Series 13 – Episode 2 – Driving Matter deployment in non-consumer applications

The Connectivity Standards Alliance announced the release of the Matter 1.0 specification and the opening of the Matter certification programme back in October 2022.

Matter is really a standard focused on the smart home, to start enabling people to bring devices from any provider, any manufacturer, and make it work with any of the ecosystems that they like and prefer.

“It’s been a very interesting road [since its launch] in terms of getting many companies from different backgrounds together and get them on the same page, working together,” said Alexander.

The logo is now something that people recognise and a lot of people are now comfortable scanning their phones and bringing the devices into their homes.

“One of the big feedbacks that we got was we need to release as often as we can, so Matter and CSA decided to release twice a year to add new device types and add new features,” noted Alexander.

The focus so far has been on consumer applications but there is also other non-consumer applications that Matter would be suitable for.

“I’d say it’s very early days for those kinds of situations,” said Alexander. “I think definitely Matter’s security and it’s wireless focus will enable that flexibility that Industrials call for.”

Alexander sees some particular innovation happening in cameras. IoT is full of cameras, and this has been a huge boon to all sorts of monitoring applications. But, right now, all those monitoring applications are siloed to a particular ecosystem. Matter could offer some improvements here.

Alexander goes on to talk about security in industrial applications and what the next big thing for the specification will be.

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