What are Matter Enabled Devices?
You may have seen the term Matter appear on smart home device product packaging or promotional materials in recent years. Smart light bulbs, switches, outlets, refrigerators, ovens and beyond are more frequently sold as Matter-enabled devices, which are smart home devices that work with the Matter standard to communicate with one another.
Matter is an industry-unifying standard developed by the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) that is designed to improve the way that devices speak to one another, helping to simplify communication and interoperability between smart home devices from various manufacturers. Matter devices are more easily onboarded into a smart home platform of choice and work together as one cohesive system.
Brief History of Matter
Prior to the creation of Matter, each manufacturer – like Amazon, Apple, Google and Samsung – had its own method of communication among smart home devices. This created silos of smart home ecosystems within the home. Connected garage door openers, air conditioners and smart lighting all used different apps that allowed remote control of these devices, but they were never designed to communicate with one another or be controlled with the same application.
The big tech companies saw this as an opportunity to centralize control through their own smart home hubs and smartphones. Each manufacturer was using its own connectivity protocols and language, so they needed to develop a transition layer to integrate their devices into other smart home hubs. These came in the form of plug-ins or integrations that users would have to download and connect back to the manufacturer’s control application.
With the introduction of the Matter interoperability standard, the translation layer is no longer needed, and devices can be onboarded directly into a Matter-supported home assistant device. The open-source standard provides a common language and set of actions that all Matter-compatible devices can use to communicate which each other. The CSA, along with its member companies, collaborate on the set of common actions that need to be supported and develop the language and rules that need to be followed.
Upgrade the Home with Matter-Enabled Smart Products
Products that feature a Matter logo or QR code are natively able to be onboarded and setup into any Matter-supported home assistant device. If you’re upgrading your home to a smart home, consider starting with a smart home ecosystem that supports Matter and choose Matter-enabled products to simplify the installation and setup.
