What Is A Matter Smart Home (Simply Explained)

So it came to my attention in the last video that I might have jumped the gun a little bit when talking about matter and what it is, because apparently a lot of people still don't even know what the matter standard is when it comes to smart home. So what we're gonna do in this video is that I'm gonna give kind of like a high level of what matter is, what it's capable of, where it's leading, and what changes it makes for your smart home. But first we need to talk about what is matter. In its simplest form, the matter standard is a new way for all of your smart home devices to communicate with each other. It also promises to make setting up of new devices much easier than it used to be. However, you might've seen in my last video that as of right now, that is not the case. But let's take a look at what matter promises to offer. Local control is probably one of the biggest reasons that most people are going to be drawn to matter. Instead of your devices being controlled by different cloud services, depending on the brand that you buy, it can now all be controlled locally depending on the ecosystem you want to run it on. So say for example, if you want to run it on the Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple's HomeKit, Samsung SmartThings, or a few more out there, but essentially you can pick the ecosystem that you want to run it on. Also another benefit to matter is you can run your devices on all of the ecosystems if you'd like to do that. So in the past, you've probably noticed on the boxes of your smart home devices that it either works with Alexa or Google Assisted, or maybe Samsung SmartThings, or maybe even rarely Apple's HomeKit. And that's something that you would need to search for depending on the ecosystem that you have. If you have Apple's HomeKit, you have to make sure that's on the label if you want it to work with your system. Now you don't have to do that anymore. As long as it says matter on the box or has received matter compatibility via a firmware update, then that device can be used in any of the ecosystems that you want. And the cool thing is that all of those ecosystems will tie together. Say if I take a device and I connect it to my Alexa smart home, and then I take that same device and I connect it to Google Assistant, and we'll just say Apple HomeKit too. If I make a change, like turning on a light bulb in one of the ecosystems, all of the other ecosystems will be able to tell that that light has been turned on. If I change the color of that light, it'll trickle down through all the other ecosystems too. So essentially all of the different voice assistants and smart displays will work cohesively as one major ecosystem in your house. Now matter uses several different types of technology to communicate with all these devices together. So they're gonna use wifi, ethernet, or thread. It can also use Bluetooth, but that is just going to be for the initial setup of the device. Now let's talk a little bit about thread because that is going to be kind of the backbone that matter is built on. And the reason for that is that thread is a low power wireless mesh network, meaning that all of your thread devices are connected to each other. So if one goes down, your devices will connect to the next closest one, essentially doing some self healing. Now, another cool thing about the thread mesh network is that it's going to optimize its setup, meaning that it's going to take the most efficient way to connect everything together. As you add more devices on, it will self regulate its connections, making sure that everything is running smoothly. Another big benefit of thread is that it is energy efficient. This is really gonna help your battery powered devices last longer. Now to get started with a MatterSmart home, you're gonna need a thread border router. This is the device that is essentially going to be the hub of your home and control all of your local devices. It will also be the device that will connect it to the internet. So that way you can use your apps when you're not at home to also control your smart home. Now there are gonna be three types of thread devices. There's gonna be a border router, a thread leader, and then also an endpoint. So any thread device that you add to your smart home is gonna either become a router or an end device. A router is gonna be a device that plugs into power, such as a light bulb or a smart plug. And an end device is a battery operated device, such as a motion sensor or maybe a door lock. The first router on your network is going to become the leader and that is going to direct your other routers. Now, if the leader fails, another router on your network will take its spot and become the new leader. Like we mentioned, it's a self healing network. Now a thread network can support up to 250 devices, 64 of those devices being routers. Now, current options for thread border routers are going to be the Amazon Echo fourth generation that I picked up in the last video. We also have options like Apple HomePod mini speakers or Apple TVs. We also have Amazon Eros mesh Wi-Fi systems, Google Nest Hub Max, Google Nest Hub second generation, and then also Google Wi-Fi and the Wi-Fi Pro. Now there are gonna be a lot more devices coming out, but as of right now, those are the ones that you can use for a thread border router. Now, one thing to keep in mind is that not all devices are supported by Matter right now. General device types that are supported right now are going to be plugs, light bulbs, light switches, door locks, thermostats. We've got blinds and shades, security sensors, and streaming devices, you know, something like a Roku. Now here are some devices that are currently not supported by the Matter standard, but will be coming later down the road. We've got things like security cameras, some smart speakers, we've got home appliances, robot vacuums, smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, garage door controllers, some wireless access points, environmental sensors, and then things like ambient motion or present sensors. So as of right now, none of that is covered, but that's something that can be coming later down the road. Now with all of these categories, it doesn't mean that all light bulbs or all switches are Matter compatible. You do have to look for that symbol on the box to make sure that it is. And something to make it even more confusing is that some of the devices that you probably currently have in your house right now are going to be getting a firmware update to make them Matter compatible. But how can you tell? That's something that is still just really murky with this whole setup right here. If you watched the video last week where I tried to set up some Matter products strictly in the Amazon ecosystem, you saw that there was definitely some struggles, but Matter promises to make this much more straight line and easier to set up. In theory, when you set up a Matter device, there is going to be a QR code to scan or a Matter number that you will plug into your Matter Smart Home app. But like I mentioned, also Bluetooth can work with this too. And I did experience that all I had to do was plug in a light bulb and turn it on. And then when I opened up my app, it automatically detected that that light was ready to be paired with my system. So it's a little confusing on which method you're gonna use. Are you gonna scan a QR code? Are you gonna type in a number? Or is that device just automatically gonna pop up and add into your system? Like I also mentioned, as of right now, testing out the Matter system, at least in the Amazon ecosystem, I have no idea what devices are connected via Matter and which ones aren't. And that's really confusing for me as I'm going through and setting these up. I hope this is something that comes down the road. I would like to see some either Matter section in these apps and maybe some of the apps have it and I just don't realize it, but at least in the Amazon ecosystem, I would love to see like a Matter section where I can go through and look at all of my Matter devices. That's not there right now, but we are going to be diving deeper into Matter. And hopefully it is going to be getting better and more streamlined down the road. Anyway, I hope this video was helpful. I hope you guys have a little bit better understanding of what Matter is, what it's offering, what the promise is, even though we're not quite there yet. If this video is helpful, give it a thumbs up and let me know that you liked it. As always, don't forget to subscribe for more content like this. I'll see you guys in the next video.