Matter, formerly known as Connected Home over IP (CHIP) is THE new standard for home automation. It was announced back in 2019 and has finally started rolling out as of October 2022. Ultimately, Matter aims to bridge the gap between different smart home platforms and unify them all together so that Smart Home devices can be used across all the different platforms with no barriers.

What was the issue?

Back when the major vendors (Apple, Google and Amazon) started delving into the Smart Home market, the major issue was getting products certified for the respective platforms. This was a lot more noticeable with Apple HomeKit as Apple has strict certification requirements in order to ensure the products they were exposing to their interface were in line with their security and privacy requirements. Thus, HomeKit consumers (like myself) had a harder time finding products to use with HomeKit as Amazon and Google had a very lax certification requirements meaning a lot more products could be used with their platforms. This is where Matter was conceived.

In 2019, Amazon, Apple, Google, Samsung SmartThings and the Zigbee Alliance came together to form the working group of Project Connected Home over IP, with the goal of the project to simplify the creation of smart home products brands and manufacturers, and increase the compatibility of smart home products across all platforms for consumers. It was eventually renamed to Matter.

Matter

Matter is an “interoperability protocol” that is set to become the new smart home standard so that smart home devices can seamlessly work across different ecosystems. So for example, an Amazon Echo device can now work as seamlessly with a Google Doorbell as it does with a Ring doorbell, and vice versa. Any Matter product you buy can be used across all platforms with no restrictions.

Over 190 products have already announced certification with Matter, and new devices coming into the market are set to support Matter from the get-go. As for existing devices, the fairly newer devices should be able to support it through software updates or through a bridge, however it’s likely that older devices will not be able to support Matter due to older devices not being able to support newer IP protocols. If they can’t support it, it will not be cut off from functioning, you’ll be able to use it as normal, it just won’t work with the new Matter protocol, but you are still able to use it in the individual smart home platforms.

Version 1.0 of Matter was released in October 2022, however the first devices are yet to be released to the market. This doesn’t mean you should not buy any devices, especially as we don’t know when the first devices will arrive, so there is no reason why you should hold back, especially as a lot of these devices are likely to get a Matter upgrade soon.