One of the things that can frustrate someone who is using smart home devices already and have some sort of experience with it is that they do not always communicate with each other and other brands as expected, and if you are having Internet issues you may as well do it yourself because most of the smart devices nowadays have to be connected to the cloud to be able to properly work.

What is Matter?

Matter is a new connectivity standard that will allow devices from different companies’ brands to interoperate with each other by communicating using “the same language” and doing it through your home network rather than their company’s servers through the internet, which will keep your devices responding to your requests, even during internet outages. Also making your smart home response faster, secure, and more reliable when interacting with it.

Matter will not only improve your device connectivity but the standard is designed to also add a layer of protection to your privacy at home. The communication between your devices is encrypted, which means only the devices that are “talking” to each other know what information is being transmitted.

How does Matter work?

Matter uses the IP Protocol for connectivity and Bluetooth Low Energy for the initial setup. The new standard will run on Wi-Fi and Thread for network communication to ensure interoperability, this will create a mesh network between devices to pass data,  ensure reliability and increase communication range. Within a Matter network, there are border routers, which act as devices that can send and receive communications. 

One of the benefits of Matter and its enhanced security features is that the communication between devices is end-to-end encrypted, which means the border routers are not able to see inside the data packages. This will be the same within devices of the same or different manufacturers.

Every device has its own identifier, which is a certificate that includes the manufacturer, vendor, and product ID, it also has a certificate declaration (CD), which means that every device that is Matter compatible has gone through the CSA (Connectivity Standards Alliance) Matter Certification Program and has been tested and certified to work with other Matter certified products.

To add a new smart device, you would have to scan the QR code that comes with the Matter certified devices, this will start the Commissioning process, this is a way to securely add your new device to your smart home network. When you scan the QR code, your phone (or tablet, smart speaker, etc) will get the role of commissioner and will verify that this new smart device has been approved by the CSA to work with the Matter standard and validate that it is authorized to connect to the home network.

All this may sound complicated but it’s actually pretty simple for the end-user, just scan the QR code with your phone, answer a few questions to add the devices on your screen and this will add the new devices to your smart home network.

In the past, smart home devices sometimes came with some concerns for security and privacy, but Matter will introduce the highest level of IoT security and privacy on certified devices. All the validations during the setup  (Commissioning Process) will guarantee that every device in your network is actually yours.

Between your devices, you can have secured unicast communications, which means every device can talk to each other securely, also, there are secured group communications, in which one device can communicate with different devices in the same group at the same time. 

Let’s say that you want to turn off different light bulbs with one single switch, instead of the switch having to communicate individually with every light bulb to turn it off, it can talk to all of them at the same time and turn them all off at once.

Who is part of the alliance?

In 2019, big players in the smart home space announced a collaboration to create a new standard to unify the industry. These were Google, Amazon, Apple, Samsung SmartThings, and the Zigbee Alliance, among other 200 plus companies. This group was called Project Connected Home Over IP (Project Chip).

In May 2021, the Zigbee Alliance rebranded Project Chip to Matter and changed its name to Connectivity Standards Alliance.

How can you unify and improve your smart home?

The greatest impact of Matter is that it will bring integration and communication between different manufacturers, its enhanced security measures for validation and communication, and its reliability within the smart home. Because it uses Thread, your devices will be able to exchange data locally without the need of connecting with the cloud, this will come in handy for those moments where your internet connection may be out.

Border routers can be multiple devices, from smart speakers, light bulbs, and even TVs in the future, this will help expand the range of the mesh network and create redundancy within the network. 

When will Matter be available?

The pandemic created delays in the release of the new standard, even though the release of Matter was scheduled for 2021, in May of 2021 CSA announced its delay to the summer of 2022, but in March of 2022, it was delayed one more time, this time to improve stability and integrate more development platform. The new release is expected for Fall 2022.

Even though the new Matter standard will bring big changes to the smart home ecosystems, we have to wait for how the participant companies will handle their integration with other platforms and to what extent they will allow other brands to control their devices. At the end of the day, this is an amazing improvement for all of us who love tech and are excited about what the smart home industry may bring to make our life easier at home.

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