Matter launched as new Apple backed smart home communications standard

https://pages.silabs.com/index.php/email/emailWebview?md_id=14699

This is just a renaming of CHIP which made a bunch of news awhile back and I think it’s a bit disingenuous that all the Apple based press is making this seem like it’s just something Apple is doing. It has the backing of Google, Amazon, Silabs, and the Zigbee alliance (now called the Connectivity Standards Alliance) too, among others. In fact, most of the technology contributed to the project appears to come from Google and Zigbee and not Apple.

https://buildwithmatter.com/

The first implementations use WiFi and Thread (which was developed by Google and is basically Zigbee with a TCP/IP stack layered upon it if I recall correctly) as the carrier and BTLE for provisioning but CHIP/Matter itself lives at the application layer. Notice @Bruce_Osborne that all of these are local, not cloud based. It is indeed encrypted, but so is Zwave when using security.

Also, @Bruce_Osborne, the link you posted doesn’t work. Did you mean to link to Matter (formerly Project Connected Home over IP) - Silicon Labs?

1 Like

That link will work. It was from the email for that Here is most of the text.

Today, we announced our wireless solutions are available for the development of Matter end-products that support Thread, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. Silicon Labs is an early supporter of Matter, which simplifies the end-user experience and product development by providing a unified connectivity standard for a wide range of IoT applications.

Silicon Labs is proud to be one of the top code contributors, providing more than 20% of the source code for Matter. Silicon Labs’ Matter solution enhances the connected product experience across major ecosystems including Amazon Alexa, Apple HomeKit, and Google.

But you posted the relevant parts so it’s no big deal.

1 Like

Signify will also support it.

(Complete Philips Hue range to be compatible with Matter | Signify Company Website)

Is there a Tread discussing about CHIP/Thread/Matter/etc.?
Cound’t find one, but that doesn’t mean anything xD

Because I’m somewhat hyped for the idea of standarts and would love to read some discussion on the topic. The promises made were quiet good in my oppinion. (Handling the software part so hardware manufacturers could focus on hardware etc.) But I’m also someone easy to catch with some good marketing, sooooo :smiley:

1 Like

There was when CHIP was first announced but I can’t find it either.

But the links above, especially the github repo is where you’ll find the best info.

1 Like

More MATTER news…

Android will offer built-in support for Matter as well as ways to easily set up and control Matter-certified devices

As pointed out above by @rlkoshak, this is CHIP renamed. Along with this the ZigBee Alliance (who run CHIP), also renamed themselves last week or so to the Connected Standards Alliance. Nothing new - just a rebranding :slight_smile:

https://csa-iot.org/

1 Like

This seems serious.

Is anyone working on getting Openhab into the Matter ecosystem?

If giants and archenemies like Amazon, Apple and Google team up to “transform the future of connectivity” then I will be extremely cautious. Of course they all want our best, apart from that what else do they want?
Me, personally, I appreciate the independancy of each technology which can be glued together with openHAB so that on first sight I do not see any advantage of NSA technology - ups, CSA technology of course

Not that I’m aware of but the protocol and reference implementation is at the github link above. Unfortunately it’s all C++ so the reference implementation itself won’t be easy to incorporate into OH itself. And openHAB, as an open source project itself, will probably not have someone volunteer to implement it until there are enough devices that support it to make it worth while.

They have all discovered that the real money is to be made by being the hub (and the data collected by being the hub), not by creating devices. And they have discovered over the past decade that trying to differentiate their hubs from each other based on which devices are supported isn’t working. Instead of giving any one of them an advantage it is just suppressing the overall home automation market.

So they cooperate to come up with a standard they can all support so that the home automation market overall can grow. It’s true that nothing these companies do is altruistic. They have definite profit motives for doing this. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that we consumers automatically lose out.

  1. Matter is a local only protocol. It does not require cloud servers.

  2. Matter is open source (Apache 2.0). We can inspect the code and learn how the protocol can work.

  3. They don’t need to put anything nefarious into the Matter protocol. The mere existence of the protocol and the increased usability and resultant adoption of smart home technologies will drive the use of their hubs and that’s the true goal because that’s where they can collect your information.

  4. All of these big freinemies will keep each other honest to some degree. Apple isn’t going to let Google put something into the protocol that only helps Google and disadvantages Apple.

So, openHAB, as a hub, would benefit as well with the wide adoption of Matter. And that doesn’t change the independence of individual technologies. Matter is simply one more added to the list of supported technologies. However, if it’s successful, we will see in the future that a lot of the big technologies in use today will go the way of X10 and become legacy and niche, at least in the consumer market. It won’t make sense for a company like Wyze or some new upstart to create their own protocol or use one of the legacy walled garden protocols when they can instantly get Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. support by using Matter, which they can use license free (though they probably will have to pay for certification I would expect to carry the Matter logo).

9 Likes

The future of IoT device connectivity would seem to include Matter as a significant component. Should (has?) this community establish a forum focal point for both tracking it and testing it?

Sure, as soon as someone volunteers to implement it. As I said before though, I think it’s unlikely that anyone will volunteer until there are actual devices available for purchase that use the standard. And even then, there will need to be an intersection of a developer willing to write a binding who also has a need to integration of a specific device that supports it.

When a developer does volunteer, I do recommend they start a thread to centralize testing and communication with the broader community. See Google Nest Device Access Console now available for one such example.

I do not recommend someone starting a thread who is not going to lead the development of the integration. There are lots of reasons for this:

  • only the owner of the thread can update the first post with, for example, links to the latest jar file of the binding for testing
  • update installation and test procedures in the first post
  • guide the discussion in a productive direction; any thread talking about what should be done that doesn’t include the developers actually doing the development are unproductive and ultimately devolve into a flame war.
2 Likes

Good news on the Matter front. I don’t have any Echo devices, but this will hopefully speed adoption.

1 Like

And now, some unfortunate news on the Matter front.

I agree with Stacey that this isn’t going to hurt Matter in the long run. However, it does feel a bit like there are too many cooks in the kitchen.

Another delay, this time to fall 2022. They’re saying that it’s due to more companies joining up, which requires more work on the SDK. I kinda half buy that. I’d rather they get it right at launch, but it also sounds a lot like a marketing excuse.

In the end, the important thing is that it fulfills its promise of simplifying home automation.

Finally, they released Matter 1.0
Matter Arrives Bringing A More Interoperable, Simple And Secure Internet Of Things to Life - CSA-IOT

1 Like

So we can start refactoring the controller reference implementation to Java?
@chris have you looked at this?

In this project they are already translating the refrence C++ implementation to Node.js, with no native dependencies:

For example as a test you can run the Matter Node.js server, wire it to some exec command in your RaPi and discover On/Off cluster function with an Android phone that has Matter support.

1 Like