Matter: Device Compliance Certification in the Smart Home and Implication for Hubs, Smart TVs, Monitors, and Family Hub Fridges

The path to smart home nirvana is paved with many different standards, like Z-Wave, wi-fi Ha Low and Insteon. These protocols and others will continue to exist and operate. The technologies of Thread and Weave have been merged into Matter. The new standard uses two standards for device setup.

The first protocol runs on Wi-Fi and Thread network layers and uses Bluetooth Low Energy for device setup. You have to choose between the voice assistants and the apps that you want to use, but there is no central Matter app. You can bet that your smart home devices will be more accommodating to you.

The CSA says the last delay was to accommodate more devices and platforms and ensure they all work smoothly with one another before release. More than 130 devices and sensors are working through certification and you can expect many more soon.

In an interview with The Verge, Jaeyeon Jung said that the company received its certification early on Wednesday, October 12th after Matter launched. Michelle Mindala-Freeman of the Connectivity Standards Alliance, which oversees Matter, confirmed that it started issuing certifications this week and said Samsung was among the very first to secure one.

The good news is that the Thread border is going to be made of Smart Things v3 hubs and $35 dongles. “We worked with Silicon Labs to use software to simultaneously run Zigbee and Thread using the same hardware chipset,” says Jung. The Smartthings v3 hub will support both Matter over Thread and Zigbee once the software is released.

While v2 hubs aren’t capable of being upgraded to Thread and will support Matter devices over Wi-Fi and ethernet, Jung says they will be able to control any Thread devices using a Thread border router built into another device. If you don’t add a dongle, the same will happen with the software-based hubs in smart TVs, monitors, and Family Hub fridges.

Jung says that Matter is making compatibility of devices less of an issue in the smart home and that is one reason why consumers will choose to use SmartThings over another platform. Smart Things was built on being the most open platform of the major players.

New Nanoleaf Products for the CES 2023 Thread and Thread Border Interoperability Requirements (extended version)

The new products are expected to be on the shelves in February. The products had been ready for a while now, but the company decided to hold the launch until Matter was here to avoid customer confusion. Nanoleaf also plans to announce more Matter-compatible products in January at CES 2023, says Chu, including the company’s signature lighting panels.

Pricing will range from $19.99 to99.99, and the products will be capable of displaying over 16 million color options, including tunable whites with color temperatures from 3000 to 6000K.

“The bulbs and light strip will use Matter over Thread, with a Bluetooth fallback,” he explained. “So, if you don’t have a Thread border router, you can still connect to the bulb using Bluetooth directly to a phone.”

“Our products already work with all of the platforms so it’s not a priority for us.” The essentials line doesn’t require a border router, but does need one to work with the internet-based assistants. The current Nanoleaf Shapes, Elements, and Lines will all act as Thread border routers, connecting any Thread-enabled products in your home to the internet and other wireless networks, such as Matter.

It will be possible to form a single Thread Network in your home once the thread border routers from different companies are able to do that. Interoperability with the other platforms is expected next year, because the Eero and NANOleaf routers already do.

The Station: a Little Station Around a SAMSUNG Wireless Charging Pad and SmartThings Automation at a Galaxy Smart Home

It can charge your gadgets. The Station can be used as a 15W fast wireless charging pad, but it will not charge other phones or earbuds the same way. I am definitely here for these multipurpose hubs. While Matter requires a controller to work, no one was asking for more little white boxes to organize their entertainment consoles. I’m only a little sad we’re not getting the Samsung Home Hub the company showed off at CES last year.

Launching first in Korea and coming to the US in early February, the Station will cost $59.99 ($79.99 with a USB-C adaptor) according to and comes in black or white. It is a new design around SAMSUNG’s existing wireless charging pad.

We got a first look at the gadget here at CES, and it’s a nice, slimline, and compact device powered by USB-C. It has a small tactile button that triggers SmartThings scenes. It would be easy to get one of these in your main home room if you press the button on the phone or just put your phone on the charge.

In addition to smart home radios (more on those in a bit), Samsung has added a small button to the device. When you press this little SmartThings logo, it can control scenes or devices set up in the SmartThings app. There are three options: single-click, double-click, and long-press.

You can also use the charging state of Galaxy phones to trigger an automation. When you place the phone down to charge, say after 11PM, that could turn on a Good Night scene that shuts off your lights, locks your door, and adjust your thermostat. Then, when you pick it up after 7AM, it could turn on your Good Morning scene.

The Station helps you find your gadgets with the SmartThings Find service. If you set it up with your Galaxy smartphone, the pad will be pre-configured to ring your phone when you double-press the button. It also searches for devices at home, so you can know where your devices are. Plus, a new function continually scans for Galaxy SmartTags or SmartTag Plus and can send a notification when a tag or device leaves or returns home.

It also has a Thread Border Router and a zigbee smartthings hub, as well as wireless radios and internet access. There is no support for the Z-Wave technology. You will still need to buy an Aeotec SmartThings Hub if you want support for your Z-Wave devices.

The Tapo Smart Plug: Connecting to the SmartThings Station using the SmartHome App Store Using the Google Home Platform as the Matter Controller

At $20 for one plug, the Tapo is the cheapest of the two Matter smart plugs you can buy right now. If you want to use a smart plug with Matter across Alexa, Apple, Google and/or SmartThings, and you have an Android phone, then pick this plug up. The only place it will work is in Apple Home and SmartThings. You’ll need to wait for the Google Home and Alexa compatibility.

I connected the Tapo plug to the SmartThings app on the App Store using the SmartThings Station as the Matter controller. (Side note: I also set up the plug using the Apple Home app and a HomePod Mini. Adding a device to HomeKit was the same as that process. The setup with SmartThings is what is noteworthy here.

It may be worth the wait, as the Eve plug offers detailed energy usage stats (although these are only accessible from the Eve app). TheTapo plug does not offer energy monitoring. The Eve’s form factor makes it easy to fit two on top of each other. It can support up to 15 Amps.

Energy monitoring is not available, but you can see how many hours the plug has been used by day, week and month. The Tapo app has an automatic update feature that will check for any new updates as soon as you set a time of day. This will make it easy for you to control it with the smart home platform app.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/23599437/tp-link-tapo-p125m-review-matter-apple-amazon-google-smartthings

The Tapo Plug: Connecting Matter Over Wi-Fi Smart Devices with the Tapo plug over any Home Platform and to Google Home or Google Home

A dialogue box appeared on the phone as soon as the plug was powered on and offered to scan the device to Google Home or the Tapo app. Even though the option at the bottom of the box was for a different app, it still didn’t show SmartThings as a choice. The partnership is made easier by the way that both companies have taken care of it behind the scenes.

With a Matter plug like the Tapo, you can share your plug across any platform and to any smartphone in your home. No cloud required. No account setup needed. Once I added the Tapo plug to one platform with Matter, the idea is that I could connect it to the other compatible platforms locally over the Wi-Fi network.

The Tapo P125M is a Matter-over-WiFi plug and so you will have to connect it to a computer and a modem. This is different from most Wi-Fi smart plugs, which need Wi-Fi but no other hardware.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/23599437/tp-link-tapo-p125m-review-matter-apple-amazon-google-smartthings

Amazon, Siri, and SmartThings All: Connecting the Plug to Amazon, Google and the Home: A Case Study for Multiple Platforms

This required starting with the Alexa app on an Android phone. From there, I added it to Google Home. It was possible to add it to SmartThings from the Home screen on the phone. From there, I could generate a new QR code that I scanned into Apple Home using an iPhone.

There was a final step of generating a couple of pairs of barcodes from the app on the phone to use in Apple Home. The plug was on all four of the platforms.

I could use Alexa to turn the plug off, Siri to turn it on, and then tap an icon on a Google Nest Hub Max to turn it back off. It took every app a single second to register the device’s new status, and eventual leader was Amazon who was 30 seconds behind the rest.

However, when I reset the plug and tried any other combination of setup — starting from iOS with Apple Home or SmartThings, or starting on Android with Google or SmartThings — I was never able to successfully add it to all four platforms.

Multi-admin is one of Matter’s main selling points. And while using it across four platforms is likely an edge use case — most people will probably use one or two platforms, maybe three — it’s a feature that should still work regardless. And as of today, it’s just not ready.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/23599437/tp-link-tapo-p125m-review-matter-apple-amazon-google-smartthings

Is it Possible to Pair a Smart Plug to a Connected Wi-Fi Device with a Matter App on a Pixel?

As Amazon doesn’t have a Matter iOS app, I used a Pixel 6 for setup. The Android operating system automatically found the device as soon as it was plugged in, without me having to open an app.

This is a nice feature the iPhone doesn’t have and jives with Matter’s promise of a simpler setup process. I already had an app on my phone and didn’t have to download a manufacturer app.

I wanted to be able to use the virtual assistant. After closing out the option, I opened the app on the phone. The Alexa home screen immediately prompted me to “Connect Your Smart Plug.” This is because I have Device Discovery turned on, which shows any available devices on your Wi-Fi network (you can turn this on or off in the Alexa app settings).

I asked if the plug contained a Matter logo. I proceeded to scan that. (This is on the side of the plug with an extra copy in the box, thankfully, as after removing the plug a couple of times, the ink on the code had smudged beyond being readable).

Next, I went to add it to the other Matter platforms, and while I was eventually successful, the process was inconsistent, and the compatibility between platforms feels very shaky.

You can’t just scan the Matter QR code on the device again in the new app — it’s one and done for the code (although you’ll want to keep it around in case you ever factory reset the device.)

Chris La Pre from the association tells me that it is a design decision. “The original code no longer works. The device needs to be put back in pairing mode, and the original ecosystem will provide a new code,” he says. “Otherwise, a neighbor walking through your house could possibly pair devices if they see the barcode.”

Unfortunately, this isn’t clearly explained anywhere in the platform apps. I can see a lot of people just trying to scan the code again to add it to another platform. I tried the process from every app and it was nearly impossible to find the steps to do it in the settings. Really, when you pair a device to one platform, the option should pop up to add it to any other compatible platform you have installed on your phone. That would be easy.

This seems like it needs to be simpler. To make matters worse (ahem), when I tried to add the Tapo plug to SmartThings from Alexa, it failed immediately. I had to go back to the Google Home app, where I could choose “SmartThings” as an option to pair to. This opened the SmartThings app and let me add the plug easily.

The plug was added to the Matter Devices list in the settings of the iPhone and it was also stored in the Keychain. From there, it would be easy to add the plug to Apple Home. It wasn’t. Even though the plug was present in the settings. I wasn’t able to add Matter to Apple Home by following Apple’s instructions.

If you want to use the Thread features, the Eve plug is a good option. Thread uses less power than other mesh networks and offers lower response times and better latency compared to other mesh networks. Eve non-Matter Thread devices have shown to be responsive in my testing. But in Matter so far, it’s been a different story, with Thread devices dropping offline frequently.

This is probably because Thread border routers from different companies are not all talking with each other yet. You can have separate Thread networks in your home if the Apple TV and a Nest Hub Max set you up. This causes problems. Thread-over- Matter is still confusing even though all of the above mentioned say they are working on making their devices talk to each other. (I’ll be writing about this in more depth soon).

Amazon said its app for theiOS will be available in the spring. Eve and Nanoleaf are among the companies that plan to release their new Matter products in late March or early summer. The support for Thread is expected to be more widely available as well, since Amazon said it will enable it on its fourth-gen Echo smart speaker and Eero wi-fi routers this spring.

“As Philips Hue is focused on quality, we will take some extra time before making the software update to the Philips Hue Bridge available to all consumers, to invest in really getting it right and delivering to the expectations of consumers,” Kelly Gramuglia of Signify, which owns Philips Hue, told The Verge in an email.

Until Amazon and Matter support bridging, it will be hard for the bulbs to work on those platforms. Additionally, neither Google nor Amazon’s smart home apps work with Matter on iOS yet, resulting in a potentially frustrating experience for users.

The delay is not a problem for Matter. Signify is not about to bail on the standard as Belkin did last week. It’s one of Matter’s earliest and most ardent supporters. Even though Matter could be ready, the companies that are supporting it still have a long way to go.