Smart homes are homes that are equipped with internet-connected smart devices.
The Internet of Things (IoT) evolve homes by bringing interconnected systems to create better experiences. The thing is, there are lots of IoT devices, and making them to work together can be complicated and confusing.
This is because the different companies that made them can have different products that work differently.
As a result, consumers need to spend way more time to figure out which product works with which, and then troubleshooting how they should work together.
And because of this, the adoption of smart homes is slow.
In order for the devices to "speak" the same language, there needs to be a standard. This standard should be used as the secure protocol of IoT devices for smart homes, and offer enough flexibility for developers to work with it.
This is where Matter is meant to be.
Matter is formerly known as the Project Connected Home over IP (CHIP).
First created on December 18th, 2019, Matter aims to reduce fragmentation across different vendors, and achieve interoperability among smart home devices and IoT platforms from different providers.
While it uses a proprietary, royalty-free home automation connectivity standard, its code repository is open-source under the Apache license, the Matter specification is licensed by Connectivity Standards Alliance (or CSA, formerly the Zigbee Alliance).
With Matter, consumers only need to buy a gadget, plug it in at their home, and it will work with the rest of the gadgets in their smart home.
Consumers can quickly set that new device to work with their favorite smart home app, and control it with their phones or voice, no matter what company made it.
Matter promises that because unlike other standards for IoT that failed to connect them all, Matter is a connectivity standard created by more than 200 different companies.
Matter is being developed by Amazon, Apple, Google, and Samsung, alongside many other smart home and smart home-adjacent companies, including Wyze, iRobot, Signify (Philips Hue), Ecobee, and more.
What's more, it uses communication protocol that leverages existing technologies, like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, to allow all smart home devices to work with each other in a local network, without having to connect to the cloud.
What this means, if the internet is down, the smart home devices will still work.
The technology is also IP-based technology, meaning that it uses the same mechanisms to communicate as the internet.
In other words, Matter is meant to be a unified connectivity technology for the smart home, that provides the ways and the language for the devices to communicate.
"This is a Renaissance [for the smart home]" explained Tobin Richardson, President and CEO of the CSA.
"Most of the industry, if not all the industry have agreed that [Matter] is going to be the way this will happen."
With Matter, companies hope that they can finally solve smart home’s biggest problems, by providing simplicity, interoperability, reliability, and security.
When the project was announced to the public, it is said that the final Matter specification, SDK and certification program should be ready by mid-2022, with the goal is to have the first Matter-certified devices available by the end of 2022, said Richardson.
At this time, Matter is still an idea.
But regardless, it is being developed by an unprecedented industry coalition, which makes it among the most promising development in smart home technologies since Amazon introduced Alexa smart speakers.