you feel about Matter standards? Are you waiting for a compatible product to hit the market, or are you ready for the new standard? We plan to update this guide before the standard is released, so feel free to leave a comment below and let us know what you want to know!