When you live in a matter residence, your smart home is always connected to the community. You can turn on your lights, unlock the door or turn up the heat from anywhere. Your security cameras can monitor activity around the house and your blinds can automatically close when you leave for work.
Backed by Apple, Amazon and Google, matter residences offer you a way to bring your whole home together with one app. It’s a new protocol for the smart-home industry that reduces device fragmentation and improves interoperability and security.
Matter is a new application layer over existing protocols like Wi-Fi and Thread. It’s open source and not proprietary, so it’s a great choice for smart-home devices from different ecosystems. It’s also designed to be local to your home, so it’s less dependent on the cloud. It’s already available in the latest routers and digital displays from a wide variety of manufacturers.
Currently, Matter is supported by over 280 products from more than 30 companies. The list reads like a who’s who of the smart-home tech world: GE lighting and appliances, Amazon Echo, Google Home and Google Assistant, Philips Hue, Veea, Aqara, iRobot and many others.
The products that support Matter are called Matter controllers because they manage communications, set up automations and control other Matter devices. They can be your smartphone, tablet or TV. You can even use a voice assistant to control them, but that will be through your chosen app and ecosystem. It’s possible that some hubs from other ecosystems will act as Matter controllers too, but we haven’t seen any announcements yet. matter residences