Matter - smart home connectivity standard (formerly Project CHIP)

Devices & Integrations
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I removed all Z-Wave devices from my home a few years back. I replaced all of my in-wall switches with Lutron Caseta switches, dimmers, fan controllers, and Pico remotes. This was by far the best home automation decision I have ever made, as everything Lutron “just works.”

A little while later, I replaced all of my GE Link, Cree Connected, and Sengled smart bulbs with a genuine Philips Hue hub + bulbs. Again, it “just works”.

All of my off the shelf sensors are Zigbee devices, which have been reliable and fast.

Together, Lutron and Philips Hue handle all lighting requirements. Both work with Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Apple HomeKit, Logitech Harmony Hub, Hubitat, SmartThings, Home Assistant, Node-RED, and many other systems. I have enjoyed the highest level of reliability, performance, and compatibility from my home automation system since removing Z-Wave from the equation. YMMV, of course.

While I don’t see Z-Wave disappearing anytime soon, I do not believe it will be a growth segment of the market. Innovelli’s Zigbee strategy makes sense to me, as long as their new hardware platform can also be used for Thread/Matter. :wink:

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That’s kinda the odd part. Zigbee isn’t part of Matter, Thread is. Zigbee devices require a bridge (like hue is doing). But there’s no zigbee to matter bridge that is open to any brand of zigbee device, they are brand locked. They did say their new Zigbee switches could be firmware flashed (via cable, no OTA) if they were to support Thread in the future.

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Neither are Thread or WiFi in that sense. Matter is at a higher level layer, “the application layer.” Thread, WiFi, and Zigbee are all in the “networking layer”. Zigbee devices can be matter compliant, but they would have to have an IP address. That’s where the hub comes in in this context.

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And from the original proposal (when matter was still called CHIP)

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Remember that one of the very first device manufacturers to announce matter support was Philips hue, and their bulbs run Zigbee. Matter will be handled in the hue bridge, with the matter messages being sent over Wi-Fi. But you will be able to buy a Zigbee device with a matter logo, it’s just that it will require the hub.

Ditto for the Aqara Zigbee devices. Many of them are going to work with matter, but they will do so through their own hub.

Just being a thread device won’t guarantee matter compatibility, just as being a Wi-Fi device won’t. The manufacturer has to have specifically built-in compatibility with the matter standard at the application layer level.

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Good points, but there’s still no Zigbee hub that will function as a Matter bridge for ANY brand. Hue will only work for Hue device, Aqara for Aqara, etc.

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Espressif has the design for a chip that will function as a matter bridge for Zigbee devices, but I don’t know of any manufacturer who has adopted it yet.

The hangup is in steps two and three as defined in that article, which is considered “outside the scope“ of matter and therefore left up to the manufacturer. This tends to lead to in brand solutions.

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That’s about as good as the z-wave alliance saying there is a z-wave bridge to Matter: all theory until a brand actually implements it :slightly_smiling_face: I was really hoping SmartThings hub would bridge both, but alas that isn’t going to be the case :cry:

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Me too! :disappointed_relieved:

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BTW, Xfinity has announced that its new Wi-Fi router, the 6E model, Will be matter compliant and act as a zigbee hub. but no technical details yet, so no way of knowing if it will be a Matter bridge, or just one way like the SmartThings hub. Also no indication of whether it will work for all Zigbee 3.0 devices in the Matter device classes or just a limited set. Right now it’s all just buzz words. But it is due to be released in the next month or two, so it will be an interesting one to watch.

Zigbee and Matter compatible, acting as a central connector for IoT and home automation devices like smart lights, plugs and locks, and more.

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Doesn’t their current alarm system use brand-locked Zigbee devices?

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It’s the other way around. It works with a number of standard Zigbee devices which would also work with smartthings, but it has limited the list of fingerprints that it will accept. So it’s the coordinator which is locked, not a proprietary profile (as in control4).

For example, it works with the following lock where the exact same model would work with smartthings:

https://shopyalehome.com/collections/xfinity/products/yale-assure-lock-touchscreen-with-zigbee?variant=39341912457348

There are also some Jasco and some Leviton models which are compatible.

Note that this is for the Xfinity security system. They have a separate home automation system, and that one works with a different set of devices. So it can get pretty confusing to tease it all out. :thinking:

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More than 16 platforms, including OS platforms like Linux, Darwin, Android, Tizen, and Zephyr

Do any appliances besides the Family Hub Refrigerator use Tizen? I know a lot of the Samsung televisions do. I’m just guessing (pure guess) that this means the Tizen-based devices are the most likely to function as a Matter hub. (Not a Matter “bridge,” which is different functionality.)

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How does a matter hub differ from a matter controller? Samsung previously announced support for being a Matter controller so does this hint their plans might change?

Here’s the official CSA press release btw:

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Pretty sure Matter Hub and Matter Controller are the same thing. Maybe technically it’s a hub that acts as a matter controller?

Anyway, the one that’s different is a “matter bridge“ since that one can expose devices connected to it to other brand’s matter-compliant apps.

So a matter controller is one way in and a matter Bridge is two ways, both incoming and outgoing.

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I believe a “controller” in this context is a normal device that can also communicate directly to another device in a very limited manner without the need of a full hub. In function, it would be similar to what Z-wave associations already provide (for example: a switch directly controls a bulb on/off). It is very limited in scope and does not have internet access.

A “hub” is what we traditionally consider to be SmartThings: a fully functional internet gateway.

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Delays are typical of a “designed by committee” platform. However, I worry that another delay may indicate disagreement over special features that could protect existing product ecosystems for big players. That would be disappointing.

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Interesting. That might well be; they’ve changed the Matter specifications a couple of times as it’s been evolving, and I haven’t dug deep into it for a while.

Since I was a network engineer before I ever started playing around with smartthings, to me a hub has a very specific meaning for home automation: it’s what establishes a local network. Under IEEE specifications, that doesn’t have to have anything to do with the Internet, necessarily. Lots of hubs exist that don’t have Internet connections.

In a “ network engineering looks at home automation” context, you get to the Internet with a “bridge” or “gateway.”

But there are a lot of different definitions in a lot of protocols using the same terms in different ways. (See, for example, the Zigbee definition of “router.“)

I guess we’ll find out what the matter terminology is once the specification is complete. :sunglasses:

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This is me trying to reason it out and decided to write it out here.

CSA has defined, at least in a webinar that reviews Matter’s Network Topology, a Matter controller as:

A Matter Controller is an entity that administers and controls other Matter devices

A Matter Controller can be built into many types of products: embedded in a smart speaker, a security panel, a smart home hub / display, or mobile operating systems & apps

A Matter Controller can belong to a smart home ecosystem, it can be a stand-alone app. It is really flexible for your 1st or 100th device.

Matter Bridges can be built into a number of devices, like Matter Controllers or smart home hubs

Example: a Matter Controller connects to a Wi-Fi router

Assuming Wi-Fi & Thread for the moment:

In terms I think I understand: any device or software with 1) access to a bit of compute power and storage + 2) access to Matter-compatible wireless radios + 3) accepts user input can, after local BLE commissioning, become a Matter Controller and start transmitting commands to Matter devices (that have already been commissioned on the local Matter-compatible Wi-Fi and Thread networks).

Matter piggybacks on our existing Wi-Fi and Thread networks. Thus, existing Wi-Fi routers and / or Thread border routers become the hubs of the local Matter network, re-transmitting IP messages from, say, one Matter Controller to all the other Matter Controllers. Matter devices are then just any connected Wi-Fi or Thread device that can understand IP messages from Matter Controllers or Matter devices.

In practice, Matter controllers are anything that can accept user input; they turn that user input into a command that travels on a Matter IP-compatible network, e.g., Wi-Fi or Thread.

So BLE commissioning adds new devices to the authoritative, authenticated list of Matter devices on This Local Matter Network. So each Matter controller needs to store this list? But where? Is there enough memory to store all our Matter devices configurations on every Matter controller?

I assume this duplication of the authoritative list does improve resiliency + faster commands.

It would tie into Matter’s key development goal of being “federated”:

Federated: No single entity serves as a throttle or a single-point-of-failure for root of trust

Will there be classes of Matter Controllers? Powered vs not? Or perhaps an upper limit per network? I’m curious how the overhead is managed of always keeping all information federated between many Matter controllers, including some that will be battery powered.

For the whole “mostly anything can be a Matter controller” bit to work, that’s presumably where multi-admin was necessary.

//

I’m trying to think of a good analogy: kind of like how you can broadcast a short audio recording from a Google Home speaker to all the other speakers? Any speaker can send an audio broadcast and every speaker is aware of every other speaker it must broadcast to.

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I would look at this a little differently (but again, I was a network engineer before Matter ever started, so my perspective may be too narrow)…

Not a “hub” as I use the term. They don’t establish a local network.

  1. I think the paradigm they’re using is the one that zigbee created for the now abandoned Zigbee Light Link (ZLL) profile. There was no hub. No device kept an authenticated list of the kind you’ve described. But there WERE “controllers” that sound to me a lot like Matter “controllers.” Think of the kits Philips used to sell of one Hue battery powered dimmer switch and one Hue light bulb. You could add up to ten total light bulbs to the dimmer switch: no hub needed.

https://www.amazon.com/Philips-Hue-Installation-Free-Exclusive-Assistant/dp/B016AEHU70

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And here’s the ZLL spec with the “controller” definition:

Architecturally, I think that’s what Matter is proposing.

Also note that ZLL had “controller bridges” similar to how I described “bridges “in a previous post – – as devices that add Internet access.

Matter adopted quite a bit of zigbee‘s application layer messaging structure, I think they may have picked up the “controller” and “bridge” terminology as well, but I don’t know for sure.

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