According to executives at Eve Systems, Matter is going to make the biggest leap into data for smart home deployments, and it becomes essential technology for smarter offices, factories and workspaces.
Make homes (and offices) smart without friction
Eve today introduced a new version of its popular indoor air quality monitor, Eve Room. The enhanced product adds support for HomeKit on Thread and is Eve's XNUMXth product to support Thread.
And this is essential due to the fact that Thread is one of the natively supported standards in Matter, the supported protocol developed by Apple, Google, Amazon, Samsung, Eve, and two hundred other industry companies.
The company will introduce a Thread-enabled engine to monitor shades and drapes in January and plans to accept Thread on its devices in early XNUMX.
"Thread has been an incredible success for us, and in the not too distant future, a Thread network in your home is going to be as common as Wi-Fi," Jerome Gackel, director of Eve Systems, told me.
He calls the resolution to incorporate Thread devices a "scalable" resolution, meaning that smart homes built today will work with other devices and platforms using Matter tomorrow. (Gackel expects the new standard to be released around June XNUMX.)
What are yarn and material?
Matter / Thread are industry standard smart family network solutions that solve certain major challenges in deploying connected devices. Today's users need to use Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to support the networks of these devices in their offices or homes, and neither of these standards is good for handling dozens of devices.
Another challenge for the deployment of smart devices is the incompatibility of platforms. We have many free devices and, although some work with certain platforms, they do not work with others. HomeKit, to serve as an example, is hampered by the lack of free products for the platform. You can purchase a smart device that requires direct access to its manufacturer's cloud service before being able to incorporate any kind of automation, and certain solutions work well with (to serve as an example) a Google hub, but they will not work. with Alexa or HomeKit. It creates a lot of confusion in the market.
This confusion also affects the industry.
Consider smart meters for water and electricity. In the first wave, these were installed in each and every part at a certain cost, but different distributors used incompatible technologies. This meant that many of the desired benefits of these systems never materialized.
This is what happens when industries evolve without standards.
Friction reduction, one standard at a time
This kind of confusion is easily solved with Thread and Matter. The latter is based on IP, while the former acts as a kind of mesh network between devices that allows each and every one of those present to communicate reliably with the home control center (a HomePod or an Apple TV in Apple's implementation).
The fact that Thread and Matter build their mesh network to assist the devices to communicate is also a huge advantage, as it reduces any inconvenience you may find when using them over Wi-Fi.
Look beyond the smart home and you'll find that Thread is already being used in certain industrial and IoT applications, and many construction companies are looking to incorporate the technology into new construction.
Gackel thinks there is an emerging opportunity to create smart office solutions based on Thread and Matter. There are reasons for this: when people started using smartphones, they quickly insisted on using them at work; think that people will want exactly the same connected comfort that they enjoy at home - free for them at the office.
Thread and Matter is going to make this considerably more possible.
Simple difficulty takes work
It is not simple to connect smart devices from multiple manufacturers to let them work on multiple platforms.
As Eve Systems explains, “Thread is based on the universally incorporated Internet Protocol version six (IPv6) standard, which makes it extremely robust. A Thread network does not depend on a central hub, such as a bridge, so there is no single point of failure. And Thread has the ability to self-heal: if a node (or an accessory in your Thread network) becomes free, the data bundles will automatically choose an alternate path and the network will simply keep running.
The privacy trick
Eve has another advantage in the smarthome space.
While many vendors in this space rely on some kind of cloud service, Eve does not. Like Apple, Eve believes in limiting the amount of data that smart devices comprise, which is why the 2 companies coexist so happily on HomeKit.
Eve's solutions already operate privately, and the company thinks that when Matter is launched, it will be able to target its solutions to non-Apple users due to the fact that it promises privacy.
Eve is a part of the early adoption programs of Google, Samsung, and Amazon. Therefore, your products should work properly when Matter is released. Eve has always and in all circumstances worked in close cooperation with Apple.
“We believe that Matter is going to push space forward by the fact that it eliminates a lot of friction and makes the products simple to use. This is going to lay the groundwork for the smart home and let companies like ours focus on delivering great products, ”Gackel said.
I believe these standards will also unlock company-wide deployments, allowing even smaller companies to start realizing the benefits of IoT on premises.
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