Open Source 'Matter' Hopes To Make Sense Of The Fractured, Messy Smart Home Sector
from the simplify-all-the-things dept
If you've spent any meaningful time trying to build a "smart home" you've probably run face first into no shortage of problems. Gear is expensive, frequently complicated, and more often than not different devices don't play well together. It's a sector filled with various walled gardens by gatekeepers looking to lock you into one ecosystem, placing the onus on consumers to figure out which devices work with other devices and ecosystems, forcing the end user to spend countless calories trying to fix interoperability issues when they inevitably arrive.
The resulting mess has slowed adoption by those who (quite understandably) find dumb home tech (ordinary door locks, for example) to be the smarter option.
While various standards have tried to unify the space, they've not been particularly successful. In part because the central control of all these devices has been fractured across different standards and technologies (Zigbee, Z-Wave, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth) all jostling for primary control despite none of them working particularly well. Enter Matter, a new open-sourced connectivity standard created by over 200 companies that's attempting to bring some sanity to the space.
Matter is an emerging communication protocol leaning on numerous existing technologies -- Thread, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and ethernet -- with the goal of letting all of your smart home devices communicate with each other locally, without the need for a controlling gateway and hub. The Verge has a great breakdown on how the standard hopes to accomplish this (namely by being IP-based and integrating with existing technologies):
"Its unique feature is it’s an IP-based technology, meaning it uses the same mechanisms to communicate as the internet. So, there is no dependency on bridges or hubs, and yes, you will (eventually) be able to get rid of all those white boxes hooked up to your modem.
To simplify adoption, Matter will start as an application layer on top of existing IP technologies, including ethernet, Wi-Fi, Thread, and Bluetooth (for device provisioning). This means Matter is not reinventing the wheel; it’s adding better technology to the highways our smart homes are driving on.
Granted this isn't our first rodeo with these kinds of efforts, as this old XKCD comic attests:
This time though there seems to be an underlying understanding that simplifying this mess is in everybody's interests, from the biggest companies looking to sell more smart home gear, to the smaller players developing innovative new solutions. As such Matter is being directly supported not just by Amazon, Apple, Google/Nest, and Samsung, but a long line of other smart home and IOT companies like Wyze, Ecobee, iRobot, and others. Matter should find its way into products starting sometime near the end of next year, at which point you'll be able to see if the underlying promise materializes.
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Filed Under: home automation, matter, open source, smart home, standards
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What always baffles me is the fact find that KNX seems to be completely unknown outside of Europe. A smart home standard that is not a "bolt-on" aftermarket solution but integral part in construction projects. Well established in the market for the better part of a decade, comprised of over 500 member companies.
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Re:
BUT,
Thats not the capitalism ideal.
We want you to buy things that only connect to What our company sells.
Then to use a 3rd party Pay service to see it.
AND we dont want to pay royalties to another company to USE their programming.
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Premise, not promise
Something to intercept all the Proprietary Hardware that wants to Connect AWAY from your system to Force you to USE another Paid service.
When a small computer, with a BIG hard drive can do 99.9% of all of it.
And if you WANT a remote, you can set up Gmail, with a Box/selection, to STORE the pictures and what ever REMOTELY.
And then you Phone to Chime if something falls into that box to tell you a DOG ran across your yard, you home is on fire, the kids came home early and now every movement they make is BEING RECORDED.
Then you send a voice msg. to Alexa to tell them to STAY out of the frig, and NOT to look at the Playboy channel.
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Concerning standards (warning, may be a touch cynical)
The great thing about standards is that if you don't like the one you're looking at, you can always find another that you'll like better.
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Re: Concerning standards (warning, may be a touch cynical)
Or,
Make is easy to hack
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Nice glossy web site, big money backers, what can go wrong?
Look at OpenHab, 200 vendors in support now
and it works today.
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Something something they spent more time making sure they didn't play well with others they never got around to changing the default hardwired passwords.
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My "Smart" Lock
I have a "smart" lock. It's a Schlage lock on the front door backed up by a hyperactive dog with razor sharp teeth. I figure my flat-screen TV is safe.
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Not the main problem
Yeah, that's nice and all, if anything ever comes out of it. But when are they going to fix the real problems with their junk? Like being about as secure as a wet paper bag, already spying on their customers for whoever cares to pay even before being inevitably hacked and all set to be bricked with an automatic "update" the moment the manufacturer wants you to buy a new one. That sort of things.
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Make a rule no device has a default password , ever company has a website with PDF manual free to download for every device , make a standard for door locks, that every company canú use, WiFi is successful because every device supports it ,
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"To simplify adoption, Matter will start as an application layer on top of existing IP technologies, including ethernet, Wi-Fi, Thread, and Bluetooth (for device provisioning)."
I hope they're starting from a strong security focus. I mean, I know they aren't because security is hard, and hard things cost money, but still.
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we've invented ANOTHER standard thats totally incompatible "somehow" with all the IP-based stuff you've already bought.
Please re-buy everything again in 2022/23/24/25 as we introduce revisions that could easily fit onto the existing flash storage in your existing stuff.
GIVE.US.MONEY.
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Reflashing
Honestly it seems at this point if you want security you should replace the device'w software entirely with your own standard. Needless to say that is not a trivial task.
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