Matter 1.4 tries to set the smart home standard back on track
Matter 1.4 tries to set the smart home standard back on track
Matter makes some smart moves.
I just want to buy home automation gadgets that don't need a bloody cloud account to work.
That's the point of this standard, at least in theory. Same with the older but still common ZigBee standard.
Zwave and zigbee have never needed a cloud.
They might be older tech, but they're pretty rock solid.
Still on zwave which works great. Don't see the point of this standard which runs over an inferior type of networking and is brought to us by the companies that created the interoperability problem in the first place.
Zwave stuff are way overpriced, even comparing to the wifi or zigbee quivalent.
As an examble I get good quality (aka not an unknown chineese brand) Zigbee smart object for 2 to 5 times lower price than what a Zwave equivalent.
Same goes for wifi one, which are roughly the same price as the Zigbee stuff.The only good aspect of Zwave was the security protocol that was more robust than the Zigbee equivalent (albeit Zigbee 3.0 closed the gap) and more standardized endpoints. Matter objective is to get those two to surpass their ZWave equivalent.
Unfortunately my gateway (which is compatible with both Zigbee 3.0 and ZWave btw) is still waiting for its Matter/Thread upgrade, so I can't try it yet, but compairing my Zwave objects with my Zigbee ones, I see no point of buying the former over the later.
I once owned a bunch of WiFi connected devices. One day I inspected my router logs and found out that they were all making calls to a bunch of services that weren't the vendor - things like Google, and Facebook.
WiFi connected devices require connecting to a router; in most homes, this is going to be one that's also connected to the internet - most people aren't going to buy a second router just for their smart home, or set up a disconnected second LAN on their one router. And nearly all of these devices come with an app, which talks to the device through an external service (I'm looking at you, Honeywell, and you, Rainbird). This is a privacy shit-show. WiFi is a terrible option for smart home devices.
ZigBee, well, I haven't had any luck with it - pairing problems which are certainly just a learning curve in my part and not an issue with the protocol. I chose ZWave myself because I read about the size and range limitations of ZigBee technology, versus ZWave, but honestly I could have gone either way. Back then, there was no appreciable price difference in devices. Most hubs support both, though, and I can't see why I wouldn't mix them (other than I need to figure out how to get ZigBee to work).
In any case, low-power BT, ZigBee, or Zwave are all options, whereas I will not allow more WiFi smart devices in my house. I'm stuck with Honeywell and Rainbird, for... reasons... but that's it. I don't need to be poking more holes in my LAN security.
Don't see the point of this standard which runs over an inferior type of networking
Inferior how? Matter is not comparable to Z-Wave. Z-Wave is a mesh network, Matter is just a standard which would allow Alexa, Siri, Google, etc. to control the same devices. To allow Z-Wave like functionality, Matter is able to work on top of Thread, which is in fact superior to Z-Wave.
is brought to us by the companies that created the interoperability problem in the first place
Of course. You don’t want to be the company known for refusing to participate in an open standard, even if you secretly don’t want it to succeed. Anyways, there’s no reason for companies to not want an open standard for controlling smart devices, since it literally helps everyone support more devices for basically no effort once you add support for Matter.
The problem with matter is that EVERY update to a device must be certified and that costs money.
So brands are sticking with the proprietary hub model so they can iterate faster
Also you need to pay (18k/year iirc) in addition to that as well. Next to the fact that matter itself is quite convoluted from an implementation standpoint.
It’s really not made with things like startups or niche products in mind. It’s really a standard by and for the big companies
Matter sucks ass
Matter has been pretty good to me lately. Had to solve an Apple Home Hub issue, but it’s pretty rock solid now. My only complaint is switches could have less latency (I want near instant), but at least they are working consistently. I’m using Matter over Thread, not Matter over WiFi.
Finally theres a standart for Smart home devices, even tho I doubt anyone else will use the standart
It's been around for a while and it's already pretty popular. So I'm nlt sure what you're talking about.