SMART HOMES JUST GOT SMARTER

I must admit, I’m a little sheepish about being so easily influenced. But having seen coloured LED lights everywhere –those glowing strips or bulbs that adorn shelves and ceilings in modern coffee shops, or on Instagram – I gave in and got some too.

They’re nice, adding a soft glow in a hue of my choosing to a corner of our apartment. They are smart too, meaning they can be turned on and off with a voice prompt – at least when they work.

It’s that last caveat that is the bane of so-called “smart home tech,” that term we give to the tangle of modern conveniences that includes everything from smart speakers to electric blinds to smart locks and security systems. That field has largely been a Wild West in its early years with competing standards, an almost total lack of interoperability, and reliability being mostly a dream. My unreliable smart lights are, unfortunately, the norm rather than the exception.

Navneet Alang

That now looks set to change, however. At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, dozens of manufacturers showcased wares that adhered to a new smart home standard called “Matter.” Everything from garage door openers to thermostats to lighting will begin to work interoperably and more seamlessly, starting now. And while there are inevitably lots of kinks to work out, it seems our homes might finally now get smarter.

It’s good news because up until now smart home tech had been plagued with problems. For one, certain products can only be controlled by certain other products. Those smart lights I bought can be turned on and off by Amazon and Google’s voice assistants, but can’t be controlled by Apple’s Home app. Every second smart home device is like this, either needing a proprietary app or being incompatible with a widely used way to control smart tech.

Worse is that much smart home tech has to connect to the cloud in order to work. That not only means that if your web connection goes down, your smart home tech no longer works; it is also an obvious security risk. The internet is littered with tales of smart lights not working when a server somewhere failed, smart locks acting up or cameras being hacked by bad actors.

Matter acts as a solution to these problems in a few ways. For one, it is a shared protocol, with hundreds of major and minor manufacturers having signed on. In addition to Apple, Google and Amazon, myriad other tech makers – everyone from major companies, like GE, Samsung and Phillips, to small but important ones like Grove, Nanoleaf and TP-Link- have all incorporated the standard. They are also no longer theoretical; according to reliable tech site Ars Technica, 550 products are now Matter certified and 150 more are in process.

That means that we are now much closer to the ideal that you can, say, buy smart lights from Phillips, a smart lock from Yale and a thermostat by Nest, but control them all using the Home app on your Apple iPad, or the voice assistant on a Google smart speaker.

That is as it should be. It would be absurd, after all, to have to buy kitchen appliances based on whether they work with your specific electricity provider. Smart tech should be the same: buy whatever makes your life more convenient and it all works together.

Further, Matter also uses another protocol called Thread to avoid having to connect to the internet. No more sitting in the dark or fiddling with a nonfunctioning smart lock because one’s access to the internet has gone down.

It is true that smart home tech can seem a bit absurd. Why do you need to use your voice to raise the blinds or have coloured lights under your kitchen cabinetry? But the upside of tech is accessibility. If and when it works well and easily, it could, for example, help the elderly and others who might have limited mobility, or simplify otherwise complicated things like home security.

It took some time though, in addition to the obvious market pressure from consumers that things work better when they work together. And though Matter is an excellent start, it will need to evolve and grow over time to include more features, more devices, and more options for users.

It is, however, an excellent start. It also seems as if there is a lesson in there: that there are both economic but also social reasons that tech should work on a standard. For one, it makes it more accessible. For another, it makes it more appealing to be able to choose what one wants without having to be locked in to a single company’s ecosystem.

The question now is whether the rest of the tech industry will learn the same lesson. Social media and communication, after all, still operate firmly in the realm of the proprietary. Matter may be small in comparison – but sometimes all you need to start if just one bright light.