Matter 1.4 has some solid ideas for the future home—now let’s see the support

Purple/blue rendering of a home with a number of different colored lights inside, with a circuit-like line leading into it.

Matter, the smart home standard that promises an interoperable future for home automation, even if it’s scattered and a bit buggy right now, is out with a new version, 1.4. It promises more device types, improvements for working across ecosystems, and tools for managing battery backups, solar panels, and heat pumps.

“Enhanced Multi-Admin” is the headline feature for anybody invested in Matter’s original promise, one where you can buy a device and it doesn’t matter if your other gear is meant for Amazon (Alexa), Google, Apple, or whatever, it should just connect and work. With 1.4, a home administrator should be able to let a device onto their Network just once, and then have that device picked up by whatever controller they’re using. There have technically been ways for a device to be set up on, say, Alexa and Apple Home, but the process has been buggy, involves generating “secondary codes,” and is kind of an unpaid junior sysadmin job.

What’s now available is “Fabric Sync,” which sounds like something that happens in a static-ridden dryer. But “Fabrics” is how the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) describes smart home systems, like Alexa or Google Home. In theory, with every tech company doing their best, you’d set up a smart light bulb with your iPhone, add it to your Apple Home, but still have it be able to be added to a Google Home system, Android phones included. Even better, ecosystems that don’t offer controls for entire categories, like Apple and smart displays (because it doesn’t make any), should still be able to pick up and control them.

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Jad Marchy
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Jad MARCHI est un ardent défenseur de la technologie, passionné par son potentiel de transformation. Ayant accumulé une décennie d’expérience dans le secteur technologique, Jean a travaillé sur une variété de projets innovants qui l’ont amené à comprendre le paysage changeant de ce domaine. Il est fasciné par l’évolution rapide de la technologie et son impact sur notre société. Que ce soit l’intelligence artificielle, la robotique, la blockchain ou la cybersécurité, il est toujours à la recherche des dernières tendances. Ses articles cherchent à informer, à inspirer et à provoquer des réflexions sur la façon dont la technologie façonne notre avenir.