categories include lightbulbs, light switches, lighting controllers, plugs and outlets, door locks, thermostats and HVAC controllers, blinds and shades, home security sensors, garage door controllers, wireless access points, bridges, televisions, streaming video players, and smart home control devices. Matter 1.1 enhances support for Intermittently Connected Devices (ICDs). Sometimes called ‘sleepy devices,’ these are typically battery- powered devices like contact, motion, and temperature sensors as well as door locks and switches that need to conserve power for optimal operation and lifespan. The additional support reduces the likelihood that a device will be reported as offline when users or platforms interact with it. Smart lighting Smart lighting is arguably one of the most popular aspects of a smart home, allowing users to dim, brighten and even change the colour of their lights wirelessly. Smart lighting company WiZ was one of the first to update all its smart bulbs, lamps, and plugs manufactured in early 2021 or later to Matter. The latest version of the company’s app, WiZ v2, introduces a convenient feature that allows users to seamlessly transfer any compatible product to the new smart home standard within the app itself. Once migrated, these products can be easily integrated
by the interaction model into a prescriptive packed binary format Security layer that receives the encoded action frame for further encryption, ensuring data security and authentication Message framing and routing layer for payload format construction and message properties and routing information specification The IP framing and transport management layer sends the constructed payload to the underlying transport protocol for data IP management The project has set a goal of a twice-yearly release cycle. Matter 1.1 was released in May 2023 – the updates in 1.1 make it easier for device makers and developers to get started with Matter, and to more easily certify products they’ve developed and get them to users faster. There is also enhanced support for battery-operated devices which is an important feature across many smart home categories. Developers interested in learning more about these enhancements can access the software development kit (SDK) on GitHub [4] or download the specifications from the Alliance website [5] . Benefits of Matter Key benefits that Matter bring to smart home technology include advanced security, universal interoperability, seamless user
experiences, reliable connectivity, state-of-the-art control and compute, and intuitive sensing [6] . The development of the Matter standard has experienced the incorporation of a proven, robust, and pervasive security against data and privacy breaches. Moreover, Matter ensures that products from all project members will work seamlessly together, allowing easy control with a preferred system. Matter also enables the co-existence of several low-power wireless solutions to ensure reliable connectivity for the smart home network. Additionally, this new IoT standard ensures advanced control and computation through low-power, high-performance microcontrollers (MCUs) that utilise human-machine interface (HMI), AI, display, sensing, and security, and ensure intuitive sensing through highly accurate and reliable smart device situational awareness. Smart home applications This section looks at some of the Matter-enabled products currently on the market and how some of the biggest brands in consumer electronics have deployed the new technology, which runs on supported IP networks like Wi-Fi and Thread (Figure 5). Matter’s 1.0 version supports a subset (albeit a significant one) of smart home product categories and the features within each. These
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