Officially launched from Matter for smart homes, backed by Apple. The long effort to introduce the new Smart Home standard has taken an important step forward.
The Connectivity Standards Alliance today announced the official launch of the Matter 1.0 standard and certification program, in collaboration with alliance members.
This opens the way for the official certification of the products of the first Matter accessories. At the same time, support for this technology has been added in the latest beta versions of iOS 16.1.
Matter for smart homes is finally here.
In a press release, the Connectivity Standards Alliance has announced that the release of Matter 1.0 means that test labs for product certification, as well as test harnesses, tools, and the reference design (SDK) are now open. .
Not only does this allow companies to bring new products certified for Matter connectivity to market, but it also means companies can update their existing products to be Matter compliant.
The Matter 1.0 standard is more than just a specification. It launches with comprehensive test cases and testing tools for Alliance members, plus a global certification program that includes eight accredited test labs capable of testing not only Matter, but also the underlying networking technologies Matter, Wi-Fi, Fi and Hilo.
Wi-Fi enables Matter devices to interact over a high-bandwidth local area network and enables smart home devices to communicate with the cloud.
Thread provides a highly reliable and energy efficient mesh network within the home. Both the Wi-Fi Alliance and the Thread Group collaborated with the Connectivity Standards Alliance to bring Matter’s vision to life.
This first version of Matter will be compatible with some of the most common categories of smart home accessories: Lighting and electricity, climate controls, blinds and shutters, security and safety sensors, door locks, multimedia devices such as televisions, controls such as devices and applications, and bridges.
More than 280 companies are part of the Matter group, including big names like Apple, Amazon and Google.
The Matter standard (originally called CHiP) was first announced in 2019, with an expected release date of 2020. The release date was later pushed back to 2021, then mid-2022, and now it’s finally on the horizon. final stretch.
iOS 16.1 offers support for Matter.
The recent announcement of the official release of Matter 1.0 comes after Apple added initial support for Matter accessories in the iOS 16.1 beta.
At this time, Apple’s implementation of Matter still has a number of bugs and glitches, but it is likely that many of these will be fixed with the public release of Matter 1.0.
In fact, in the latest beta 3 version of iOS 16.1, the Matter interface was removed from the Settings app.
According to Apple’s release notes, the technology behind Matter is still in beta. Each successive release of a new iOS 16.1 beta has significantly reduced the number of bugs for Matter.
The Matter standard could promote the acceptance and spread of smart homes. It ensures that the accessories can be used on multiple platforms without requiring the same effort as before. This means, for example, that a Matter-enabled device is also HomeKit-enabled.
This is an important update because it means that accessory manufacturers will no longer have to adopt each smart home platform separately, such as HomeKit, Alexa and Google Home.
Instead, they can adopt Matter and automatically get cross-platform compatibility.
The process will probably be slow, but the official release of Matter 1.0 is a big step in the right direction.
