One badge to rule them all (eventually).

Buying a smart home product today means checking which ecosystems it works with by looking for the little “Works with Apple Home” or “Works with Google” badge on the package. Matter was supposed to get rid of those because if a product works with Matter, it should work with all the big smart home platforms. That hasn’t happened yet, and now we have one more badge to look for: the Matter badge.

Getting all those badges is about to get simpler for manufacturers, though. The Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA), which runs Matter, announced today that Apple, Google, and Samsung will all accept its certification for their “Works With” programs:

The Alliance is excited to share that Apple has begun accepting Alliance Interop Lab test results for Matter devices for Works With Apple Home, and that Google and Samsung will be doing the same for their respective Works With Google Home, and Works With SmartThings certifications later this year, underscoring the credibility and reliability of the Alliance’s testing programs.

This means device makers won’t have to put their gadgets through a separate testing program for each platform to wear its “Works With” badge. If they get certified as a Matter Device by the CSA, they can show their results to the other ecosystems and get those badges, too, without doing any more testing. This makes it much easier for device makers and gets us one step closer to just one badge to rule them all. (Notably, Amazon has not announced participation for Works with Alexa.)

The CSA also announced a new FastTrack Recertification Program and a Portfolio Certification Program that lets companies certify multiple products more efficiently. A complaint I’ve heard frequently from smart home companies is that getting devices certified and recertified by Matter when they make a change or an update is a laborious and expensive process that slows down their development work. The CSA says these two new programs simplify both processes and make them less costly and complicated.

  • FurtiveFugitive@lemm.eeEnglish
    73·
    2 days ago

    There is only one cert that matters to me, is it open enough to run locally with Home Assistant? If you make a product that can’t be broken by your company going out of business, I’ll give you money. If you try and tie it down to your own proprietary app, I’m out.

        • Jax@fedia.io
          1·
          2 days ago

          While yes, I do agree with you, I have had luck with one of their Tapo Matter smart plugs. Added in HA and never needed to touch their servers or the internet.

          • AbidanYre@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            1 day ago

            That’s how the Kasa line used to work. Then they stopped letting you skip the account registration and the switches don’t work without an account. And if they can’t talk to the server the LED now flashes instead of just indicating light on/off.

            Still works with HA though, so I just put the ones I already have on the IOT network and don’t let them talk to anything but the controller.

      • Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        2 days ago

        My mirror-finished currant smart outlet glares back at me when I do this. At least they fully up and died. My wemo plugs still pretend like they should function but just slowly became unsupported and stopped working reliably and app still pretends to work but never gets updates or fixes and rarely connects to devices successfully. This is more excruciating

    • treadful@lemmy.zipEnglish
      3·
      2 days ago

      I do believe Home Assistant supports Matter devices. So if it gets this badge it’s likely to work with HA.

  • Jesus@lemmy.worldEnglish
    12·
    2 days ago

    My only problem is that matter support usually means “basic functionality” for your IOT devices. On / off, hot / cold, etc. You typically still have to create an account with a proprietary app to configure more nuanced things. For example, the shape and soil characteristics of my irrigation zones, the motion section trigger areas of my cameras, the fade and trim setting of my light switches, etc.

    I don’t know how you sort this mess out. I’d love to never install a 3rd party app for IOT stuff, but I don’t see that happening anytime remotely soon.

  • surfrock66@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    2 days ago

    Anything that gets us closer to mattercast. If we can have one interop standard to be able to cast to devices, whether it be a kodi box running the casting server, a smart speaker running Home Assistant’s voice, or a google/amazon device, one open standard to rule them all is the world we need to get to.

    • themurphy@lemmy.mlEnglish
      6·
      2 days ago

      Maybe we should create a citizen proposal for this in the EU actually.

      They might listen to these kind of things, because they are very aware of monopolies and closed ecosystems.

      Then by 2029 this might be mandatory.