I assume this is a Discourse issue, so will let ST off the hook for it.
I’ve heard two different things from two different journalists. One said you will have to add each Matter device one at a time to each ecosystem (
). Another said there will be a multiple selection list where you choose which Matter device(s) you want to add to the ecosystem (
). Which leads me to believe it may be up to the manufacturer’s how they implement the device adding flow (
).
I suspect it’s the way ST is implementing Discourse, since I haven’t seen the problem on other boards that use the same software. But it’s a third-party product, ST doesn’t design anything. They just set it up. And my guess is it isn’t anybody’s real job because it’s just used for this forum.
Anyway, off-topic here. Here’s the on topic thread:
That is definitely one of the most useless articles I’ve read lately.
That is quite frustrating. This standard should solve all the mess what the previous ones left behind, but meanwhile it looks like anybody can interpret it differently as they want.
(The following is a joke.)
What the major partners contributed to Matter
Amazon: we brought everyone together.
CSA/Zigbee: we provided the messaging architecture.
Apple: We contributed the bridging architecture and the privacy models.
Google: We picked the name.
StaceyonIot pointed out a really interesting interview with George Yianni from Phillips hue about their plans for matter.
Bottom line: their integration will be at the bridge level. They think there are a lot of advantages to that for both the company and their customers.
Both IKEA and Aqara are doing pretty much the same thing for pretty much the same reason.
So far it’s the companies that were making Bluetooth devices, such as Eve, that are switching the individual devices over to Thread, and that makes sense to me.
Aqara also plans to release Thread devices, though. Could lead to some confusion for their product selection…
Good point, although it’s not clear to me that their individual Thread sensors, for example, will have Matter support without their own hub.
IKEA is going to have new Thread devices, for example, and their new hub is going to be a Thread border router, but it’s not clear that you can add devices of other brands.
Both Aqara and IKEA will have Thread sensors, but even though both hubs support Matter, that doesn’t necessarily mean you can add their Thread sensors to the OTHER brand’s hub.
What it does mean is that it should work like the Hue bridge: if you have both hubs, it should be easy to add your Aqara Matter-compatible hub to your IKEA Dirigera app and bring in the aqara sensors that way.
We will see.
Isn’t that exactly the opposite what Matter is all about? At least how I have expected it to be. Everything works together. If your assumption happens to be correct then those who have ST have to buy ST compatible devices or Home Kit users have to buy their own, although all supports Matter. To me that seems a bit topsy-turvy.
It’s super easy for devices that don’t require a hub. So WiFi devices with the Matter logo will work with any app or voice assistant with the Matter logo. Easy setup, easy integration.
When there’s a hub required it’s more complicated. If the Matter logo is limited to the hub, which is my hope, AND the logo is only given for two way integration, which is my hope, it should be pretty easy to understand. When end device X is used with its own hub which has the Matter logo, that hub can bring it into other Matter supporting apps. This will hopefully mean, for example, that IKEA’s new Dirigera hub can bring most of its attached devices simply and easily into the Apple Home app, Alexa, Google Assistant, and the SmartThings app, all at the same time, simply and easily. No unique integrations required. This would be a huge improvement over the current situation, and I think most consumers will be able to understand it. It will work just like the Philips hue bridge works now.
The same would be true for the Aqara hub.
This is also exactly how it works now for HomeKit. Yes, you need the hub to get the sensors. But setup is super easy and there’s no custom integration. It “just works.”
If you don’t want to have to buy a hub for each brand, then you stick to Wi-Fi devices.
So, matter logo on the end device, it doesn’t need a hub, it works with any app that has the matter logo.
No matter logo on the end device but it works with a hub that has the matter logo, then you add that hub to any app that has the matter logo and it will bring in most of its devices. But maybe not all.
SmartThings is putting itself in a particularly annoying category, as far as I’m concerned, in that the smartthings app can bring in other hubs, but the smartthings hub will not integrate with other apps. So the app is going to be matter compliant, and the hub is going to be able to connect directly to matter Wi-Fi devices, but the smartthings hub will not expose its connected devices to other matter apps.
I honestly don’t know if that means smartthings hub gets to display the matter logo or if it will be that it works with the smartthings app which has the matter logo. Maybe @Automated_House knows. But, yes, there will definitely be customer confusion and friction. 
If you use the IKEA hub or the aqara hub or the Philips hue bridge, you can add those hubs to Apple’s HomeKit app, and then almost all the devices will show up in the apple Home app or the new IKEA app. But if you use the smartthings hub, those devices are not going to show up in the Apple home app even though both Apple and smartthings “support“ matter. Because smartthings has decided to only have one way matter support: it can bring things in, but not send things out.
I don’t know how much difference that’s going to make to customers or not.
The huge advantage for Apple HomeKit users is going to be that there will suddenly be literally hundreds of inexpensive devices available to use in their app. All the Wi-Fi ones that have the Matter logo will just show up. The ones that require a hub will need that hub, but then they will just show up. It’s going to feel like Christmas. 
Smartthings customers already have integration possibilities with hundreds of cheap devices, so The advantage isn’t going to be as obvious to them. Integration should be a little smoother coming into smartthings, which is good. Cheap WiFi Devices with the matter logo should work just fine in the smartthings app, which makes shopping easier than it is now. Some devices which used to need a cloud integration might be able to work locally, that’s not clear yet, but I don’t know if most users even understand that issue. and devices connected to a smartthings hub are not going to instantly show up in HomeKit or the new IKEA app. 
So I do think it’s better than it used to be, but it’s not “everything works with everything“ The way some journalists have written about it.
You make good points. I have high hopes but at the same time I’m ready get disappointed big time.
Today, you will need an iPhone or iPad to set up and control the Eve Motion and a HomePod or Apple TV (fourth gen or newer) to control it from outside your home. When Matter arrives, it will work with other ecosystems but will require a Thread border router for communication outside the home.
Some border routers are being upgraded to Thread 1.3.0, which finally seems to force a single connected, meshed Thread network between any manufacturers’ devices.
Instead of an Apple Thread network, a Nanoleaf Thread network, etc.
Should hopefully make meshing & range much less troublesome & improve cooperability, and maybe one day assuage Signify’s concerns.
I kept forgetting how, compared to WiFi, Zigbee, and Z-Wave, Thread is so incredibly tiny in market share.
//
Hopefully, Thread 1.3.0 will means bundled Thread border routers into future WiFi routers which seem like clearest & most reliable (and likely highest market penetration).
Amazon and Apple are also going to put Thread Border Routers into some Echo models and the Apple HomePod Mini, which should also help market penetration for Matter and reduce confusion for their customers.
It’s SmartThings customers who are most likely to get confused at first. They could have a Samsung Smart television, the SmartThings app that “supports Matter,” then buy a Thread motion sensor with the Matter logo like Eve’s but have no way to add it to their account. 
The MATTER/CSA membership amounts don’t look reasonable. Large enterprises pay just 20 thousand dollar and a small company needs to pay 7000 annually . SMB are again hit the most. OFcourse, a device alrready has costs certification such as CE and FCC , but this keep adding to the bill of innovation for a device. Suppose you have an BLE, USB enables WIFI device, it add to the cost of a BLE, MAC ID and a USB device ID. There should be some kind of difference in payment depending on the revenue or headcount of companies.
Yeah, the membership $$$$ cost does seem tough-ish for SMBs, at least from what I see.
But I guess the angle is “pay $7k to 20k / year for docs, industry access, and far simpler interoperability” than “hire two more engineers to write your HomeKit code, your SmartThings drivers, etc”. The former would be notably cheaper, no?
I do appreciate CSA’s management of a genuine industry standard has costs, e.g., hiring top engineering + management talent to herd trillion-dollar tech heavy-weights into a single direction, the always-on / high-reliability DCL databases, creation of certification tests + events, the marketing + consumer education so ordinary people “get” the standard, etc.
$7k / annual costs: what do you get with membership beyond access to the internal spec?
//
Based on % would be more egalitarian, agreed, though perhaps with a cap. Without a cap, maybe then the big giants would then question, “So how much money does CSA need to operate? 0.01% is already millions / year in fees to CSA.”
I hop Matter brings “cheaper” entry costs (e.g., perhaps total cost over time?), but I’ve not seen the actual agreements.
Still, I think Nabu Casa (e.g., Home Assistant’s “business” side) seemed OK to pay the annual fee and they seem to be diving very heavily into Matter without hestation.
//
In other news, Ayla joined Matter last week. I never heard of Ayla, but they are apparently the IoT provider for Kenmore, Hunter Fan, Owlet, Schneider, and Fujitsu (among others).
Since its founding in 2010, Ayla has been the IoT platform behind connected products from leading consumer brands, including SharkNinja, Owlet, Canadian Tire, Kenmore, Hunter Fan, Fujitsu and Schneider Electric. These brands leverage Ayla’s smart home and IoT experience to remain ahead of the market with competitive, connected solutions.
//
In other-other news, Espressif has launched its updated ESP32 line-up with Matter support—I think many, many, many OEMs (Ayla included, funnily enough) use Espressif’s hardware, so this is positive for the next year or so.
A quick demo video from their YouTube page:
Apologies for the double-post, but thought this deserved its own space. Silicon Labs has confirmed “many” vendors, including themselves, will offer ZigBee and Z-Wave to Matter Bridges:
Many IoT companies, including Silicon Labs, will be introducing bridging products that will support both existing and deployed Zigbee/Z-Wave products, in addition to the newer Matter products.
The Unify-Matter bridge application, which is part of Unify SDK, is based on the Matter Bridge Application software from CSA. The application receives the ZCL commands on the Matter protocol interface and translates to Unify Controller Language data model and publishes to an MQTT interface.
From this latest blog post (20 July 2022):
No dates, timelines, hardware, or other helpful information was shared so we may be looking at 2023 and beyond, I imagine, as Matter should just be “around the corner”. I never found any footage / articles of first-hand testing of Silicon Labs’ claimed Z-Wave to Matter bridge at CES 2022.
If SmartThings, a major Z-Wave hub at least in the U.S., has shared its current ST Hub (V3) won’t support Z-Wave bridging, whose hardware will? And Samsung’s confirmation of “one-way” Matter usage—at least with current hardware—-has also felt uncomfortable for someone like me pining for a more open, compatible, and reliable smart home.
Maybe ThinkA? They have the first, and I think only, Z wave to HomeKit bridge that is officially certified by both, and as far as I can tell, once you can do HomeKit doing matter should be pretty easy. And they don’t currently do Z-wave locks because of HomeKit restrictions: they might be able to use matter for that, which should be appealing to them.
At €429 This is a very expensive hub relative to smartthings and IKEA, but seems to be good engineering. Not yet available in North America, they still have to go through FCC certification.
