Matter - Integration: The key to the future of smart homes

Our homes might be smarter than ever, but with so many platforms, manufacturers, and ecosystems vying for our attention and hard-earned cash, it can be hard to know where to start. Matter, a new smart home connectivity standard, hopes to make things a little easier.

MAKING SMART HOME TECHNOLOGY SMARTER

We’ve all done it: found a great piece of smart home technology and purchased it without reading whether it’s compatible with the rest of our smart home ecosystems. The chances are, it’s not, or you’ll need to download another app and connect it through a third-party tool to have a chance of it working. Simply put, the smart home space is unnecessarily complex and anti-consumer - but a new standard hopes to change things. Matter, which was previously code-named CHIP (Project Connected Home over IP), has the backing of all of the major players - including Apple, Amazon, and Google - and is designed to increase interoperability between smart home devices across platforms. Should the practice come into effect, popular devices from big-name brands would work the same with your Apple hardware as it would Android devices, and vice-versa. Matter hopes to break down some of the barriers put in place by smart home manufacturers and make life easier for everyone.

Matter will use existing networking technologies to unify smart home platforms. All devices that are Matter-certified will use the same Wi-Fi, Bluetooth LE, and Thread technologies to connect to your network, and as these technologies advance, Matter will incorporate new standards and change the way it connects devices to platforms. Manufacturers who adopt Matter from day one will also benefit - their products will be immediately compatible with Apple’s HomeKit, Amazon’s Alexa, and Google’s Assistant, without them needing to support different protocols and keep on top of each.