What’s included in the new specification and why it’s important.
Recently the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) announced the updated Matter 1.4 specification. This new release shows the smart home business community’s continued discipline in maintaining this release schedule for developers and manufacturers as Matter adoption grows and becomes more successful in the smart home space.
This update includes normal bug fixes, multiple feature enhancements for the devices already part of the Matter specification and adds some new features to improve the user experience and practicality of smart home devices
Matter 1.4 is finally bringing HRAP devices like routers, modems, access points etc under its scope and certification process. HRAP devices can now be certified by CSA for Matter and provides a standardized approach to manage Matter smart home devices. With the combination of Wi-Fi access point and Thread Border Router, an HRAP device, these features improve the functionality, user experience and interoperability between various Matter devices.
Matter 1.4 also introduces the Enhanced Multi-Admin mode, which is built on top of multi-admin mode, to further enhance the capabilities of Matter devices to join more than one Matter Fabric supporting multiple ecosystems by the same device. This new extension simplifies the usage and setup of devices between a smartphone and a smart speaker which is a common consumer use case.
Long Idle Time (LIT) allows a longer sleep time for Intermittently Connected Devices (ICD). This longer delay and less frequent updates result in significantly reduced power consumption and for certain applications like wireless switches, intrusion detection sensors etc – which generally need to update the Matter controller only when a specific event happens – this is a boon, providing years of operation before they need a battery replacement.
Matter 1.4 significantly improves on the support of new devices like Solar Panels, Batteries, Heat Pumps, Water Heaters, etc. With support for these devices, Matter now covers all the major power generation and consumption devices in a household, and with improvements in the way these devices can report and control their energy consumption, the Matter controller can now have detailed information about the electricity consumption and the trends which can be leveraged to automate their usage to optimize for electricity consumption.
The continued growth of Matter to new devices and use cases in the smart home, highlights the continued commitment from the Connectivity Standards Alliance and member companies to unify and grow the smart home. As a CSA Board Member, we are committed to this continued growth across our Wi-Fi and Thread product lines. We continue to support Matter at customers as it expands into more comprehensive home energy management and sustainability for consumers. The Matter 1.4 release highlights the regular and ongoing updates to the standard to support consumer demand and enhance the use cases and devices supported.
To read about Infineon’s Matter-certified and Matter-enabled solutions below, visit www.infineon.com/Matter
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