What is Matter and why it matters?

Matter (formerly Project CHIP) is a connectivity standard and application layer protocol that is highly interoperable with multiple ecosystem providers which enables the end-user to setup their smart home devices with ease.

But if you ask me, is that it? No, there is more. Let's understand that from the smart home devices OEM's (Original Equipment Manufacturer) perspective.

Let's say you're building a motion-sensing device that should be integrated with the HomeKit ecosystem to make it useful to the consumers, the traditional way is,

1. Get the MFi license

2. Ask your team (if you’ve one) to understand the infrastructure

3. Get the SDK from silicon vendors (only happens if you’ve MFi)

4. Start developing, testing, integrating

5. Release the product.

Note: Cycle may vary according to the product you’re building and this is a generalized example.

After 2 weeks you feel like this should work with Google and Alexa as well, you might need to start over and find the resource to accomplish this, that pain is real.

Why suffer when Matter is here?

Matter reduces friction for device developers and their customers.

Your customers never have to think like,

1. Will it work with my smart speaker?

2. Do I need a separate hub?

Matter democratizes the connected home devices

Know the Hardware

To demonstrate the Matter protocol we’ve chosen two off-the-shelf boards which are available in the market.

1. XIAO nRF52840 Sense

2. Adafruit 4333

The reason for choosing two different breakout vendors is to demonstrate our ability to develop the firmware.

XIAO nRF52840 Sense is a beautifully designed and cute little piece of hardware that integrates the nRF52840 SoC and two powerful MEMS sensors which makes rapid prototyping much faster and mess-free.

You know what? This little piece includes an onboard external flash (2MB) which makes life easier while working with protocols such as Matter.

Know more about the hardware: https://wiki.seeedstudio.com/XIAO_BLE/

Adafruit 4333 reminds me of the spinning wheel with LEDs, this is absolutely for prototyping when you need individual addressable LEDs with of-course less mess. Adafruit 4333 has the advantage of additional onboard peripherals.

Know more about the hardware: https://www.adafruit.com/product/4333

And Of-Course the Firmware

The firmware for both XIAO nRF52840 Sense and Adafruit 4333 is built with nRF Connect SDK which is running on ZephyrRTOS.

Both devices use Thread Network for transportation (we can discuss what is Thread in upcoming writings) and the interesting part is Thread is the secret sauce of the Matter because of its highly reliable and low latency packet transportation with very low operational and memory footprint.

In this setup, both the devices are commissioned to the same Matter fabrics, in this case, Apple and Google.

After commissioning, we created a simple automation to turn the lights on when the occupancy is detected by Occusense.

You can see them in Action

Wanna build one?

If you're a connected home devices developer looking-out to build products with Matter, you can connect with me

https://cal.com/absoluteabutaj/connected-home

If you've made it this far, special thanks to you.

And of course, this is all possible with my wonderful team, thanks to them.

Until then, stay happy, we can connect soon.