The FUTURE of Smart Home Tech – Matter Explained

Matter really seems like it’s the future of smart home and internet-of-things tech – but what even is it? It’s a bit of a complicated and under-supported mess right now, so let me do my best to explain what Matter is, why it’s seen as the future, and why you want it. 

At a base level, Matter is a way for different smart home devices to talk to each other. You want your smart lights to be able to talk to your smart switches, or your smart plug socket to talk to Home Assistant so you can monitor the power usage, so you need something to let them talk to each other. It’s important to note here though that Matter isn’t actually a radio protocol like Zigbee or ZWave, it’s a communication protocol that runs on top of other networks. Matter is kind of like the language the devices speak, and the underlying radio protocols are how they speak to each other. 

Matter is primarily designed to work over Thread – no not the recently released spyware from everyone’s favourite robot-man – no this is the open source communication protocol Google released, which started in 2014. Thread, much like Zigbee, uses the 802.15.4 standard to create a separate mesh network between devices. Thread actually uses 6LoWPAN, or IPv6 over Low Power Wireless Personal Area Networks. Basically, unlike WiFi which uses the hub-and-spoke model – you connect to an access point and only to the access point, Thread uses a mesh network setup where most devices will actually talk to each other to relay messages. That does mean you’ll need a “hub” – or in this case a “Thread Border Router” – but it means you have a more reliable, low power, separate network for all your smart home tech to connect to. 

Thread in particular is a little different to Zigbee, as Thread uses bog-standard IPv6 to give addresses to the various devices you connect to the network. That means it’s easier for Thread devices to talk to regular IP based devices like your phone or other WiFi connected tech. That’s also why Matter prefers it. A lot of the products you’ll find are listed as “Matter over Thread”, which means they do require a border router, but will have great battery life, won’t need to connect to your WiFi network and thanks to the mesh network you should be able to place devices all over your house and still have great connectivity. A number of existing smart home hubs have already been updated to support Thread and Matter, including the Samsung SmartThings Station, Google’s Nest Hub, WiFi router and Nest Hub Max. You can also use a dongle like this one with Home Assistant – which is actually going to be the next video in this series, where I’ll be getting these three Matter over Threads products working with Home Assistant, so make sure you are subscribed so you don’t miss that!

The nice thing about Matter though is that because it’s based on IPv6, it also works on WiFi devices too, which, via the Thread Border Router, and happily talk to each other. Of course WiFi Matter devices can’t connect to the mesh network directly and do have lower efficiency meaning shorter battery life, but of course have the ease of no separate hub being required to connect them. You will still need a Matter Controller though, which most smart hubs (and Home Assistant) can do. I would argue that while the setup process for Matter over WiFi devices might be a little easier, I would much prefer Matter over Thread devices thanks to the efficiency, mesh networking, and the security benefit of not being directly connected to the internet. 

Espressif have a great demonstration of what Matter can do – they set up a collection of devices, one over Thread, one over WiFi, and actually one over Zigbee. The Thread connected display can control the Zigbee light, thanks to Matter. Now I believe this is not quite “Matter over Zigbee”, but more that their Zigbee/Matter bridge is doing the conversion on the fly, but the fact that this is possible is what makes Matter special. It isn’t “just another standard” – relevant XKCD here – but more like the glue that finally binds these competing standards together. Yes, devices that use Thread are likely to be the future connectivity standard over Zigbee, but the fact that with Matter you can use devices from any standard and make them all work together is fantastic. 

As for the devices themselves, thanks to how new Matter is, launching the official specification in just October last year, the number of devices that support Matter is somewhat slim. Hell, even if you include just Thread devices you still only get a total of 47 listed on OpenThread’s own website. Matter V1 only supports things like lighting products, door locks, thermostats, HVAC controls, blinds and home security sensors. Things like motion, temperature and environment sensors will be supported soon, but not quite yet. Software support is also pretty new – even on Google’s border routers or Samsung’s SmartThings Station. Philips’ Hue line will support Matter, but currently it doesn’t. Home Assistant’s Matter integration is still in beta – that really tells you what sort of state this is in right now. It’s new, but the number of devices that support Matter in one form or another is slowly growing. Matter-Smarthome.de has a list of devices and even handily lists if they use Thread or WiFi, and if they are available, announced, or outright cancelled already. I’ll link to all of that in the description below for you to check out.

If you do want to get in on the Matter device hype train this early, what you’ll be looking for is listings that show the Matter logo, and the Thread logo like this. The listing should say “Matter over Thread” – most Amazon listings seem to be pretty good for that. You will also need something to act as the Controller – whether that is a fully packaged system that also runs the Thread Border Router like a Samsung SmartThings Station, or something more DIY like Home Assistant and a Thread dongle like this Sonoff one that I’ve flashed with the Multi-PAN firmware – so do bear that in mind. Even Matter over WiFi devices will need a Matter controller somewhere on your network.