Matter it is a standard for home automation and smart home with which the various device manufacturers have finally managed to agree. Its main advantage consists ininteroperability: Matter allows products from different brands and different ecosystems to communicate with each other and work in unison without highlighting particular issues.
Thanks to Matter support, users no longer have to worry about only purchasing products from a certain brand or ecosystem. Just verify that a device is Matter certified to be sure that it will work with the other devices already installed.
In our opinion, the best way to free yourself from closed ecosystems of the various manufacturers, is to rely on a solution that allows you to create an offline smart home solution. It is certainly among the most popular software Home Assistantwhich we presented in the article.
Matter 1.3, here are the new features of the new version of the smart home standard
While integration with Matter devices is still in the development phase on the Home Assistant side, the standard is running fast and after a few months from the previous iteration, here comes Matter 1.3 in its definitive guise.
CSA, Connectivity Standards Alliance, points out that Matter 1.3 represents a notable step forward, adding support for a wide array of devices. The goal is to make Matter even more widespread and stimulate everyone player of the industry to adopt it, in the shortest possible time, within its products.
With the announcement of Matter 1.3, the standard embraces device support water management and of theenergy. In this way it becomes possible to rely on a universally approved solution for monitoring water resources and energy consumption. Each Matter 1.3 compatible device can report actual and estimated measurements, including instantaneous power, voltage, current and others, in real time, as well as energy consumption and generation over time.
Support for leak detectors and frostbite, rain sensors and remotely controllable water valves, ensures the possibility of keeping water systems under control, inside and outside any building.
Manufacturers of equipment for charging EV can, thanks to Matter 1.3, present a way user-friendly to control how and when to charge your electric vehicles. The new version of the standard allows you to manually start or stop the charging process, adjust the charging rate or specify how many kilometers of autonomy to add to the vehicle within a certain departure time, leaving charging station the optimization of the charging phase. Also in order to minimize costs and reduce environmental impact.
Added support for a large number of home appliances
In a world increasingly populated by devices forInternet of Things (IoT), Matter 1.3 adds support for a large number of home appliances. Ovens and microwave ovens, hobs, extractor hoods, clothes dryers, are all objects that become part of the “scope” of the standard.
Matter 1.3 also introduces a series of improvements related to TV functionality: push messages, support for features of casting, advanced interactivity, search functionality, and so on. Other Matter devices can send notifications to the television or other devices with a display to inform me, for example, that a robot vacuum cleaner is blocked, that the clothes put in the dryer in the laundry room are ready, that the oven has finished its “work” and so on.
“Behind the scenes” improvements
With the advent of Matter 1.3, the standard embraces the concept of scene: These allow users to define the desired behavior for each device. You can combine multiple settings to activate them, all together, with a single command.
And controller Matter can now group multiple commands into a single message when communicating with devices. This significantly reduces the delay between the execution of those commands.
The mechanism of Network Commissioningnow allows compatible devices to report which ban WiFi support, a system has been implemented timestamping of events useful for synchronization between devices, the beaconing extended which allows devices to transmit for longer periods.
Developers can already benefit from the new features of Matter 1.3 by using the development package (SDK) already being distributed on GitHub.