Some hope however. “Amazon and Samsung’s collaboration will allow customers to easily tap into Matter’s multi-admin feature, as well as simplify onboarding while creating a unified Thread network in the home. Customers that opt-in will be able to control their Matter devices with both Alexa and SmartThings without having to set up devices on each smart home system. By sharing Thread network credentials, customers will benefit from streamlined setup for Thread based devices and a more reliable experience through wider coverage on a single Thread network.”
That article is nine months old and there’s been no progress that we can tell
“Thread standard may create multiple networks in your smart home”
Somewhat misleading article, which I’m seeing a lot of these days.
Yes, the light strip uses Zigbee. But it does not Itself support matter, and it will not get a Matter logo.
Instead, it connects to a specific matter bridge, in this case, one of the aqara hubs with that functionality, and it is the hub that then connects to other platforms via matter. Once that matter bridge is connected to another platform, it will bring the light strip in with it.
Only… Smartthings does not yet support importing matter bridges, although it does intend to.
So: yes, Zigbee.
Yes, matter, but only when connected to its own matter bridge, and only when that matter bridge is accepted into another platform.
So for now, no to working with smartthings via matter. Although, hopefully that will change in the future.
Hub V3 firmware update scheduled for next week includes some Matter features, but no full details yet:
- Added support for 3rd party Matter Bridges
.- Fixed a driver bug that prohibited reading from some Matter manufacturer-specific clusters
Aeotec Smart Home Hub/2018/2015 Model Hub Firmware Release Notes - 0.49.08
This is a really nice list of Matter devices which distinguishes between “announced,” “beta,” “ready,” and “stopped.”
The only thing missing is a clear delineation of which hubs are also matter bridges. They just group them all together. But other than that, I really like it.
The one company I have not seen any news about in regards to Matter is Lutron. They are a member of the CSA but have not made any announcements on how or when they might support it.
Yeah, no announcements I’ve seen either. Most of their devices are professionally installed so it’s less of an issue for them and of course they’re not competing with the very low price no label stuff anyway. For now they seem content that having a good Amazon Alexa integration and a good HomeKit integration is enough to satisfy their installer customers, as well as many of their DIY customers.
Lutron has a long history of never pre-announcing anything: the first official announcement is almost always when the device is available to purchase or the feature is ready to use.
Although I am happy Lutron is part of CSA, their RF is not 2.4 GHz? Why would they be compelled?
However, the white paper does mention “In 2019, backed by over 25 years of wireless lighting experience, we introduced Clear Connect Type X as the first native 2.4GHz Clear Connect product from Lutron.”
The matter standard doesn’t care what frequency the device uses. But it does have to be IPV6 addressable, which the Lutron proprietary frequency is not. However, that shouldn’t make any difference: what they would need to do is update their SmartBridge device to become a matter bridge (or put out a new model), which is what Hue is doing. I’m not saying it’s easy, but it should be doable if they choose to do that.
I have the new Leviton outdoor plug and a wireless companion switch. But unfortunately need to find an application for it since we don’t have any “dumb” lighting outside. Might hit up a neighbor this weekend.
Start planning your Halloween projects…
True! That would be a good application for an outdoor wifi plug, but I probably wouldn’t use the companion remote in that case.
Indeed, I understand your point. Matter protocol, itself, does not really care about the RF band. However, the Caseta (at least what most household people use, I would think, is using the old 433 MHz. This means that either a bridge will need to be implemented, as you mention, for the matter protocol. But my issue is: will things like Caseta blinds already designed in 433 MHz be ever upgraded? I think probably not. It would be through a bridge. “I’m not saying it’s easy, but it should be doable if they choose to do that.” - yes, but what is the real incentive for them? Reading the white paper, I see that they own many RF standards from their acquisitions. Will they “make the move” ? Time will tell. But for sure, the fact they are in the CSA means that would be considering bridges. Since they invented Clear Connect Type X as their first native 2.4GHz, it is because they intended on having Thread devices and play that game and future iterations of devices would natively ‘speak’ matter as a Thread Router (for example)?
Lutron uses a proprietary frequency, ClearConnect. 434, not 433. Nothing “old” about it— it’s one of the most efficient messaging protocols in home automation.
As far as a bridge, they already have multiple bridge models. That’s how the integration with smartthings works, it’s how the integration with Apple HomeKit works, and how the integration with Alexa works.
They shouldn’t need to change anything at all in the way the existing products work, whether they are window coverings, or lighting. All that needs to change is the bridge to act as a Matter Controller… The main question is whether the existing bridge models have sufficient memory to handle the specifics of the matter protocol.
odd headline. It supports Matter just like the SB Curtain 1 and 2 do, which is via the Hub 2 Matter bridge.
But other than that, it is a fantastic upgrade to their Curtain product. I have one that i’m working on a video for as we speak.