Matter 1.4: how the “universal” home automation standard wants to save you money

More lively and unmissable than ever! Matter, the home automation standard, which aims to allow all compatible devices to talk to each other and be controlled centrally, reaches an important milestone on November 7. Its version 1.4 arrives and reinforces the efforts initiated last March with the deployment of version 1.3. The latter was entirely focused on the centralization and management of energy and its electrical consumption in your home. Its little sister, in addition to other additions, drives this point home.

Two years and big steps forward

Announced in December 2019, under the name Project CHIP (for Connected Home over IP), and supported by Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance, later joined by other giants like Huawei, IKEA, and Schneider, Matter only really set out to attack our homes in October 2022.
It has therefore been a little over two years since the standard took off, two years during which the certification processes were optimized and refined, two years during which hundreds of engineers gradually expanded the product base. compatible with Matter. And each new product makes Matter more relevant, strengthening its usefulness and uses. Likewise, each new update brings its share of progress. About every six months, the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) publishes one.

Two updates, one big step

Version 1.3, published last March, opened a new essential part of the future of home automation: the management of electricity consumption. In the spring, “we have ensured that any device (compatible, editor's note), each connected socket, each bulb, can tell how much energy it consumes“, details Chris LaPré, head of technology within the Alliance, with whom we spoke. Version 1.4 announced on November 7 goes further. Matter now hears “help users save energy with advanced energy management improvements“, we can read in the official press release.

Thus, this new version constitutes an essential building block, both technologically and through the uses introduced. “Energy management in our homes is one of the main reasons that push users to adopt connected devices,” explains the CSA. And Chris LaPré tells us, “Matter 1.4 not only allows us to monitor the electricity consumption of each device, but it also allows us to create automated routines that save energy and therefore reduce the bill” for households. equipped. The promise is beautiful.

New devices taken into account

For these scenarios to be relevant, for the savings potential to be real, it was necessary to add new types of devices, to expand the Matter family to include elements that consume a lot of electricity or produce it… The standard is in fact now capable of managing solar panels, wall batteries, water heaters and even heat pumps. Of course, it is necessary that the manufacturers of these devices have ensured that they are compatible and connected. Improving the management of electric vehicles also makes it possible to define “the best time to charge your car, based on what is most practical in terms of your habits and cost,” explains Chris LaPré.

Optimize consumption, reduce the bill

Because the objective of supporting this wide variety of products is the creation of scenarios for optimizing energy consumption within your home. Once you know the details of consumption, it is possible “to choose the start time for charging your car or heating your water reserve based on energy consumption habits or electrical power needs”.
Of course, Matter also allows you to deviate from these routines if you have family over, for example, and need more hot water, or need to hit the road earlier. It is even possible to juggle between different electrical sources: solar panels, network, wall batteries, etc.

Your home and edge computing

Ultimately, the goal is to ensure that these automations can be changed contextually, without tedious user intervention.
If Chris LaPré does not see the CSA developing the necessary AI solutions, at least as long as the members of his organization do not want it, it seems obvious to him that players will have to get on with it.
For him, Google and Apple are not necessarily in the best position. Of course, interactions and controls will certainly take place in and via their ecosystem, but specialized players will be needed to offer the most relevant intelligent solutions.
Smart solutions that will rely on specific boxes or computing capabilities of other Matter-enabled devices, whether it's an Apple TV, a Google Nest Hub or even your refrigerator, “anything as long as it's not your smartphone that leaves the house with you,” says the CSA’s chief technology officer.

In other words, Matter would enter the era of edge computing for ecological issues, respect for privacy and also the need to always be accessible. “We can have an Internet connection outage, but we cannot have a house outage,” explains Chris LaPré schematically.

Intelligence, more intelligence

However, Schneider Electric, which is on the board of the CSA, has solutions in its portfolio, coupling hardware and software, capable of adapting consumption and even production of electricity according to your habits, your needs and criteria. variables, such as the weather, for example.
It is therefore possible that tomorrow, the intelligent part currently developed by Schneider Electric for its products will be made available to users of Matter products. In this case, nothing has been decided, but we can quite envisage that the service takes the form of an application (or even a plug-in for the Home or Maison app), offers some free functions and the functions more advanced via a subscription.

Thus, extrapolates Chris LaPré “your connected refrigerator could decide not to start the dishwasher now by powering it from the sector, because within an hour your solar panels will produce enough to power it” or it could open the shutters so that the sun heats the living room while reducing the heating… Unless of course you have prohibited the shutters from being opened without your authorization when you are not there. Because control always lies with the user.
In short, once again Matter would be a facilitator, the CSA provides the framework, the components communicate the data locally, and actors graft onto this platform a service executed locally, also, for free or (more probably) for a fee, which will reduce your electricity bill even more.

Energy: Matter’s killer app?

If the promise of a house that can be controlled remotely, where you can easily adjust the heating or lighting was attractive, the possibility of ensuring that radiators, sockets, water heaters, solar panels and other pumps heat pumps working together to optimize your energy consumption suddenly makes Matter much more attractive. For two years, the standard has been growing, without necessarily the general public finding a strong, conscious interest in it. But in a context where energy is becoming more and more expensive, the use that could make it essential could well have just been announced… New technological brick or new start, Year I of Matter is perhaps now?