Matter provides a universal language for home appliances!
Matter is an open-source connectivity standard that enables seamless connectivity between smart home devices and is now available.
After years of fragmentation, has the industry finally united behind a common smart home standard?
In the promised smart home, appliances—thermostats, smart refrigerators, smart locks, smart lights—work together to manage the home with minimal disruption. The reality is a chaotic mess of systems that refuse to communicate: a bunch of digital servants cobbled together, shouting at each other in languages they can't understand, with little effect.
The lack of interoperability is one of the most serious obstacles to the development of the Internet of Things (IoT), a fact that has been recognized for a long time. A 2014 UK government report warned that competing IoT standards were a major obstacle to the industry’s growth: “If left unchecked, this could lead to monopolistic vendors developing and enforcing restrictive standards, and fragmentation would stifle device interoperability.”
This fragmentation is particularly painful when it comes to smart homes. Consumers are forced to connect proprietary systems with bridges, install various apps, and create multiple user accounts to get devices working together. Even the most tech-savvy consumers find this frustrating. Developers waste time creating similar products for each platform, while retailers are forced to maintain multiple inventories.
This approach, which severely limits device compatibility, is often referred to as the "walled garden" approach to the Internet of Things.
Lars Felber, PR director of German smart home company Eve Systems, described the domestic IoT ecosystem as a set of isolated islands: "The smart home industry today looks like a huge ocean full of small islands. You buy a lighting product in a store, but there's no available bridge in your home, so you need startup software with the lighting bridge. If you want to control it with a voice assistant, the voice assistant's cloud service may not be able to communicate with the lighting bridge's cloud service... So it's all very fragmented."
For years, the fragmentation of smart homes has left large corporations shaking their heads in despair and fueling their enthusiasm, ostensibly supporting a universal standard that would allow all smart home devices to be managed through a single control app. Standards are widely recognized for not only simplifying the user experience and reducing manufacturers' workload, but also for bringing benefits such as improved cybersecurity and energy efficiency.
Over the years, competing standards have emerged one after another. The most successful include Zigbee, Z-Wave, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. While each has its advantages, none has been suitable for every part of the smart home, nor has any has truly stood out as a universal standard. Jon Harros, Director of Certification and Testing at the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA), commented: “Innovators start developing their own products, very focused on their own solutions. Soon, they begin collaborating with one or two other companies that might have similar interests.”
"But clearly, this is happening simultaneously in many different fields. So what we end up seeing is a few very small innovations happening in the same field, and all of these are starting to grow."
Ultimately, all these competitors seemed to realize that they had to cooperate and unite around a standard under the supervision of the CSA.
“It took the market several years to realize that, as independent businesses, their businesses could only grow to this extent,” said Michelle Mindala-Freeman, CSA’s VP of Marketing. “And as these businesses naturally realized, they were able to grow around the organization’s mission. To some extent, it was around a consensus in the market’s view that IP is the universal protocol for connecting devices, not proprietary methods, surrounding the future of IP-centric technology.”
Most smart home players believe that Matter is the universal connectivity standard the industry has been waiting for.
Matter originated from the Zigbee Alliance, comprised of hundreds of companies that have used the standard since 2002. Zigbee is a method for connecting smart home devices, a mesh-based approach where each node in the network acts as a wireless router. In 2019, it launched the IP Connected Home Project, which was renamed Matter last year, while the Zigbee Alliance became the CSA. Its goal is to establish an industry-wide IoT standard, unlike in the past, where almost everyone is involved.
More than 500 companies are members of the CSA, including Amazon, Apple, Google, Samsung, Facebook, Huawei, Qualcomm, and TCL. Of these, more than 200 companies are directly involved in the standard.
Felber stated, "This isn't a North American problem, nor is it an Asian problem: 200 companies from all over the world... these large companies really want to stop this decentralization and allow consumers to buy what they want and connect easily."
The result of all this work is Matter: an IP-based open-source connectivity standard. Matter provides a unified application layer for connecting devices on top of existing IP links such as Wi-Fi, Thread, and Ethernet, without the need for dedicated converters.
Hundreds of companies have decided to base their standards on IP, a result of gradual technological advancements that have made it possible in smart home applications. Chris LaPré, CSA's Technical Director, explained: "IP implementations were too large-scale, too expensive in terms of silicon, and didn't make sense for small, connected devices. But with Moore's Law, it all seemed to be the right thing to do. It was the right thing to do, just too expensive to do. Now is the perfect time for IP to grow."
CSA aims to release the final Matter 1.0 specification, software development kit, and certification program in the fall of 2022, with the first Matter-certified devices expected to arrive around the end of this year.
The launch of Matter was highly anticipated. CSA members were enthusiastic about the additional perks such as Multi-Admin and the ability to largely bypass the cloud. This greatly simplifies control over certain devices that family members can operate, as the Matter controller can send commands directly to devices on the IP network, rather than going through the cloud.
However, Matter's overwhelming advantage lies in its potential to connect fragmented smart homes. Matter-certified products will be "plug and play," ensuring seamless communication of basic commands across different platforms.
Users will no longer be locked into a specific ecosystem. For example, users of Google Locks were previously effectively locked into the Google ecosystem. However, in the future, Amazon Alexa could act as a Matter controller to control Google Locks.
Mindala-Freeman stated, "Matter, as a unified language for the Internet of Things (IoT), will make it easier for consumers to choose and enter the market. Another challenge is the unification and simplification of development efforts. This will lead to more innovation because it frees up incremental resources that have been previously focused on IoT protocols 1, 2, 3, and 4. Developers can now think: What will be the next great user experience? What will be the next great device innovation?"
There is a near-universal consensus across the industry that Matter is the universal standard the industry has been waiting for. IET researcher David Owens stated, "I do believe Matter is the standard we've been waiting for, and its success is backed by the Big Three: Amazon, Apple, and Google. It's credible because it's comprised of the IP Connected Home project, which combines the Zigbee Alliance and other organizations. Adoption will ultimately depend on delivering compelling customer use cases… and the key to that is interoperability, security, and compatibility achieved through standardization, which Matter can help achieve."
Initially, Matter will be limited to the simplest commands. Matter 1.0 includes: light bulbs, switches, and lighting controllers; plugs and sockets; locks and garage door controllers; thermostats and other HVAC controllers; blinds and curtains; security sensors; wireless access points and bridges; and television and streaming video players.
According to Harros, the alliance members decided to move quickly toward Matter 1.0. Therefore, the first specification only includes the simplest devices: "They're all simple data packets: turn on, turn off. Cameras and other devices... have gone beyond that now, but that's what we're aiming for in the future." The next specification is expected to include vacuum cleaners and electric vehicle chargers, while more complex devices, such as AI-powered home cameras, are still some time away.
This means that manufacturers' apps will still require some special features not available in Matter. For example, users can use Matter controllers to turn lights on and off, but will still need to use a proprietary platform like Apple HomeKit to access adaptive lighting features.
CSA hopes to enhance the standard through these features in the future. Its representative explained that Matter works by finding a set of common features that its members agree can and should interoperate, and this set of features can be expanded as manufacturers contribute their "tricks" to the standard. Mindala-Freeman believes that this collaborative approach will not hinder innovation in the industry, quite the opposite.
Matter's success cannot be taken for granted. One obstacle was the inability of its automation and routines to run seamlessly across platforms; another was the issue of legacy devices. In many cases, older devices can be upgraded via hardware, such as converting HomeKit products to Matter products. However, some older products lack the hardware suitable for these over-the-air upgrades, resulting in certain generations of devices ultimately being incompatible with Matter—a serious problem when some smart home devices, such as smart light switches, are embedded in the home.
These legacy devices can be connected using bridges that are fully defined in the Matter specification, although this requires more "patching" from the user. At this point, Matter should mark the beginning of an end.
Mitch Klein, executive director and chairman of the Z-Wave Alliance, which is not a CSA, commented: “When Matter launched, there was a massive marketing push… to ensure that adoption of these products wouldn’t essentially render all existing devices obsolete or incompatible. That’s our concern. Matter won’t be successful if hundreds of millions of devices stop working.”
While Matter has gained widespread acceptance, it's not a panacea for the fragmentation of smart homes. Whether these companies are willing to lower their garden walls and collaborate with competitors to promote this new standard remains to be seen. So far, CSA members are making the right voices and taking the right actions. Mindala-Freman stated, "Matter's success lies in its members. If they don't, it will hinder their success."
