Matter - smart home connectivity standard (formerly Project CHIP)

Devices & Integrations
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Aqara may be the first major hub manufacturer (or the only, as far as I can tell) to officially support Matter bridges, with this video confirming it will expose its Zigbee devices to other Matter controllers:

Zigbee (Bridge) <-> Thread + Wi-Fi (Matter) <-> Bluetooth (Provisioning)
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Agreed. I should’ve noted Mr. Tekippe’s response was soon after Kevin, the ASSA ABLOY representative, had discussed the official Matter specification for bridging to either Z-Wave or Zigbee.

“While it does, the other technologies–like you said Z-Wave, Zigbee, Thread–they’re not going to go away. They’re not going to be abandoned or left out there on the sidewalk. We’ll continue to support them: if you’re using Z-Wave in the Pro channel now, continue to do so if that feels right for you. And, as Michelle said: that’s the key thing. Matter is not trying to leave them behind: there’s a bridge specification. If you choose, you’ll be able to have those products in the future, through a Matter-to-Zigbee or Z-Wave Bridge, continue to work. So there’s no goal here for Matter to abandon existing ecosystems or leave those types of things behind. So, it’ll take time and while it does, manufacturers such as ASSA ABLOY will be loyal to our customers, we’ll continue to support those technologies, while we evolve Matter, and help you with your future products.”

Though, you wouldn’t need a bridge for Z-Wave / Zigbee products to continue work, e.g., Samsung’s presumed angle currently by enabling two active “devices” in its Hubs: a “legacy” hub and a Matter controller.

You’re right that Samsung hasn’t stated they’ll be adding any bridges. Yet at least one person at SmartThings has noted the importance of bridging (in an official SmartThings panel discussion FWIW), so a bit of either mixed signalling or Samsung themselves don’t know what they’ll do. That is, I don’t put it past Samsung to end up throwing in the towel for bridges permanently, but it’s a slight glimmer of hope they won’t try ST-only lock-in or some convoluted a-SmartThings-bridge-yet-annoyingly-non-Matter.

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Funnily enough, I’d actually initially highlighted that section because “Thread integration” had also perked my ears, but I wasn’t sure what Samsung had initially promised before, either, haha.

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123

Good technical article about what a Matter bridge will be:

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124

Maybe Matter is really “Skynet” LOL :rofl:

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Seeing how Matter evolves and the plans to build the video/audio streaming into the standard as well, I am curious how this will end up after the sh!tshow what Sonos and Google pulled recently through a court ruling and ongoing lawsuits.

When will a company axe the standard with a patent claim?

Here I mean the group volume control and including devices that should be part of it.

Especially that Sonos is not a Matter participant:

https://buildwithmatter.com/

But they are part of the Connectivity Standard Alliance. (it is hard to find it…)

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It depends how you define “major,” but I think Phillips hue was the first. Their bridge will expose Hue brand Zigbee devices connected to it to other matter-compatible apps.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that both Hue and aqara already do exactly the same thing for HomeKit. They are very similar architectures in this regard.

It will be interesting to see what Lutron and Lightwave RF do.

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127

Hue was always playing nice with other ecosystems. They do share everything. Even the new zigbee switch modules they share press events through their local API.

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128

Somebody asked for an example of a Wi-Fi device which sometimes uses a cloud and sometimes does not.

Meross has an official cloud to cloud integration with smartthings, but runs locally without a cloud when used with Apple HomeKit. (I just verified that again this morning.) The local Wi-Fi has to be operating, but the HomeKit integration does not need an active Internet connection.

My expectation is that Meross will implement matter without a cloud requirement, but I have no idea what will happen to the smartthings integration then.

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129

Ecobee thermostats (at least newer ones that support HomeKit), the Philips Hue bridge, and the Lutron Caseta SmartBridge all also support both local network connectivity (e.g. HomeKit) as well as remote cloud capabilities/integrations.

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130

I don’t know about HomeKit support for any of these, but LIFX and Shelly has local control as well.

TP-Link’s Tapo products has full local control too.

The Tapo and the LIFX apps are controlling the devices on the local network, if they both connected there.

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131

Interestingly, Matter’s new website is up and CSA has merged the CSA ↔ Matter members list. There’s now no longer a separate Matter list. So now, Sonos is listed as a member now, heh, even when the list is linked from the Matter pages.

And, my heart skipped a beat when I couldn’t find the SmartThings logo on the list any more. Turns out, SmartThings’ text logo is still there, just they didn’t add their blue five-circles-encircling-another-circle logo. :joy:

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Matter, like all other tech, should have already been through an IP law review, no? For the speaker / volume control, I imagine there are other methods to achieve similar functionality or CSA just pays the needed royalties to / enters in a license agreement with Sonos. From my first look, I don’t think Sonos is living off their patents; their speakers + systems account for 94% of their revenue.

But I’m no lawyer, so I’ll leave this up to CSA to figure out. That’s one benefit: instead of a “meeting of equals” or “big company with small company”, CSA oversees the standard and notes they’re a neutral third-party (e.g., Apple gives a permissive license to only CSA and then doesn’t need to give it to Google or Amazon). And, as you note, the Matter cohort is enormous, really across the entire technology industry: it’s an ungodly number of patents that CSA can license.

To that point, CSA claims they have notable experience in developing standards (from an interview last week with the CEO of CSA), so I’d hope this aspect is nailed down. Ya never know, though: likely a lot of confidential agreements (until it comes to raining down blows in Court). For all we know, Z-Wave could get hit with the patent hammer next week…let’s hope not.

The interview above (and a few others) also responds, IIRC, to that: how do you get these companies to work together without someone bailing? Most answers revolve around nobody likes the interoperability problem from the tech side or the business / market side. The big ones all hit a ceiling in sales, below their expectations, and they realised interoperability & uncertainty was the elephant in the room.

Maybe in that interview (can’t remember now), but it had some backstory on Matter and how the idea got developed.

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Ah, right, I forgot about the Philips Hue bridge, @JDRoberts! That is a great reminder. That was a real light at the end of the tunnel moment for me about Matter.

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With the new Matter site, we’re inching towards more concrete details soon, I’d hope. A lot of the Matter text is copied from the earlier site and mostly everything juicy (e.g., certification) is still only Zigbee or dotdot.

They do reiterate local connectivity on the homepage, though.

Reliability

Consistent and responsive local connectivity.

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@Automated_House I’m not sure if you were also trying to get in touch, but SmartThings does seem particularly quiet on Z-Wave, from TechHive’s repeated emails:

The company has for the past month, however, refused to answer our repeated questions—during a live press forum as well as in emails to multiple contacts—about continued Z-Wave support.

But newcomers to the smart home scene who set about building their smart home around SmartThings will be in for a rude surprise when [ikjadoon: if or when?] they discover a whole host of erstwhile SmartThings-compatible devices don’t work with the SmartThings hub in their Samsung TV or Samsung smart appliance.

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132

Yeah, this could get confusing. The app is decent about only showing brands that work with a hub or without depending on your environment, and I know the device API has a specific field for compatible ST hubs, so in theory the app will hide z-wave brands/devices for the new TV and fridge hubs with a zigbee dongle. But that won’t help when looking at a z-wave product on Amazon, Best Buy, in a store, etc. that says “SmartThings compatible” without the added details of only V2, V3 and Aeotec hubs being supported.

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133

Flicking through the API docs today, I happened upon a device type I don’t remember seeing before …

matter
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135

That’s good news, if not quite as good as some people were hoping for. And as the article says, I think this is the first lock that’s been announced with Matter compatibility. :sunglasses:

First the good news.

Many Yale smart lock models have the radio in a removable module. The modules themselves are in different shapes and sizes depending on the exact lock model, but all the ones for one lock model look the same and you can convert, say, a lock from zwave to Zigbee just by swapping out the radio module.

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Yale is now announcing that they will have a new module for some models that will work with Matter. You will have to purchase that (no price announced yet) and swap it out for your existing module, but then your Yale lock will be a Matter lock. My guess is using Thread, although I didn’t see that announced. At that point it will only work with your original system if that system supports Matter, and it’s likely it will be treated as a brand new device, so you’d have to redo any routines.

The other bad news:

Unfortunately, Assa Abloy currently has no Matter backward compatibility plans for August-branded locks.

Again, I didn’t see specifics, but I’m guessing that only applies to the round August retrofit locks, since those don’t have a replaceable radio module. I’d hope the “Yale by August” models which do have a replaceable module will be offered a Matter option, but there may be other issues that prevent that as well. We will see. :thinking:

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136

It is really about selling another piece of hardware then.

The Yale Linus/August smart locks, the recent ones have Wifi and Bluetooth, they could go on a way to change the firmware of the Gateway for Bluetooth locks (as it being a Wifi devices) to be Matter compatible. Or change the firmware of the Wifi locks just to be Matter compatible, as they are already HomeKit compatible.

But none of these involves extra income for Yale. So I really doubt that it would happen.

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137

I re-found the article on Matter’s beginnings.

Lots of interesting little details, like Amazon came in first; Apple and Google came in shortly after. Major motivations were their ceilings and inability to conquer the market alone (a push) and product roadmaps aligning with Matter (a pull).

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138

Yah, I was one of the suckers who bought the SmartThings Nvidia Shield dongle many years ago. It was a hub (both radios) that used Android TV for onboard logic. The Android TV app and user workflow were painfully incomplete to the point of being unusable, and was never improved until finally being euthanized in 2020. I suspect the installed user base for this hub was near zero with no backend improvements ever made. However that didn’t stop Samsung from marketing it to unsuspecting customers for literally years.

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139

Some choice quotes:

Nearly all Amazon Echo devices will let you set up and control Matter, too. Apple’s HomePod Mini and second-generation Apple TV 4K will be able to act as Matter hubs, as will Samsung’s SmartThings Hub v3. [ikjadoon: huh, did WSJ absent-mindedly write “v3” or is Matter not coming to v2 / other hubs?]

Initially, Matter will run in door locks; sensors for motion, air quality and more; thermostats; lighting; garage-door openers; blinds and shades; smart plugs; and smart TVs. More complex smart-home products, such as security cameras, robot vacuums and appliances, won’t be supported at launch.

“We know we’re competing with a light switch,” said Samantha Fein, vice president of business development and marketing at Samsung’s SmartThings. “So if it’s not as easy as that, we’re not going to get anywhere.”

Quitting the Cloud

Google and Amazon’s home devices regularly communicate with the cloud, while Apple’s HomeKit is designed to work without as much internet dependence. Smart-home commands stay inside your home, which can make responses faster and more private. Matter takes a similar approach to HomeKit. If there’s an internet outage, your Matter-enabled products could still work, much like how your Wi-Fi printer still operates when your broadband is down.

“All smart-home accessories will have the same level of security, privacy and ease of use that Apple customers enjoy today with HomeKit accessories,” Apple spokeswoman Jacqueline Roy said.

In the past, Eve Systems GmbH didn’t link its smart plugs and sensors with Google and Amazon because they depend on the cloud, said Tim Both, Eve’s senior brand and product manager. Eve didn’t want to be responsible for user data. With Matter, the system’s data can stay inside your home, even if you use Google or Amazon’s platforms.

Amazon and others will still use the cloud for some things. Older Alexa-enabled smart speakers can’t process commands without it, said Chris DeCenzo, a principal engineer at Amazon working on smart home and Alexa devices, adding that the cloud is “a critical component of infrastructure for many, many smart-home devices and services today.”

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I was recently reviewing Inovelli’s products and noticed a key post by the founder & CEO, Eric H, last month. One major reason Inovelli is splitting its Z-Wave vs Zigbee/Matter products was the quite weak relative growth rate of Z-Wave.

I wonder what this means for that repeatedly-promised, never-detailed Z-Wave to Matter bridge. I’d love to see Z-Wave still kept around via those USB Z-Wave sticks. These are global numbers, FWIW.

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Z-Wave in 2023 is estimated to have 50% lower revenue than Zigbee in 2012 and over 8x lower when compared in the same year (2023 vs 2023).

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141

Zigbee has been more widely deployed than zwave in every industry report I’ve seen in the last 10 years (and I’ve seen a lot).

So I’m not sure where the idea came from that it’s more popular. :thinking:

Outside of Asia, it has been more popular in two narrow categories: light switches and locks for DIY projects. As I’ve mentioned before, my own guess on that is because of the Wi-Fi interference issue. But professional installers have the tools to get around it. And Zigbee has definitely been more popular for smart bulbs and sensors.

3 of the most popular mass market devices: the Philips hue bridge, the Echo devices with a smart home hub inside, and the ikea tradfri gateway all use Zigbee, not zwave. That’s literally millions of devices.

I’ll see if I can find a report that’s publicly available.

Ok, here’s one that’s publicly available. It shows that in 2014 Zigbee had five times as many installed devices as zwave, and with the addition of the three brands I mentioned above, it’s likely that their percentage has gone even higher.

http://edge.alluremedia.com.au/uploads/bi-research/2017/07/the-iot-networks-report.pdf

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