A chip renames it “important” and promises to simplify your smart home

Project Connected Home via IP (CHIP) – A new name has been given to the ambitious smart home partnership in which Amazon, Apple, Google, Samsung, ZigBee Alliance and dozens of other companies work together on an open standard: Matter.

The rebranding is about to begin with the first certifications from Matter, which will arrive in advance End of 2021. The new branding and logo aims to make it easier for customers to learn about devices that work with Unified Matter. The logo will appear on future device products.

Matter’s goal is deceptively simple: Make sure you can use your smart home devices with the voice assistant (or assistants) of your choice, whether it’s through Apple Siri / HomeKit, Amazon Alexa, or Google Assistant. On startup, Matter works on Ethernet Wi-Fi, Thread, and Bluetooth Low Energy.

There are other big companies like Philips Hue on board: The company has already promised to release a small software update in the coming months that will make all past and current products compatible with Matter after launch.

It’s an ambitious goal that could greatly simplify the confusing parts of a smart home setup – assuming companies are ready to release software updates and integrate the standard into their current and future products.

As part of the announcement, the Zigbee Alliance (which created the ZigBee standard for networked smart home devices) announced that it would be renamed the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) because, in addition to Zigbee, it also focused on projects such as materials on networking.