From smart home appliances to smart home, from single-product intelligence to whole-house intelligence, the home appliance industry has gradually entered the smart lane. Consumers’ demand for intelligence is no longer the intelligent control through APP or speaker after a single home appliance is connected to the Internet, but more hope for active intelligent experience in the interconnecting space of the whole scene of home and residence. But the ecological barrier to multi-protocol is an unbridgeable gap in connectivity:
· Household appliances/home furnishing enterprises need to develop different product adaptations for different protocols and cloud platforms, which doubles the cost.
· Users can not choose between different brands and different ecosystem products;
· The sales end cannot give users accurate and professional compatible suggestions;
· The after-sale problem of smart home ecology is far beyond the category of home appliance after-sale, which seriously affects user service and feeling……
How to break the problem of islandless debris and interconnectivity in various smart home ecosystems is the primary problem to be solved urgently in smart home.
Data show that the pain point of smart home products use “different brands of devices can not communicate with each other” ranked first with 44%, and connectivity has become the biggest expectation of users for smart home.
The birth of Matter has revived the original aspiration of the Internet of everything in the outbreak of intelligence. With the release of Matter1.0, the smart home has formed a unified standard on the connection, which has taken a key step in the crux of the Internet of Things interconnection.
The core value of whole-house intelligence under the smart home system is reflected in the ability to autonomously perceive, make decisions, control and feedback. Through continuous learning of users’ habits and continuous evolution of service capabilities, the decision-making information that fits users’ individual needs is finally fed back to each terminal to complete the autonomous service loop.
We are excited to see Matter providing a unified IP-based connectivity protocol as the new connectivity standard for the smart home at the common software layer. Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Low Energy, Thread, and many other protocols bring their respective strengths to a seamless experience in a shared and open mode. Regardless of which low-level protocol iot devices are running, Matter can fuse them into a common language that can communicate with end nodes through a single application.
Based on Matter, we intuitively see that consumers do not need to worry about the gateway adaptation of various home appliances, do not need to use the idea of “under the whole chess” to layout home appliances before installation, so as to achieve a simpler consumption choice. Companies will be able to focus on product development and innovation in the fertile ground of connectivity, ending the days when developers had to develop a separate application layer for each protocol and add an additional bridging/transformation layer to build protocol-transformed smart home networks.
The advent of Matter protocol has broken the barriers between communication protocols, and promoted smart device manufacturers to support multiple ecosystems at a very low cost from the ecosystem level, making users’ smart home experience more natural and comfortable. The beautiful blueprint painted by Matter is coming into reality, and we are thinking about how to make it happen from various aspects. If Matter is the bridge of smart home interconnection, which connects all kinds of hardware devices to operate cooperatively and become more and more intelligent, it is necessary for each hardware device to have the ability of OTA upgrade, keep the intelligent evolution of the device itself, and feed back the intelligent evolution of other devices in the whole Matter network.
Matter Itself Iteration
Rely on OTAs for More Types of Access
The new Matter1.0 release is the first step towards connectivity for matter. Matter to achieve unification of original planning, support only three kinds of agreements are not enough and need iterative multiple protocol version, extension and application support for more intelligent household ecosystem, and in the different ecological system and Matter to the certification requirements, OTA upgrade is every intelligent household products must have the ability. Therefore, it is necessary to have OTA as an indispensable capability for subsequent protocol expansion and optimization. OTA not only gives smart home products the ability to evolve and iterate, but also helps Matter protocol to continuously improve and iterate. By updating the protocol version, OTA can support the access of more home products and provide smoother interactive experience and more stable and secure access.
Matter the Sub-network Sevice Needs to Be Upgraded
In Order to Realize the Synchronous Evolution of Matter
Products based on Matter standards are mainly divided into two categories. One is responsible for the entrance of interaction and device control, such as mobile APP, speaker, center control screen, etc. The other category is terminal products, sub-equipment, such as switches, lights, curtains, household appliances, etc. In the whole house intelligent system of smart home, many devices are non-IP protocols or proprietary protocols of manufacturers. Matter protocol supports device bridging function. Matter bridging devices can make non-Matter protocol or proprietary protocol devices join the Matter ecosystem, allowing users to control all devices in the whole house intelligent system without discrimination. At present, 14 domestic brands have officially announced cooperation, and 53 brands have completed the test. Devices that support the Matter protocol can be divided into three simple categories:
· Matter device: A certified native device that integrates the Matter protocol
· Matter Bridge equipment: A bridging device is a device that complies with the Matter protocol. In the Matter ecosystem, non-Matter devices can be used as “bridged devices” nodes to complete the mapping between other protocols (such as Zigbee) and Matter protocol through bridging devices. To communicate with Matter devices in the system
· Bridged device: A device that does not use the Matter protocol accesses the Matter ecosystem through a Matter bridging device. The bridging device is responsible for network configuration, communication, and other functions
Different smart home items may appear in a certain type under the control of the whole house intelligent scene in the future, but no Matter what type of equipment, with the iterative upgrade of Matter protocol will have the need to upgrade. Matter devices need to keep pace with the iteration of the protocol stack. After the release of the subsequent Matter standards, the issue of bridging device compatibility and subnetwork upgrade can be solved by OTA upgrade, and the user will not need to purchase a new device.
Matter Connects Multiple Ecosystems
It will bring challenges to the remote maintenance of OTA for brand manufacturers
The network topology of various devices on the LAN formed by the Matter protocol is flexible. The simple device management logic of the cloud cannot meet the topology of the devices connected by the Matter protocol. The existing iot device management logic is to define the product type and capability model on the platform, and then after the device network is activated, it can be managed and operated and maintained through the platform. According to the connection characteristics of Matter protocol, on the one hand, devices compatible with non-Matter protocol can be connected by bridging. The cloud platform cannot sense the changes of non-Matter protocol devices and the configuration of intelligent scenarios. On the one hand, it is compatible with the device access of other ecosystems. The dynamic management between devices and ecosystems and the separation of data permissions will require more complex design. If a device is replaced or added in the Matter network, the protocol compatibility and user experience of the Matter network should be ensured. The brand manufacturers usually need to know the current version of the Matter protocol, the current ecosystem requirements, the current network access mode and a series of after-sales maintenance methods. To ensure the software compatibility and consistency of the entire smart home ecosystem, the OTA cloud management platform of brand manufacturers should fully consider the software management of device versions and protocols and the full life cycle service system. For example, Elabi standardized OTA SaaS cloud platform can better match the continuous development of Matter.
Matter1.0, after all, has just been released, and many manufacturers have just begun to study it. When Matter smart home devices enter thousands of households, perhaps Matter has already been version 2.0, perhaps users are no longer satisfied with the interconnection control, perhaps more manufacturers have joined the Matter camp. Matter has promoted the intelligent wave and technological development of smart home. In the process of intelligent continuous iterative evolution of smart home, the eternal topic and opportunity in the arena of smart home will continue to unfold around intelligent.
Post time: Oct-24-2022