Hands on With Matter

An Early Look at loT Devices Supporting the Newest loT Wireless Communications Protocol

- Jay Basen

The term “smart home protocol” refers to the communication standard or language that different devices in a smart home use to communicate with each other and with the central processor or hub that manages the smart home system.

There are many different smart home protocols available, including Zigbee, Z-Wave, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and Thread. Each protocol has its own strengths and weaknesses, and different smart home devices may be designed to use different protocols.

The problem has been that when choosing smart home devices, you’ve had to consider which protocols they use and whether they are compatible with the other devices in your smart home. Some smart home hubs or controllers support multiple protocols, while others only support one or a few.

Matter, the newest protocol for IoT wireless communications, promises to be a unifying standard that will allow all IoT devices to work together. If you think that Matter will just be another competing standard that confuses consumers and complicates smart homes, you are probably wrong.

First, and foremost, you have to look at the companies behind Matter. The Matter consortium includes Amazon, Apple, Google, Samsung SmartThings, and many other companies. These companies have recognized that it is in their best interest to have IoT devices that are compatible with all of their platforms. Then they can differentiate themselves among competitors by building the best possible platform, while only having to build IoT devices for a single protocol specification.