Taking Matter(s) into your own hands

TAKING MATTER(S) INTO YOUR OWN HANDS

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What Matter set out to do in 2021, when the standard was first launched, was regarded as ambitious: create a unifying standard that would mean, regardless of the smart home device or manufacturer, they’d be able to communicate with each other in an ecosystem. The smart home is not a new concept, but definitions hinged on a home with smart devices, like locks or lightbulbs, that would operate independently, because manufacturers hadn’t designed their devices to be interoperable. The smart home was recognised early on for the advantages it would bring the end user: such as convenience, safety, and quality of life. Imagine, for example, an elderly person who lives on their own and has limited mobility. Using a smart home hub, they could switch on lights, adjust the temperature of their home, and lock their doors with the touch of a button. Where manual tasks might have proved difficult, Matter-enabled devices could overhaul them altogether. An emerging use case for a smart home is energy management, particularly pertinent as the cost of energy has skyrocketed in recent years. Upon talking to industry experts actively working on Matter, it became clear that the standard is unique for being a manufacturer- driven initiative where competing companies banded together in

recognition of the fact that making their devices interoperable was more important than their competition, to fully realise the smart home. This is not to suggest that the smart home has been fully realised. The problem Matter is looking to solve is not easy, for a number of reasons. Although each version of the standard – 1.4 being the most recent release – added new device types, not all ecosystems supported these features – as Finn Boetius from Nordic Semiconductor pointed out, ecosystems support window blinds but not the command to tilt these blinds back – an example of the complexity that exists. Certification also came up as an issue in the course of writing this article, as something manufacturers mentioned was a current hurdle for them to overcome, adding time and complexity. The most important element of the standard – collaboration among the manufacturers – is already happening, and the Matter-enabled devices already on the market have demonstrated that interoperability is no longer merely proof of concept, but here now.

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THE HISTORY OF MATTER The Matter standard was created by the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) which can be traced back to 2019. Matter 1.3 created support for water and energy management devices – an area the CSA is moving into THE EVOLUTION OF MATTER Interoperability among devices doesn’t come without risks. From its inception, Matter has had to be very security-conscious KEEPING THE STANDARD SECURE Depending on who I asked, what they had to say about what excited them about Matter or their key takeaways varied. WHAT’S EXCITING ABOUT MATTER? FINAL THOUGHTS Matter, when it was introduced in 2021, was seeking to make smart home devices interoperable.

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TAKING MATTER(S) INTO YOUR OWN HANDS

At a glance, Matter’s ambition is to achieve interoperability between smart home devices, regardless of the manufacturer, so in an ideal, utopian scenario, you can ask your Amazon Alexa to switch on your Philips Hue lightbulb without the push of a button. But scratch the surface, and you’ll find a network of companies working together under one unified purpose: to realise the smart home of the future. Because the standard has grown to include other device types, like smart lighting, which is a popular format, as well as microwave ovens and electric vehicle charging support, more scenarios have become possible, and the possibility of a fully automated smart home has grown even closer. This is what the Matter standard is actively working towards. The concept of the smart home wasn’t conceived at the release of the Matter standard, in 2021. Discourse about what smart homes would look like, the benefits they would bring, and even whether they represented a fundamental yielding of autonomy from humans to machines – and subsequent social anxiety about the role technology would play in our lives (see Figure 1) – goes back several years. For brevity, the focus

of this article will be on how the introduction of Matter has facilitated significant growth and development in smart homes, as well as shaped the understanding of what a smart home looks like – with brief mention to the notion of an ‘autonomous home’ representing a further evolution. In order to understand how Matter has supported, and is supporting the smart home, it helps to contextualise it by looking at the history of the smart home to begin with. Conversations around smart homes have been happening for decades, but without a unifying standard, what a smart home meant rested less on unified communications between devices, and more on how installing these devices, such as smart lighting or smart locks, were providing new functionalities such as energy management, greater convenience, and safety. Smart home devices were bought from different brands, with no interoperability, and although there was evident interest for how smart homes could help with energy management [1], in hindsight, growth was hindered. A survey conducted in 2016 [1] on the benefits and risks of smart home technologies (‘SHTs’) not only demonstrated that smart homes were a “priority area” for energy

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Figure 1: Prospective users of smart homes from the 2016 survey were more likely to perceive potential risks of smart home technologies

planning and national policy, but that SHT developers were “recognising the challenge of gaining the trust and confidence of prospective users”. The most significant barriers to adoption reported were cost, lack of awareness, and privacy concerns, alongside security, reliability, and the “interoperability of different technologies”. One conclusion drawn from the survey [1] was that respondents, while citing their concerns, were not averse to adoption, and that smart home developers could go a long way in reassuring them of the benefits of adoption by designing secure tech: 80% of respondents, however, agreed or strongly agreed that SHTs should be designed to be reliable, easy to use, controllable, and easy to override and guarantee privacy, confidentiality, and secure data storage. ENTER MATTER. As an open-source project, the standard invites anyone working on Matter to view

and modify the standard accordingly. The value of having an open-source project means the developers and manufacturers who are implementing the standard in smart home devices are able to feed back on what works well, and what doesn’t; what areas have room for improvement and what perhaps needs to be focused on for the next version. The steady releases of Matter versions has shown the Connectivity Standards Alliance’s (CSA) own desire to improve the standard, partly by responding to what people are looking for from their smart homes. For this technical article, I spoke to Chris LaPre, Head of Technology at the CSA; Chetan Joshi, Lead Product Manager at Panasonic Industry Europe; Steve Hanna, Distinguished Engineer at Infineon Technologies; Sujata Neidig, Marketing Director and Neal Kondel, Director of Product Marketing and Management at NXP Semiconductors; Finn Boetius, Product Marketing Manager at Nordic

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A Philips Hue lightbulb, a Matter-enabled smart home device

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Semiconductor; Matt Maupin, Senior Product Manager and Rob Alexander, Principal Product Manager at Silicon Labs; Gweltas Radenac, Business Line Director - IoT at SEALSQ, a WISeKey subsidiary; and Mark Tekippe, VP of Product and Growth at Samsung SmartThings. Interviewing industry experts working in the Matter space showed that we aren’t necessarily where we want to be with the standard – however, everybody that I spoke to was incredibly optimistic about the standard and stressed that what Matter is trying to achieve is not something that is easily done in a day. As Kondel from NXP Semiconductor put it succinctly: “These are hard problems to tackle … The big thing is, what can we do as an industry to make it so that consumers want to buy these products and have a smart home?” This is the big-ticket question. For smart homes to work, they have to offer devices that are easy to set up and onboard, (an especially significant step as struggling to set things up can switch people off from purchasing Matter-compliant devices in the future) interoperability that is seamless, so devices do communicate with one another as intended, and have practical applications that end users would apply in their day-to-day lives. Just because someone could, in theory, set up a smart TV to notify a house owner when their dishes are done, doesn’t mean that they would. The overall aim was for me to understand not only how companies are individually approaching Matter, but what the experience has been like across the board;

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“It had some similarities to what Zigbee was then, but for their architectural purposes they wanted the stack to be IP-based, which is what the [Google] Nest was at the time,” he said. Zigbee is a wireless mesh networking standard based on the IEEE 802.15.4 standard, created by the CSA and officially launched in 2004. The thought process behind the standard was to create a low-powered mesh network covering devices within 10-100 metres that was more cost-effective than operating on Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. It demonstrated, in practice, the value of having a single standard on which devices could operate. The founding members of the then-named Zigbee Alliance included Philips, Honeywell, and Samsung, “bounded in the sense of aiming to create a secure, reliable, and low-power wireless technology suited for a wide range of devices … including smart home devices”. [3] Widening this outlook means looking at the common challenges IoT companies were facing at the time, notably interoperability – or a lack thereof. The explosion in smart home devices, perhaps best represented by smart speakers and their growth – which in 2024 were estimated to be owned by almost half of 45–54-year-olds [4] – was cause for excitement, as lightbulbs that could be turned on using an app or activating a speaker using your voice were coming onto the market. However, without a standard to facilitate communication between all of these devices, consumers not only had to buy devices from different brands to build their smart home ecosystem (AKA ‘a fabric’ in industry

from the perspective of the Connectivity Standards Alliance, but also from their members’ perspectives, which includes smart home device manufacturers and module vendors. One key takeaway I learned was that Matter exemplified a project where companies, even if they were direct competitors in the market [2], were willing to put aside any differences to work collaboratively on a standard that is anticipated to positively impact the development of the smart home. THE HISTORY OF MATTER The Matter standard was created by the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) which can be traced back to 2019. In December 2019, then-named Zigbee Alliance, which changed its name to CSA in 2021, along with its member companies Amazon, Apple, Google, and Samsung, went public with the Connected Home over IP (‘CHIP’) project. This would be renamed to Matter in 2021, along with the CSA. Matter is notable for the mission it champions in addressing interoperability among smart home devices but also for the collective efforts of the CSA’s member companies in working to improve the standard in spite of being competing organisations, a dynamic referred to as ‘coopetition’, a blend of competition and collaboration. Matter is interesting for providing “a unique example of platform ecosystem coordination and collaboration”. [2] According to Chris LaPre, Head of Technology at CSA, behind the scenes, its member companies wanted to work on an Internet protocol (IP)-based stack and approached the CSA.

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jargon) but manufacturers had to puzzle out the solutions alone.

In hindsight, without a unifying standard, manufacturers were getting bogged down in the technical difficulties and consumers were being put off from smart home fabrics. In essence, it defeated the purpose of a ‘smart home’ if you were left to figure out how to connect your devices up. As Deepal Mehta, Senior Director of Marketing and Business Development at InnoPhase IoT once told me: “The beauty of the engineering is that you hide all the complexity from the customer.” AKA, even with Matter now on the market, developers and manufacturers still have to put a great deal of work into making sure a device works from day one, or risk putting off end users. EARLY INVOLVEMENT IN MATTER Matter had early ambitions to create interoperability between devices and although it was an industry-led effort pioneered by Amazon, Apple, Google and Samsung, other member companies of the CSA decided to get involved. Why? “I was so thrilled when I heard about Matter,” said Steve Hanna, Distinguished Engineer at Infineon Technologies, an early supporter and advocate for Matter, as he saw what the standard was capable of achieving. Today, Infineon is a promoter-level member of the CSA, which is the highest level of membership, and is actively involved in Matter. Hanna said his early advocacy for the standard was received well by Infineon, who he said was “100% supportive”, and explained that Matter reminded him of an

THE EXPLOSION IN SMART HOME DEVICES, PERHAPS BEST REPRESENTED BY SMART SPEAKERS AND THEIR GROWTH – WHICH IN 2024 WERE ESTIMATED TO BE OWNED BY ALMOST HALF OF 45–54-YEAR-OLDS

agreeing on what the socket would look like, and you would have to make five different versions of the same light bulb just to go into five different sockets.” For companies like Silicon Labs, who were involved from the beginning, a standard like Matter was recognised for building on the foundations provided by the work that had been invested to make wireless signals work properly – at least, according to Rob Alexander, Principal Product Manager. Alexander is also on the board of directors at the CSA. “I was involved in Zigbee for 20 years and that was trying to make wireless signals work for the longest time, at a very basic level, and then at a higher level, trying to make the networking work for an embedded device,” he explained. “At the time, these devices were not capable of running IP or standard routing protocols … It became a very well-known problem, and Z-Wave and Zigbee solved it, even Bluetooth mesh solved it. “I WAS INVOLVED IN ZIGBEE FOR 20 YEARS AND THAT WAS TRYING TO MAKE WIRELESS SIGNALS WORK FOR THE LONGEST TIME, AT A VERY BASIC LEVEL, AND THEN AT A HIGHER LEVEL, TRYING TO MAKE THE NETWORKING WORK FOR AN EMBEDDED DEVICE"

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Rob Alexander, Principal Product Manager, Silicon Labs

early experience of using the Internet.

“I could see all the different IoT companies were working on similar problems, but in slightly different ways … everyone had their own spin on it, reminding me of the early days of networking,” he explained. “Back in the 1990s, we came together to develop the Internet and that gave us the ability to have interoperability, no matter which product you had and from which company. “I could see the same thing happening with Matter. Now more than 700 companies are coming together to solve these problems.” Pre-Matter, said Hanna, “every company had its own proprietary way of building IoT. Imagine that if you’re going to build an IoT-controlled light bulb it has to support five or six different protocols because every operator would have their own way of doing things.

“In essence, the standards evolved to

“It’s like making a light bulb before

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could solve the issue of interoperability in smart homes.

see what more could be done to provide better use cases and support for the industry.” As a result, the work that had been done on wireless signals helped to provide a building block for Matter. “It was able to draw upon the huge wealth of knowledge in the industry of how to make wireless work,” said Alexander. “It had use of Thread as a network transport for the low-cost side, but also then Wi-Fi as the high-bandwidth powerhouse it was. And then, of course, devices had evolved to the point where they could natively run IP, and that worked really well for them.” For people like Alexander, the work on making wireless signals work showed that these problems could be solved, and by virtue, seeing in Matter a standard that

According to Gweltas Radenac, Business Line Director - IoT at SEALSQ, who launched an IoT development board with Matter compatibility: “Our job was not relatively easy, but clear from the beginning … The beauty of the Matter protocol is [it’s] open source. Everybody can use it.”

TAKING THE LEAD FROM CUSTOMERS

Some of the people I spoke to about the standard were keen to stress that their approach to Matter, the CSA included, was informed by their customers’ requests (in the case of the CSA, their member companies). Even the inception of Matter happened because Google,

Silicon Labs’ multiprotocol wireless SoCs which support Matter connectivity

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provided a starting point to build out a set of foundational features such as temperature setting and monitoring. “We wanted to expand the definition of what a traditional smart home was,” explained LePre. “Now we have releases every six months.” THE EVOLUTION OF MATTER At the time of talking to LePre, the latest version of Matter was 1.3, which created support for water and energy management devices – an area LePre shared that he saw the CSA moving into. “Energy management is a critical spot for us to be going into,” he said. “We support electric vehicle charging equipment and energy reporting, so all devices now can report their energy usage.” Following on from this, the CSA announced Matter 1.4, which, alongside bringing improvements for a multi- ecosystem user experience and introducing Matter certifiable Home Routers and Access Points (HRAP), also expanded its energy management capabilities for users to save on their energy usage. The CSA said that it represented a step further in its journey, as energy reporting was introduced in 1.3, while 1.4 added support for device types like solar panels, batteries, and heat pumps.

Apple, Amazon, and Samsung wanted to work with an IP-based stack.

“We are a member-driven organisation,” said LaPre. “The members dictate where we go. We have processes and procedures that put guidelines around what a member company has to do in order to get something done. But if members want to start working on a Matter toaster, we will provide them a place to work on the Matter toaster.” In other words, the possibilities are, in theory, limitless. “Our view is guided by how the industry is approaching us to support them on Matter,” said Chetan Joshi, Lead Product Manager at Panasonic Industry Europe. “Everything we do on Matter has been in response to the requests we receive from customers and the idea is to service them to the best of our capabilities.” Since the release of Matter 1.0 in October 2022, three more versions have been released; Matter 1.1. in May 2023; Matter 1.2 in October 2023; Matter 1.3 in May 2024; and Matter 1.4 in November 2024. Although the architecture of the stack is the same, the capabilities and device types it supports has expanded significantly. Take Matter 1.2 compared with Matter 1.3, for instance. Matter 1.2 added nine new device types including refrigerators, dishwashers, and air purifiers. The appliance support added to the 1.2 version, the CSA said,

This feeds into what you might envision when you think of a smart home, i.e.

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Matter 1.3 added support for electric vehicle charging

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NXP’s vision of an intelligent or autonomous home

emphasised. “The cost of energy is quite high, but I’m [from a consumer perspective] not willing to get uncomfortably hot or cold because of the cost of energy.” Sujata Neidig, Marketing Director and Neal Kondel, Director of Product Marketing and Management at NXP Semiconductor told me they saw the smart home shifting into the “intelligent or autonomous home”, reflecting an evolution. Although they didn’t comment on this more specifically, this could be because ‘smart home’ as a term has been rolled out to refer to products like a lightbulb whose colours can be changed using an app – and while this is interesting in its own right, it doesn’t sufficiently encapsulate the lofty ambitions of NXP (a founding CSA member) and other companies who are seeing the transformative value in Matter. Discussing the autonomous home in terms of an evolution or step up from the smart home, they told me that these homes aren’t flashy for the sake of being flashy – they can provide integral support

one able to let you know your energy usage and react accordingly. It also shows how smart home devices are reactive to what’s going on in the world around us. The European Commission, which publishes a biannual review into energy prices and costs, concluded in its 2023 edition that “taking a closer look at energy expenditures for households has become increasingly important in the last two years,” [5] registering the spike in energy prices from 2020-22 that was caused by Russia invading Ukraine. The same report acknowledged that although electricity is regarded as a basic good and therefore it must be paid for, “investment in energy efficient appliances and lighting help to save electricity”. [5] It is reasonable to assume that if smart home devices can help monitor and reduce energy usage, then they are very attractive to the energy-conscious end user. “You can start to see that energy management as an app or a feature in your smart home is critical,” LaPre

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In short, designing a feature that nobody is going to use is pointless. In speaking about what they showed at the latest iteration of IFA in September 2024, Tekippe referenced their SmartThings energy service, which offers deeper insights into how energy is being used in the smart home and allows the consumer to make adjustments accordingly. “We have this AI Energy Mode on our appliances so that in the event a house goes off grid, we can notify the consumer on their TV, like, ‘Hey, your house is in backup mode. You’re not connected to the electric mains anymore.’ We can recommend putting appliances in certain settings to save energy. That’s one practical example.” Energy management and supporting ageing relatives who may need round- the-clock monitoring shows that the technology behind Matter goes beyond

for areas in your life like watching over your elderly parents.

“The smart home is made up of a lot of smart devices that are connected and you can control them somehow,” Neidig said. “But the intelligent home is one where it can learn your patterns, it can think about ageing in a place where your parents don’t want to move out of their home, but you can’t be there every day. If they have an intelligent home, it can learn that.” “We refer to the ‘home’ less as the intelligent home, more the autonomous home,” Kondel added. “It’s not just about having devices that can connect.” A good point made by Mark Tekippe, VP of Product and Growth at Samsung SmartThings was making sure to think about “practical examples” in designing smart home devices and the features that would benefit consumers the most.

Adding a Matter device into a smart home network. Source: Infineon Technologies

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simple convenience; it becomes a very tangible way of improving your day-to- day living.

that are set up easily and work

SETTING UP A DEVICE WITH MATTER

Let’s say you’re an end user interested in buying a smart home device. You could be tech-savvy, or you might not be all that familiar with smart home devices, but you’re interested in reaping some of the benefits already discussed, like energy management and monitoring. The question is, how do you set up the device in the first place? Will it work first time, or will it need further fiddling with? Because of the initial confusion and segmented approaches about how to realise a smart home fabric, manufacturers are keen to create devices

from the get-go – subsequently, module vendors are keen to offer products that manufacturers can use with ease. “Something that’s very important is the end user experience,” said Matt Maupin, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Silicon Labs. “They [device manufacturers] need to make sure they’re going beyond just certification testing and looking at how this works for users in the field and running pilots.”

Let’s look at the end user perspective,

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IN AN IDEAL SCENARIO, A USER WOULD FOLLOW THESE STEPS AND THEN BE ABLE TO SWITCH BETWEEN DEVICES WITH EASE, AS WELL AS ENABLE COHABITANTS TO DO THE SAME.

detect Matter devices once they are plugged in and provide a notification to guide the user through. Some devices may have support for linking the device at checkout, upon purchase, which triggers an automatic set up where the retailer from which you buy the device is already connected to your smart home platform. As soon as the device is set up, it can be connected with other smart home platforms. Matter has multi-admin support designed to allow a household to share devices and choose which apps

L they’d like to set up, all of which come with a code provided on the device, on the packaging, or on an app. The set- up process is triggered in a number of ways; from the device manufacturers’ app, smart home platform, scanning the QR code, tapping on the NFC code, or manually entering in the set up code. which is arguably the most important. In an ideal scenario, the end user would purchase the smart home devices

Following on from this, some platforms or apps may require further set up, which

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at least on paper, all the things I had experienced with my journey into the smart home,” Maupin explained. “At Silicon Labs we realised that it’s more than just compliance to the specification; how does it really work for the user?” Over a three-month period, Maupin tested the three different ecosystems that can be set up using Matter; Google, Apple, and Amazon. One problem he was looking to solve was setting up a single ecosystem, with multiple devices on it. “Overall, that was a good experience,” he noted. “I was most impressed with the commissioning. A lot of the devices in my home were Zigbee or Z-Wave.” Problems that arose during testing included a difficulty with consistency in ecosystems. “For example, I was testing [the] Google [ecosystem]. I used an iPhone and an Android device to commission devices on the network. This brought in questions. As I was going through, I had to scan a QR code and it would prompt me one thing on an iPhone, skip that, and go to a different prompt on an Android device. I wanted to see the same experience through the ecosystem, regardless of the device that I was using.” Another challenge was device support, in terms of what Matter-enabled devices could and couldn’t work on an ecosystem. Providing one example, Maupin said: “The biggest one I saw at the time was the switch. With Apple, the switch worked … with Google, it commissioned the device, but there was no support for it. With Amazon I got an error message saying this device wasn’t supported yet.”

or platforms access each device. In an ideal scenario, a user would follow these steps and then be able to switch between devices with ease, as well as enable cohabitants to do the same. However, the end user experience of setting up Matter-enabled devices can be very different from what is advertised. Separate from this article, Maupin spoke to me on an episode of IoT Unplugged in the wake of a three-month long experiment he conducted, in order to really understand what the experience was like. Companies are wont to discuss their products and solutions in a positive light, but what is it really like buying a device and having to set it up? That was what Maupin set out to find out. Maupin had a unique perspective as both a product marketer at Silicon Labs and a consumer like any of us, meaning he may have had the kind of insight into why devices didn’t work, or why there was difficulty in setting up fabrics.

“One of the reasons I was really interested in Matter was that it was addressing,

The architecture of Matter. Source: GitHub

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standard showed that concerns over a lack of privacy and security due to the adoption of smart home devices were prevalent [1]. Looking at the architecture of Matter, the stack is made up of several layers, including the application layer, which outlines the high order business logic of a device – for example, if the application is for smart lighting, the logic will dictate turning a light bulb on and off – as well the data model layer, interaction model layer, action framing layer model and, more importantly, the security layer. The security layer encrypts messaging and attaches it with a message authentication code. This is one way Matter has been designed with security in mind; another way is requiring all devices to have device-specific pass codes that provide proof of ownership to commissioning devices, and credentials that are cryptographically verified to prove the joining devices are Matter-certified. In this way, no smart home device that isn’t certified can be allowed to join a smart home fabric.

Based on his experience of the experiment, Maupin recommended that manufacturers making Matter-enabled devices have to look at it from a user experience, and across ecosystems, which can be achieved through testing them. “More importantly, I think the ecosystems need to step up and make sure they’re supporting all these different device types,” he concluded, adding that he remained firmly “pro Matter” and thought the standard was going in the right direction. KEEPING THE STANDARD SECURE The 2016 survey reflected an anxiety over what was seen as too much dependence on technology, and to a degree, technologies ruling our lives [1]. It also showed that security is a paramount concern when it comes to installing connected devices in your home – the greater the number of connected devices, the wider the attack surface. Interoperability among devices doesn’t come without its risks. From its inception, Matter has had to be very security- conscious, as surveys pre-dating the

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threats Matter posed from the beginning provided a helpful guide to understanding what they needed to guard against. “We created a threat model to understand all the different ways that people could attack Matter. And we wrote down about 100 different ways that they could come in and attack and came up with countermeasures … Now, we have over 250 ways that we’ve come up with and we continue to add to the countermeasures,” explained Hanna. The ‘basics’ of setting out the security when they started were looking at secure communications; encrypting the messages, protecting the confidentiality of users, and making sure messages sent are coming from authorised parties. They went further than that, in making sure every Matter-compliant device comes with a QR code, not just for the end user’s convenience, but to trigger a series of security steps. “This includes having the phone find the device on the network, having them mutually authenticate to make sure this is the device to be set up and the phone is authorised to set it up,” he explained. “We had 10 major security features that were added in the first version of Matter … we added a new one last year, which has the ability to revoke certificates of authenticity,” Hanna continued. “In case someone does figure out how to create a counterfeit certificate, we now have the capability to revoke it.” WHAT’S MISSING FROM MATTER? The excitement the standard has generated and the ‘coopetition’ of

Steve Hanna, Distinguished Engineer at Infineon Technologies

The Mirai botnet incident in 2016, a huge cyber attack that infected millions of devices, is cited as an example of what can happen when malware can exploit vulnerable IoT devices and turn them into bots used for DDoS attacks, thereby increasing the ‘swarm’ of attacks. “Governments around the world have been paying a lot of attention the last decade or so to IoT and establishing requirements for cybersecurity … It’s not just a concern for individual consumers, but a national security threat as well,” stressed Hanna. Hanna played a part in outlining the security requirements for Matter, which he explained he saw as a key part of reassuring end users. “Once they know their security is a top priority and they can see the evidence of that, they become more comfortable, more willing to buy things and connect them up … that leads to overall societal benefits,” he said.

Because of the nature in which cybersecurity works, understanding the

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The Gartner Hype Cycle

around. Following the methodology, technologies are expected to reach their peak, slope down and, if they manage to stick it out, rise back up and eventually plateau. It can provide a resource for companies to understand what emerging technologies are worth investing in, as Matter was when it first came out. “I spoke to my network and I received the same opinion. ‘Matter is good, everybody’s excited, but we’re playing the waiting game.’ That went on for seven to eight months, and this was a regular discussion every time. That led us to ask a very fundamental question: What is missing?” Joshi queried.

companies working together cannot be understated. In the same vein, the standard is continually evolving and understanding companies’ individual experiences in working with Matter helped to highlight that there were some pain points that still need to be addressed. This can arguably be viewed as part of the learning curve. “When we spoke to our customers around a year or a year and a half ago, we suspected it was going through the famous Gartner Hype Cycle,” said Joshi. The Gartner Hype Cycle is a well-known, well-documented methodology for understanding how technologies evolve over time, and whether they’ll stick

The answer Joshi found was a “higher

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manufacturing barrier” than anticipated. “There were new concepts such as Blockchaining every single product identity to ascertain its identity, or provisioning a device every single time … You see that the customer is already thinking about talking to someone about PKI (Public Key Infrastructure),” he said. COMMON PAIN POINTS Common pain points encountered by device manufacturers included the high manufacturing barrier that Joshi mentioned, certification, and ecosystems failing to support all Matter features. “For example, every ecosystem technically supports window blinds but there’s also a command to tilt the shades back, and not every ecosystem supports that. There are areas that are more niche where not everything is supported,” said Finn Boetius, Product Marketing Manager at Nordic Semiconductor. “This is a pain point for device manufacturers to figure “FOR EXAMPLE, EVERY ECOSYSTEM TECHNICALLY SUPPORTS WINDOW BLINDS BUT THERE’S ALSO A COMMAND TO TILT THE SHADES BACK, AND NOT EVERY ECOSYSTEM SUPPORTS THAT. THERE ARE AREAS THAT ARE MORE NICHE WHERE NOT EVERYTHING IS SUPPORTED"

Finn Boetius, Product Marketing Manager at Nordic Semiconductor

out where their devices are supported, and how to communicate to their customers that their device will only work if they use ecosystem A or ecosystem B.” Certification came up several times as an acknowledged difficulty – simply put, manufacturers getting their devices certified has proved challenging. Joshi spoke about the modules the company offers which provides the wireless interfaces required by Matter; Bluetooth Low Energy, Thread, and Wi-Fi, and the launch of their Matter Certificate Service in July 2024 means the company can handle Device Attestation Certificates (DACs) and inject them into compatible modules. “We don’t sell it as a certification service. We sell it as a production service,” stated Joshi.

“One [pain point] we see is that

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insert these device certificates, we can completely program the flash,” Maupin explained, “so when these chips go to the manufacturer, they’re ready to go.” In some cases, existing pain points have caused companies to rise to the occasion, Panasonic included. Take the difficulty with device certification, which Boetius highlighted as a non-technical pain point: “If you get to the point where you have a finished Matter device in your hand and it works, it’s almost ready to be brought to the market. You still need to get a Bluetooth certification, a Thread certification, a Matter certification, and a device attestation.”

certification is more difficult, because there’s a lot of moving parts,” Maupin said. “We’re not a certification house and we don’t do anything for that. But we have certified our devices and understand this process.” Silicon Labs’ Custom Part Manufacturing Service (CPMS) is cognisant of the issues faced in securing IoT devices by offering manufacturers the ability to customise hardware and MCUs with security and certificates. The latter point is especially important for Matter, which requires certificates to be stored on the device securely.

“We can do custom identities, we can

Panasonic’s PAN-MaX certification service to streamline Matter enablement

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A Device Attestation (DA), as outlined by the CSA, refers to the process of verifying that a product is genuine, has passed Matter compliance tests, and been certified by the CSA. Without the DA, a smart home device cannot be commissioned onto a Matter network. The DAC (Device Attestation Certificate) provides documentation that the device is authentic and has been certified. This is especially important for security reasons. “If you want to connect a Matter device to the network, the other devices need to know that this is a device that can be safely connected to,” Boetius summarised. Boetius pointed out that there can be a big cost attached with developing devices, beginning with the initial idea and running all the way along to certification. “For small companies, this can be a big chunk of money.” “The certification can be seen by a developer or an OEM as a burden,” said Radenac, “something which is necessary but can take time with lots of back- and-forth, because certification might not happen correctly the first time … It’s always a matter of [the] time to market and minimising the development risks.” As a result, SEALSQ’s IoT development board came pre-certified. “Having a board that is pre-certified is clearly the solution to streamline the development,” said Radenac. WHAT’S EXCITING ABOUT MATTER? Depending on who I asked, what they had to say about what excited them about Matter or their key takeaways varied.

“The availability of Matter has been phenomenal,” said Maupin, “well beyond anything we saw before. If you look at the number of device types today, there are over 40 device types that are defined.” “The more devices we can get enabled with the same connectivity technology, the more we can gain from that,” outlined Alexander. “The barrier for the longest time has been that in order to develop an IoT device, you had to develop the hardware device, software that runs on it, a mobile app to commission the device, and that had to be for iOS and Android. There’s a big developer cost there.” Alexander added his hope for Matter was for the identities of players to be separated, “so we can have mobile app developers and that’s all they do.” “I’m personally excited to be at this stage where it’s reaching everyday consumers, and I can see how this technology is showing up in my own life and in my family’s life,” said Tekippe. “Not just a novelty of turning the lights on and off and controlling devices but helping people care for their families, care for their pets, provide peace of mind and safety, saving energy, and helping with sustainability. We’re just at the beginning of this chapter.” “The final closing message would be that the service needs to be democratised so that it is accessible to the lower volume segment of the same manufacturers, ODMs, and OEMs. Because the people who have already achieved scale aren’t going to innovate and the smart home is in desperate need of innovation all [of] the time,” noted Joshi.

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Mark Tekippe, VP of Product and Growth at Samsung SmartThings

“I’M PERSONALLY EXCITED TO BE AT THIS STAGE WHERE IT’S REACHING EVERYDAY CONSUMERS...”

“Not just a novelty of turning the lights on and off and controlling devices but helping people care for their families, care for their pets, provide peace of mind and safety, saving energy, and helping with sustainability. We’re just at the beginning of this chapter.”

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FINAL THOUGHTS

Interoperability inevitably translates to security risks, and security has to be built into the fabric of a smart home ecosystem. After all, surveys have shown that consumer anxieties revolve around yielding autonomy to technologies, let alone taking into consideration the security risks. The wisdom of the CSA and its members has been to create an open-source structure in which those working on Matter have been able to provide their feedback and experiences. It was these experiences I relied heavily on in writing this technical article.

Historically, the definition of the smart home was arguably not clearly defined, and it was posited as a home capable of utilising ‘smart’ technologies like sensors and cameras – but with the absence of a unifying standard that enabled communication between these technologies, development was limited. At the risk of basing the definition solely on Matter and the value it brings, its value in connecting smart home devices which previously would not have communicated is significant. One major takeaway I had from writing this article was appreciating the comprehensive time and the efforts that go into establishing interoperable technologies and making wireless standards work; it can’t be achieved overnight. In my conversation with Hanna from Infineon, I was struck when he compared working on Matter to developing the Internet which provided interoperability, back in the nineties – a fact which is probably hard to reconcile now, when Internet access is so widespread and a key part of our lives. Matter, when it was introduced in 2021, was seeking to make smart home devices interoperable (which is no easy task), and as far as standards are concerned, it is relatively new – Zigbee, for instance, celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2024.

Before beginning this article, I hoped to address the question:

" IS THE SMART HOME H ERE?" I’d like to conclude that the smart home has not yet been fully realised, but we’re not far away. If the dedication and belief of the experts working on the standard is any indication, complete interoperability between smart home devices will happen in the near future.

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REFERENCES: [1] Wilson, C., Hargreaves, T., Hauxwell-Baldwin, R., (2017), ‘Benefits and risks of smart home technologies’, Science Direct. Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/ S030142151630711X/?science2 [2] Crawford, C., (2024), ‘Protocol power: Matter, IoT interoperability, and a critique of industry self- regulation’, EconStor. Available at: https://www.econstor.eu/handle/10419/300742 [3] Loreck, C., (2024), ‘How does the new IoT Standard Matter? Innovation through Standardization in Smart Home’, University of Hamburg. Available at: https://www.edit.fis.uni-hamburg.de/ws/ files/54825461/EURAS_2024_Loreck_Matter.pdf [4] Laricchia, F., (2024), ‘Share of adults who own a smart speaker in the United Kingdom (UK) in 2024, by age group’, Statista. Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/956343/ ownership-of-smart-speakers-uk/

[5] Smith, M., Jagtenberg, H., Lam, L. et al., (2024), ‘Study on energy prices and costs: evaluating impacts on households and industry – 2023 edition’, European Union. Available at: https://op.europa.eu/en/publication- detail/-/publication/3b43f47c-e1c5-11ee- 8b2b-01aa75ed71a1/language-en?WT. mc_id=Searchresult&WT.ria_c=37085&WT. ria_f=3608&WT.ria_ev=search&WT. URL=https%3A%2F%2Fenergy.ec.europa.eu%2F [6] Risteska Stojkoska, L., B., Trivodaliev, V., K., (2016), ‘A review of Internet of Things for smart home: Challenges and solutions’, Science Direct. Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/ abs/pii/S095965261631589X [7] Song, L., Yan, J., Cheng, L., (2024), ‘WIP: Hidden Hub Eavesdropping Attack in Matter-enabled Smart Home Systems’, ResearchGate. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/ publication/384090291_WIP_Hidden_Hub_ Eavesdropping_Attack_in_Matter-enabled_ Smart_Home_Systems

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