The SmartThings hubs will be upgraded to Matter this month

Matter: A Framework for the Interoperability of the Home and Office of Smart Things in the Age of Internet and Other Cloud-based Devices

The Smart Things Home Life services include energy management, pet care, and air quality, and are available in the Smart Things app. These services only work with the devices from the top brands, and they are only able to monitor the energy use of all devices. Jung believes that more devices will be supported in these services. “We seek to become an open platform so people can benefit from using SmartThings with all the smart devices they have in their home,” she says.

Matter is a new smart home interoperability standard that provides a common language for smart home devices to communicate locally in your home without relying on a cloud connection. It uses three wireless protocols; wi-fi and thread, as well as smart lighting, smart plugs and switches, and smart thermostats.

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 across 16 development platforms (operating systems and chipsets) are working through certification, and you can expect many more soon.

The company received its certification early in October, a week after Matter launched, according to an interview with Jaeyeon Jung. The Connectivity Standards Alliance confirmed that it began issuing certifications for Matter this week, and that the first one to do so was SAMSUNG.

The bad news is that the Smart Things v3 hubs and $35 dongle will not be used to make Thread border routers. The software was used to run the two devices side by side, using the same hardware platform. “Once we roll out the software, SmartThings v3 hubs will support both Zigbee and Matter over Thread devices, along with the dongle, too.”

Jung says they will be able to control Thread devices using a Thread border routers built into another device if v2 hubs aren’t able to be upgraded to Thread. If you do not add a device, the software-based hub in the smart TVs, monitors, and Family Hub fridges won’t work.

Matter is making compatible devices less of an issue in the smart home, which may cause consumers to use SmartThings over another platform. (SmartThings arguably built its brand on being the most open platform of the major players).

The Nanoleaf Essentials Line: Upgrade to a Thread Mesh Panel for Wireless Sensors, Lighting, Shades, and Shades

Nanoleaf’s existing lighting panel products — such as the Nanoleaf Shapes, Elements, and Lines — are not currently planned to be upgraded to Matter, says Chu, and neither will the existing products in the Essentials line, which include an A19 bulb and light strip.

Pricing will range from $19.99 to $99.99, and all the new products will be RGBW, capable of displaying over 16 million color options, including tunable whites with color temperatures ranging from 2700–6500K. The company made the announcement at the Matter launch event in Amsterdam this week.

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

“Our existing products already work with all the platforms, so it’s not a priority for us, as it doesn’t change much for the consumer,” says Chu. (Its Essentials line does require a Nanoleaf Thread border router to work with Google Home and Alexa.) Any Thread-enabled products in your home can now be connected to the internet and other wireless networks through the currentnanoleaf shapes, elements, and lines.

As a Thread border router, the Station will support any device that uses Thread, one of the key wireless protocols Matter is built on, alongside Wi-Fi. Thread is a low-power, low-latency mesh network primarily used for low-bandwidth devices such as sensors, lighting, and shades. If you’re looking to extend your Thread mesh network, having multiple in the home could be a good way to go, because the Station is currently the cheapest border routers you can buy.

The Station: A new Hub for Smart Things in the Home and at the end of the smart home revolution – first look at Samsung at CES

Three years after getting out of the smart home hardware game, Samsung is back with a new hub. By making a wireless charging pad, you can put a device hub in your home.

The Station will be available in black or white in Korea and the US before the end of the year. It’s designed around Samsung’s existing wireless charging pad but is entirely new hardware and software.

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 and inexpensive to have one of these in each main room of your home as somewhere to drop your phone while simultaneously turning on your lights — either by pressing the button or just by putting your phone on the charger.

There is now a small button on the device, as well as smart home radios. When you press this little SmartThings logo, it can control scenes or devices set up in the SmartThings app. You have three choices: single-click, double-click and long-press.

It is possible to use the charging state of the phones to initiate 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 works with the SmartThings Find service to help you locate your gadgets. 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 acts as a device finder, so you can always find your phone, tablets, watches, and earbuds. A new function can send a notification when a tag or device leaves or returns home, and it is continually scanned for.

It’s also a Thread Border router alongside a Zigbee SmartThings hub and has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radios built in. There is no Z-Wave support. You will have to buy an Aeotec Hub if you want support for your Z-Wave devices.

The Tapo Smart Plug: An Affordable Smart Plug for Smart Home Automation in the Cloud and at Smart Home from an Android or iOS Platform with Matter

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. For iPhone users, bear in mind that for now, it will only work in Apple Home and SmartThings through Matter. You will have to wait for the compatibility of the two devices.

To use it in Matter, you have to set it up on a Matter platform first, then pair it to the Tapo app. You could also just use the Tapo app and connect it to Alexa, Google, and Apple’s Siri Shortcuts from there. But if you aren’t going to use Matter, buy one of TP-Link’s less expensive plugs. (See below for more on why you might want a Matter plug)

It may be worth the wait, as the Eve plug offers detailed energy usage stats (although these are only accessible from the Eve app). There is no energy monitoring in the Tapo plug. You can fit two stacked on top of each other with the Eve’s compact form factor. It supports up to 1,800 watts and 15 amps.

There is not an energy monitor available, but you can see how often the plug has been used by day, week and month. The Tapo app has an auto-update feature where you can set a time of day the plug will check for and download any firmware updates. If you set this up, you will not need to use the Tapo app again and you can just rely on your smart home platform app to control it.

The cloud is where most non-Matter smart plugs rely to be controlled. This means creating multiple accounts, logging into those accounts across platforms, and downloading “skills” (in the case of Alexa) to link devices. In my experience with the cloud, response times and automations can often be slow, and when you lose internet, your smart home breaks.

You can use a Matter plug to share your plug with any platform of your choice, from your computer to your phone. There isn’t any need for a cloud. There is no account setup required. 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, so you will need a Wi-Fi connection and a Matter controller (hub) to set it up. This is not the same as most smart plugs that have no other hardware.

From here, I should have been able to add the plug to Alexa and Google Home by generating a pairing code from Apple Home and entering it into the corresponding apps on an Android phone (at least until Amazon and Google’s Matter iOS apps arrive). According to TP-Link, a known flaw in theAlexa app doesn’t accept pairs from other platforms and that didn’t work. It didn’t work to past the code from Apple into the Home app on the other platform. I was eventually able to pair it to Google Home using the SmartThings app on an Android phone.

The final step was generating a pairing QR code from the Google Home app on Android and scanning that into Apple Home with an iPhone. Now, the plug was on all four platforms.

I could turn on the plug, turn it off, then turn it back on by using either of the above methods. Each app recorded the new status of the device within a second, and was the only one behind the others that did not register the state in the app.

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.

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

Connecting Your Smart Plug with the Matter Ecosystem: How to Add a New Code to a Multi-Mode App for the Android Operating System

Matter has a main selling point of multi- admin. It is not likely to be an edge use case because most people will use one or two platforms, but it should still work. And as of today, it’s just not ready.

Amazon doesn’t even have an app for Apple’s mobile device operating system. The device was found by the operating system 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 have an app on my phone that I don’t need a manufacturer app for.

I wanted to use it. So, I closed out of this option and opened the Alexa app on the Pixel. 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 was asked if there was a Matter logo. I proceeded to see what I could find. (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 Connectivity Standards Alliance (the organization behind Matter) tells me this is by design. The original code doesn’t work anymore. 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. In every app I tried the pairing process from, the steps to do so were buried in the settings — almost like they don’t want you to find them! 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 simple.

It seems more complicated than it needs to be. It failed immediately when I tried to add the tapo plug to the smart things. I had to go back to the Home app to pair up, because “SmartThings” was an option to pair to. This opened the app and made it easy for me to plug in.

The reason I chose a version of Apple Home was that Matter is built into the operating system of the iPhone. The plug was added to my account but not to my Home app, and its sharing credentials were stored in Keychain. In theory, this means if I wanted to add it to another app on iOS, the data should transfer automatically, so I wouldn’t need to copy and paste codes.

The Eve plug is a good option if you want to benefit from the features of Thread. Thread offers a local wireless mesh network with lower latency and faster response times than Zigbee and Bluetooth, and it uses less power than Wi-Fi. In my testing, non-Matter Thread devices from Eve have proven to be very responsive. But in Matter so far, it’s been a different story, with Thread devices dropping offline frequently.

There are not a lot of Thread border routers talking to each other yet. If you own an Apple TV and a Nest Hub Max, there will be Thread networks in your home. This causes problems. Thread-over-Matter is still not up to snuff despite the fact that Amazon, Apple, and several others tell me they are working on it. I will be writing more about this soon.

The spring is when Amazon says it will have an iPad app. Google tells me its version is “coming soon,” and we know several companies (including Eve and Nanoleaf) have slated the release of their new Matter products for late March or early summer. As for Thread, it will be more widely available as well, since Amazon has said it will enable the thread on its fourth-gen echo and Eero wi-fi routers this spring.

“We will take some more time before making the software update to thePhillips Hue Bridge available to all consumers to invest in really getting it right and delivering to the expectations of consumers.”

There is no new schedule for the Hue Matter update. If you decide to sign up for a developer account, you will be able to try the Hue lighting products with Matter.

The delay doesn’t represent a disaster 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. Companies working together to support Matter as a concept still have a long way to go, although it is an illustration that may be ready.