Google’s open-source industry standard for smart home to roll out this year

Google at the annual I/O conference has announced that it will launch the open-source industry-standard, Matter, sometime this year for smart home users.

Developed in collaboration with Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA), formerly known as the ZigBee Alliance, Matter was created to replace multiple IoT standards with a single standard that will make home devices from different brands interoperable with each other. Currently, there are over 14 standards for IoT devices such as Bluetooth, ZigBee, Z-Wave, WiFi, AMQP, CoAP, DDS, LoRa and LoRaWAN, and XMPP.

The lack of agreement on a common standard is one of the reasons for the lack of compatibility between smart home devices by different brands. According to Google, there are nine smart devices in an average smart home. The problem is that most users buy them from different brands. Though they can be controlled separately with their companion apps, most of them don’t work together by default. With Matter, Google and CSA’s aim is to allow users to setup, connect and control all devices from a single app.

Also read: 5 key announcements from Google I/O 2022

What makes Matter different is that it has the backing of over 200 companies that are members of the CSA. It includes Apple, Google, Samsung and Amazon, and several other IoT companies.

At the I/O, Google said that it will update its Nest devices to make them compatible with Matter. It will allow users to connect all Matter-enabled devices from any brand to Google Home, and control them locally as well as remotely using the Google Home app or Google Assistant. Matter devices can also be connected and controlled with Android devices using Fast Pair technology which is commonly used to connect to wireless headphones. 

Google Home speaker, Google Mini, Nest Mini, Nest Hub (1st and 2nd gen), Nest Hub Max, Nest Audio, and Nest WiFi are some of the smart home devices by Google that will support Matter and can be used as controllers to control all the devices connected to it.  

To help developers and brands build a single app or device that will work with all devices, Google has announced a new Google Home Developer Center. It will also release a Google Home Developer Console on June 30 that will include two new software development kits (SDKs) that will make it easy to build Matter devices and apps.