Series 10 – Episode 9 – Why Matter matters

Matter is the new proprietary standard for home automation that is royalty-free and promises reliable, secure connectivity.

Schneider Electric and Silicon Labs have been involved with Matter from the very beginning. They are both members of the Connectivity Standards Alliance – an organisation consisting of hundreds of members that create, maintain, and deliver open global standards for the Internet of Things (IoT).

“Schneider has been an active promotor of open standards … for a very long time already,” notes Faber. “We have a long history of interoperable standards, and the reason is because we do believe that connectivity is one of the main enablers of energy savings in a home.”

“We’ve seen the evolution of the industry overall and what we’ve seen is that at the very early days, we were just trying to make sure that radio signals work together,” said Alexander. “Ultimately, we want the devices in all their capacities to work together.”

But what is Matter and how does it work?

“Its main goal is to bring together a lot of these disparate ecosystems, device makers and mobile app developers into the same room,” said Alexander.

“Matter has been designed per the core values of simplicity, interoperability, reliability and security,” said Faber. “[Currently], you cannot link multiple systems together and they will understand each other. This is one thing that Matter has addressed.”

Schneider Electric has already integrated Matter within its home and buildings portfolio and Silicon Labs has many tools to help developers get started with building Matter products.

“The onboarding of Matter devices is really one of the differentiating factors – it’s really simple,” notes Faber. “It’s just as easy as switching on the device, open up your favourite Matter app, scan the QR code on the product and you’re done.”

Faber and Alexander go on to talk about the device categories that Matter supports, how it enhances the security of IoT devices and how they both see the standard evolving in the future.

To hear more about Matter and much more, you can listen to Electronic Specifier’s interview with Arseni Faber and Rob Alexander on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.