What Is Matter, and Does It Matter for Home Automation?

What is Matter, and how does it impact home automation? The short answer is that it won't matter to you unless you are deeply into DIY home automation. As a WDIFY (We Do It For You) full-service home automation company, we care about new developments in the smart home industry, and Matter is one of them. We want you to understand them so you are a well-informed consumer, although when you work with us, we shield you from having to worry about such things.  

So, what is Matter, and does it matter for your Alpharetta, GA, smart home? Let’s get into it. 

SEE ALSO: 3 Things You Can Only Get from a Home Automation Company

What Is Matter?

Matter is a smart home interoperability standard launched by Amazon, Apple, Google, Samsung, and other companies in 2019. You probably know about Alexa, Google, or Homekit-compatible devices, like smart light bulbs and popular Nest thermostats. The big tech companies that drove Matter are also the leading players in device ecosystems like iOS and Android, and Matter aims to create an interoperability standard across their respective smart home devices. For example, that means you could have the Apple Home app control a Google Nest thermostat.

How Does It Work?

Under the covers, home automation and smart devices need to have common ways to communicate. Thread is a communication protocol developed by Google for its devices (like Nest thermostats and cameras) and is part of its contribution to the Matter standard. Along with Wi-Fi, it's the radio protocol that Matter devices will use. 

What's a radio protocol, you may be wondering? Bluetooth is one, and you have a good sense of how that works. Other widely used radio protocols in home automation are Zigbee and Z-Wave. Control4, the home automation system we install the most, uses Zigbee for communicating with some devices. They have been favored for reliability and low energy use, which is vital in devices like small sensors. 

What will happen to these? Matter's Thread won't replace them but will simply offer a standard way for devices to communicate.

What Does It Mean for You?

As we mentioned before, the short answer is that Matter won't matter much to you unless you like to integrate your own home automation solutions. While it remains to be seen, Matter may make it easier to integrate various consumer smart home devices like Nest thermostats and smart locks. While Control4 already does that with a vast range of devices, their participation in the Matter standard will make it easier for them to integrate more devices with its system. So Matter might make it easier for us to integrate your favorite smart devices into your home.

But we're not waiting for Matter, nor are we dependent on it in any way. Integrating a custom smart home system specifically tailored to your desires and needs is what we’ve always done. 

You don’t need to wait for Matter or any other new technology to build your dream smart home—it’s available now. Let us show you all the options. Reach out to us here or click the chat below to connect with us. We look forward to working with you.