As it prepares for the launch of a smart home interoperability standard, the Zigbee Alliance has changed its name to the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) and will broaden its scope. At the same time, the working group within the CSA previously known as Project Connected Home over IP has adopted Matter as its formal brand. The CSA also said the Matter specification is final and is ready for testing.
Matter is the newest hope for consumer electronics companies to try and solve the problem of interoperability for the smart home. In December 2019 Apple, Amazon, Google, Samsung, and others said they would work on building an application layer standard so devices in the home would be able to communicate. It is and was a big deal as the numerous ecosystems and walled gardens associated with smart home devices had frustrated consumers and developers.

With Matter, consumers won’t have to research if their Nest cameras will work with their Schlage locks or if their HomeKit compatible sensors will also work with Alexa, for example. Developers won’t have to keep up with multiple ecosystems and integrations. Initially, this will only work across a limited number of devices, but those devices include lighting, blinds, HVAC, TVs, access controls, safety & security products, access points, smart home controllers, and bridges.
Matter will create an IP-based interoperability layer between devices at the application layer. Most smart home devices might interoperate at the networking layer (this is where protocols like Z-wave or Zigbee come in). But network compatibility doesn’t mean a light bulb can communicate with any light switch or a security sensor can communicate with a different platform. Matter will enable a standardized data model for devices so a certified product can communicate what it is and what it can do to other certified products.

And it makes sense that Connectivity Standards Alliance would get a new name as the mission of the organization is expanding. The organization will continue to support the Zigbee standard, but it’s likely that the bulk of the organization’s work going forward will focus on Matter as it has a much larger market and more potential. Tobin Richardson, the president and CEO of the CSA, said that the organization will also expand its standards work to an additional three or four connectivity protocols for the smart home. He declined to say what those other standards might cover.
The CSA will also add lobbying to its mission and has decided to take a global perspective on issues such as data privacy and security. To that end, it will work with the World Economic Forum Council on the Connected World to contribute to a global conversation about the role of smart home technology. Richardson also gave lip service to sustainability and connected devices, as well as security, equity, and inclusion.
The CSA is also focused on releasing as much as it can as open-source code, which strikes me as somewhat incongruous with the fact that to see or vote on the developing standard, companies had to pay to join the CSA and the Matter working group. However, the code is all available on Github, and anyone will be able to see it and download it for their applications and devices.
Richardson also said that the certification is now feature-complete, which means that we shouldn’t expect significant changes ahead of the fall release. It may get tweaks as device testing begins and manufacturers spot issues, but we should still be on track to see a few Matter-certified products before the end of this year, with more expected in 2022.
We also received a bit of clarity on how Matter will work with multi-ecosystem households, such as those that might have a HomeKit user and an Amazon Alexa device. A video released as part of the rebranding, promises that with the Matter standard, devices from multiple ecosystems will work together without the homeowner having to manually add the devices to multiple ecosystems. That’s great news for people like me who have a plethora of devices from many vendors, but I want to wait to pass judgment until I’ve tried it in real life.
The video’s narrator calls the feature Multi-Admin, and promises that “users can connect devices to multiple apps and multiple ecosystems locally, securely and simultaneously.” It also sounds like users will also be able to grant control of devices at an individual level, which means that connecting a Nest account to an Amazon Echo might not require adding all of the devices associated with that Nest account. This could make it easier to put a controller of some sort in a guest bedroom letting your guest have access to some home controls, but not all of them.
Additionally, the folks behind Matter reiterated their commitment to using the standard for apartments and MDUs to make it easier for tenants to bring their own platforms and devices into a new home, without worrying about the existing infrastructure. As long as the existing infrastructure is Matter compliant, renters can bring their own Matter-compliant devices.
So, stay tuned as Project Connected Home over IP becomes Matter and the Connectivity Standards Alliance takes on more smart home standards.
Update: During a panel featuring representatives from several smart home device companies, we learned a bit more about how they plan to implement Matter and what users might expect. For example, George Yianni head of technology for Signify, says that existing nine-year-old Hue light bulbs will be updated to work with Matter, although you might have to purchase a new hub. He says we should expect compatible Hue products at the end of this year. Chris DeCenzo, from Amazon, mentioned that a Matter-compliant television might let consumers cast their content to devices regardless of the manufacturer.
I’m still hoping for a Zigbee/Z-Wave Matter bridge
Zwave does not (yet) participate in Matter and I haven’t seen any plans for a bridge. You never know. There are multiple hubs now available that have both a Z wave and a Zigbee radio, including Aeotec’s “Works as a SmartThings Hub,” Hubitat, Homeseer HS4, and Abode, and some of those are participating in Matter, so maybe some day.
I know quite a few people now use Homebridge to bring Zwave devices into HomeKit (typically via SmartThings or Hubitat), so something like that may be an eventual option. It probably wouldn’t give you the MultiAdmin feature, though.
The whole thing is BS. This is not being done for the consumers “benefit”. These companies for exactly have a reputation of consumer first. Wanna remove Facebook from a Samsung phone? Nope, can’t do that. Wanna watch YouTube on an Amazon device? Only if Google and Amazon are getting along at the time. It’s just like the lightbulb scheme, it’s about squeezing more from the consumer with “certified” devices. The real intent here it to kill off Zigbee. F this entire idea. No I’m not “uninformed” over 200 “smart” devices in home setup, various protocols some self and custom built.
*these companies DON’T exactly have…*
Homeassistant already communicates with all these devices and is open source.
Exactly, and it’s highly configurable. It makes “smart” devices behave the way you envision it when you buy them.
The goal here is plug and play for the mass consumer market. Phillips hue and Amazon Echo proved you could sell millions and millions of home automation devices as long as setup was really easy.
The reason all the companies involved, Amazon, Google, Apple, Samsung, etc see this as valuable is because they want those millions of customers. and they don’t want the customer support headaches of explaining how to onboard everything.
People with a stronger technical background who are willing to do the work can definitely get more from something like home assistant. But it’s not a plug and play mass market solution.
Acronym: CSA. The Canadian Standards Association (CSA) is accredited by the SCC as a standards development organization. It is also accredited as a certification body. CSA is a non-profit membership association serving industry, government, consumers and other interested parties Canada and the global marketplace.
Acronyms are pronounceable types of initialisms, e.g. NATO. CSA is an initialism, not an acronym. Abbreviations, initialisms, and acronyms are not all the same. Of course, like all common word mis-usage, it is slowly becoming more acceptable to make this mistake, and eventually it will no longer be considered a mistake by anyone but a serious and dedicated language pedant like me.
You can’t trademark an acronym: lots of organizations end up with the same initials.
CSA also stands for:
California Society of Anesthesiologists
Canadian Space Agency
Casting Society of America (seen in many movie credits)
Celiac Sprue Association
Chief of Staff Association
Chili Soccer Association
Cloud Security Alliance
Community Supported Agriculture
Cricket South Africa
Czech Airlines
and the Crime Syndicate of America (DC Comics)
among dozens of others.
The new name for the Zigbee Alliance, the Connectivity Standards Alliance, will be one of many organizations to use the same initials.
What I find quite frustrating is that the group developing the standard is so closed up. I searched for ways to find a forum where I could read discussions and post my own questions. But it seems that without paying the alliance fee, I’m out of luck. Also, why don’t they publish a draft of the specification?
Any hints about where to find more details on the spec or a way to learn more about it are very welcome!
It’s Open Source, have you looked at their GitHub? Whatever there is to see is there.
https://github.com/project-chip/connectedhomeip#readme
Thanks for your response!
I’m already aware of the GitHub repository, but it does not contain the actual spec. It’s an example implementation of some elements.
So that makes it too hard to read for me (although I am a coder) and doesn’t give me the level of abstraction I’m looking for.
Because I couldn’t find a place to discuss and post question, we decided to host a category on our forum open to anyone who’s interested in Matter: https://community.apilio.com/c/general/build-with-matter/15