matter residences is a smart home standard that’s been adopted by major players like Google, Apple, Amazon, Legrand and Schneider Electric. It aims to reduce the number of different apps you need for your smart home and will work with your existing devices.
You’ll still need a smart home platform to manage communications and automations, but Matter is the language your devices will speak. If your smart lights and locks are on different systems, they can’t talk to each other; Matter enables them to do so.
Essentially, Matter is an application layer that works over the existing protocols Wi-Fi and Thread. Wi-Fi is widely available and a good choice for battery-powered devices, while Thread is a mesh network that can handle larger numbers of devices. The big benefit of Matter is that it’s locally connected, meaning your devices won’t be talking to the cloud unless you have a controller or app that connects them to a remote service.
At launch, Matter 1.0 will only support basic functions. So you won’t be able to do things like setting up energy monitoring in a smart plug or creating complicated scenes for your colored smart bulbs pulsing with the shades of your favorite football team.
But the smart home world is notorious for its inexorable march toward integration, so don’t be surprised if you find many of your existing devices get Matter compatibility via an over-the-air update. At CES 2024, for example, we saw companies like Roborock, Ecovacs and Aqara announcing new Matter devices. matter residences