Smart home tech gets a major overhaul

Complicated installation and frequent disconnections has rendered smart homes too difficult for many but major change is coming.

An alliance between tech firms is revamping smart home devices. Picture: iStock

Complicated installation and frequent disconnections has rendered smart homes too difficult for many households. For them, using voice to switch on groups of lights, fire up robot vacuums and control their air conditioner remotely has been a step too far. It remains easier to flick a switch the old fashioned way.

Adding to problems were decisions by Apple, Google and Amazon to push their own smart home systems with separate voice assistants and a bespoke range of connected IoT devices such as smart lights and switches that didn’t work on rival systems.

Devices that worked with Google Home and Amazon Alexa would not work with Apple HomeKit and visa versa.

Some device makers also didn’t bother updating the connectivity capabilities of their IoT devices. They would only connect to the 2.4 Gigahertz band on routers that had moved to combine 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. Connectivity was unreliable.

This situation is about to change, thanks to an alliance between Apple, Amazon, Google, Samsung, the Zigbee Alliance and many others called “Matter”.

Google smart home devices.

Smart lights, cameras, door bells, switches and appliances will work across brands. The aim is for all smart home devices to work seamlessly with Google Home, Alexa, Siri and others.

“What‘s held the market back is the lack of standards, and I think there’s a lack of innovation in the appliances sector,” said Foad Fadaghi, managing director of technology research firm Telsyte.

“It’s really ripe for disruption. Today you can‘t use a Google smart speaker, for example, to drive HomeKit products and vice versa with HomePod. I think Matter will accelerate the market and deliver an affordable smart home for the masses.”

Smart home take-up hasn’t been bad. Mr Fadaghi said Australian homes had an average of 20.5 connected devices in 2021, but he expected more by now.

“We‘ve continuously had to revise our numbers given the promise of the smartphone hasn’t necessarily been fulfilled. Once we have voice control that’s standardised, we’re going to see much greater adoption of products because people won’t be worried about compatibility.”

Apple HomePod Mini smart speakers help operate HomeKit networks.

It’s been four years since technology firms formed Project Connected Home over IP (CHIP) which became Matter.

In 2022 Matter is finally coming to fruition with a mid year validation event. The Connectivity Standards Alliance, an umbrella group for 240 member companies, said it planned to validate more than 130 smart devices of 15 device and sensor types from more than 50 member manufacturers.

If Matter 1.0 launches in the third quarter as planned, developers will have the tools to build the new age of IoT devices.

Mr Fadaghi said we’ll see compatible IoT devices flow after that. “We anticipate 30 to 40 per cent of all IoT home products sold to be compatible by the end of next year,” he said. “We think it will be adopted quite quickly.”

Householders have taken to connecting smart cameras to their home Wi-Fi networks.

CEO & president of the Connectivity Standards Alliance, Tobin Richardson, said consumers will soon choose the brands and products they want in their home, by looking for the Matter mark, and be confident they will work together. “Matter devices can be controlled from any voice assistant, smart speaker, iPhone, iPad, or Android device.”

In some cases they can upgrade existing smart home devices to Matter. “Many of the top devices in people’s homes now will be upgradeable to Matter via software update or a Matter-enabled bridge, and new devices featuring Matter built-in will be able as well and can be added to the home.”

Smart devices will additionally use a new radio protocol called “Thread” which in the long run may take over from Zigbee, Z-wave and even Bluetooth. But there’s no certainty how this will play out.