Matter 1.4 Tries To Set the Smart Home Standard Back On Track (theverge.com) 28
Longtime Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares a report from The Verge: It's been two long years since the launch of Matter -- the one smart home standard designed to rule them all -- and there's been a fair amount of disappointment around a sometimes buggy rollout, slow adoption by companies like Apple, Amazon, and Google, and frustrating setup experiences. However, the launch of the Matter 1.4 specification this week shows some signs that the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA, the organization behind Matter) is using more sticks and fewer carrots to get the smart home industry coalition to cooperate.
The new spec introduces 'enhanced multi-admin,' an improvement on multi-admin -- the much-touted interoperability feature that means your Matter smart light can work in multiple ecosystems simultaneously. It brings a solution for making Thread border routers from different companies play nicely together and introduces a potentially easier way to add Matter infrastructure to homes through Wi-Fi routers and access points. Matter 1.4 also brings some big updates to energy management support, including adding heat pumps, home batteries, and solar panels as Matter device types.
The new spec introduces 'enhanced multi-admin,' an improvement on multi-admin -- the much-touted interoperability feature that means your Matter smart light can work in multiple ecosystems simultaneously. It brings a solution for making Thread border routers from different companies play nicely together and introduces a potentially easier way to add Matter infrastructure to homes through Wi-Fi routers and access points. Matter 1.4 also brings some big updates to energy management support, including adding heat pumps, home batteries, and solar panels as Matter device types.
Too late (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Tried it, was seriously useless. Now using Zigbee and Hubitat.
Indeed it was, which is why it is under continued development. In any case nothing is "too late" in this industry. The smart home shit is still a completely massive mix of ever changing undecided incompatible rubbish. Just because you have Zigbee and Hubitat today doesn't mean you won't find big problems tomorrow that forces you to look at something else again.
That's the sad state of the industry right now.
Re: (Score:2)
So I can use old tablets to have multiple control systems around the house cheaply and can STILL use my laptop if I want.
Its a mess because of user capture and data mining (phone home) desires of businesses.
The sooner we can make personal data a liability rather than a sellable resource the better.
Re: (Score:1)
You seem to be a bit confused about what Matter is. Matter is the higher layer protocol, it can use Zigbee as a transport layer, or WiFi.
Hubitat seems to be some proprietary thing. I don't use proprietary stuff for my home automation, it has to be an open protocol. That means either Matter or something with Tasmota firmware/MQTT over WiFi. I see there is a Home Assistant bridge for Hubitat, but I'd be worried about long term availability of the platform when the manufacturer inevitably abandons it.
I choose Antimatter (Score:5, Interesting)
The Antimatter protocol is far superior because it protects your privacy. Somebody is going to claim that "anonymized data can be deanonymized" which is true but the Antimatter protocol gets around this by never transmitting any data. Vendors have cost optimized devices that don't transmit the data by removing the circuitry needed to collect and transmit it. What makes these smarter devices any different than dumb devices? Well obviously because they support the Antimatter protocol. ;)
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Matter is fully offline, no internet access required. Hard to see how it can collect data for the mothership when it has no way to send it out.
Do you have a link to this Antimatter protocol? When I search all I get is some commercial crap that looks like it steals your data.
Re: I choose Antimatter (Score:1)
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Full Antimatter protocol specification: "stay off the fucking internet"
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So is it just something you made up?
In any case, Matter allows you to "stay off the fucking internet". I have a separate network that has no internet access just for it, and stuff like printers.
Re: (Score:2)
If you read my original comment then it should be obvious that I'm talking about using dumb devices.
Re: I choose Antimatter (Score:2)
enhanced multi-admin (Score:4, Funny)
I am holding out for the release of enhanced multi-admin pro plus.
Does not solve anything I need solved (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem I have is needing a special app for WiFi provisioning. Today it was a spa, but these dedicated crapware apps are a pain in the arse. Not needed once the device is on WiFi, but easential until then.
Re:Does not solve anything I need solved (Score:4, Interesting)
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You can provision a matter device using Home Assistant as the hub, which is entirely open source, including the app you would use to scan the QR code. You can even run a DIY thread border router using a dev board plugged into a raspberry PI. Whatever problems matter has, being closed or violating privacy isn't one of them. Yes I'm sure there are devices that are bad actors and phone home, but that isn't the fault of the protocol. If you really don't trust a device, put it on a local-only VLAN.
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I use home assistant, for my issue I think I need a separate Bluetooth module to allow provisioning. And I guess I need to find out which neighbor is fscking with our WiFi... but that is a separate problem.
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You can use your phone to provision using the HomeAssistant app. On Android at least the process is you power on the device, the phone pops open a prompt to scan a QR code, then you can the QR code and the device gets connected
Meh (Score:2)
Quoting Andrew S. Tanenbaum: (Score:2)
Matter with Apple Home (Score:5, Interesting)
And I almost forgot the four Onvis Smart Plug S4 (Matter over Thread) plugs that I recently purchased to replace some older Belkin Wemo smart plugs that have a known security vulnerability and have been discontinued. The Onvis Smart Plug S4s have worked reliably.
Just one question (Score:2)
Smartest home is a dumb one, can't be hacked (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
So use smart devices that don't connect to the Internet...
Honestly the paranoia of some of the luddites on this site...
Re: (Score:2)
How do you hack Matter? It's fully offline capable. And it's a standard system.
Whether or not smart devices support it is another thing altogether, but it's a standard that doesn't offer internet access.
It's just a protocol. It's supported by some really useful smart home software like Home Assistant. You let in what you want, or not at all.
Multi-controller (Score:2)
All I want is Zigbee or Zwave with support for multiple controllers for redundancy.