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Hardware

Report: 'Matter' Standard Has 'Undeniable Momentum' (theverge.com) 42

Posted by EditorDavid from the mind-over-Matter dept.
The Verge reports "undeniable momentum" for Matter, the royalty-free interoperability standard that "allows smart home devices from any manufacturer to talk to other devices directly and locally with no need to use the cloud."

"Matter was the buzzword throughout CES 2023 this year, with most companies even remotely connected to the smart home loudly discussing their Matter plans." The new smart home standard was featured in several keynotes and displayed prominently in smart home device makers' booths as well as in Google, Amazon, and Samsung's big, showy displays. More importantly, dozens of companies and manufacturers announced specific plans. Several companies said they would update entire product lines, while others announced new ones, sometimes with actual dates and prices. And Matter controllers have become a major thing, with at least four brand-new ones debuting at CES. Interestingly, nearly all of them have a dual or triple function, helping banish the specter of seemingly pointless white hubs stuck in your router closet....

Matter works over the protocols Thread, Wi-Fi, and ethernet and has been jointly developed by Apple, Google, Samsung, Amazon, and pretty much every other smart home brand you can name, big or small. If a device supports Matter, it will work locally with Amazon Alexa, Samsung SmartThings, Apple Home, Google Home, and any other smart home platform that supports Matter. It will also be controllable by any of the four voice assistants....

The big four have turned on Matter support on their platforms, but Amazon's approach has been piecemeal, and aside from Apple, nobody supports onboarding devices to Matter on iOS yet.

However, that is shifting: at CES, Amazon announced a full rollout by spring, and Samsung's Jaeyeon Jung told The Verge that Matter support is coming to its iOS app this month. There's still no news on Matter support in Google Home's iOS app. Then there's the whole competing Thread network issue, although that sounds like it will be resolved sooner rather than later....

The Matter device drought should be over soon — although, judging by most of these ship dates, not until at least the second half of 2023.
"It's also likely we'll see dedicated bridges coming out that can bring Z-Wave and other products with proprietary protocols into Matter...."
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Report: 'Matter' Standard Has 'Undeniable Momentum' More

Report: 'Matter' Standard Has 'Undeniable Momentum'

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  • Open to read, not so open to contribute to (Score:5, Informative)

    by braincode ( 1013969 ) on Sunday January 15, 2023 @07:54PM (#63211250) Homepage
    The version of Matter's "open standards" is: Pay our yearly $20.000 fee to get access to a private #GitHub repo where the standard is actually written. Alternatively, stick to vendor-specific hacks until big corp with 20k$ releases spec changes for cameras, power metering, etc (those are still not supported). Thread and evidence over: https://twitter.com/braincode/... [twitter.com]
    • I don't know what you are complaining about - anyone can contribute momentum to matter. What's more, it even works for non-smart matter as well just as long as it's small enough for you to pick up and throw. However, you do need to be careful because too much momentum involved in interactions between smart and non-smart matter generally causes much unhappiness.
      • I don't know what you mean by "contribute momentum". I'm just pointing out that unless you pay $20.000, the commercialization of my own power metering device is bound to baking in vendor-specific hacks that'll have to revert if you need to change chips and/or development platforms (i.e due to chip shortages).
        • Perhaps I'm too used to RFC-based standards-building culture where people can actually suggest and/or contribute without opening their wallets?

        • I don't know what you mean by "contribute momentum".

          Whoosh! ...and Whoosh!

          • Bwahahah, :facepalm:... I totally deserve this for reading diagonally and not properly understanding while busy with sth else at the time of writing X"D
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Single exfiltration point (Score:5, Insightful)

    by devslash0 ( 4203435 ) on Sunday January 15, 2023 @07:55PM (#63211254)

    As long as ANY of the devices connected to the Matter network can speak to the cloud, eventually, a copy of all your data will end up in the cloud. A single point of exfiltration is all you need to compromise the entire data set.

    • Also of importance is that it will not be obvious what the full set of manufactured things are that can talk to this network.

      Moores law and all, whatever the cost of the technology that drives this, it will only cost pennies 20 years from now. Even your junk mail will spy on you.

    • Re:Single exfiltration point (Score:5, Informative)

      by mrwireless ( 1056688 ) on Sunday January 15, 2023 @09:25PM (#63211388)

      Bingo. There are so many (privacy) issues with Matter.

      - Devices can talk locally, which is great, but they can also more easily connect to the cloud. Since "hubs are evil", according to the Matter creators, storing data logs is implied to happen in the cloud.
      - As you say, any border-gateway will allow even very simply low-power devices to connect to the internet. You have to secure all these border-gateways somehow, which will be extremely hard. There is no single point of control anymore, as "Matter sees privacy as damage, and routes around it".
      - Vendors have even more options for custom extensions than they had with Zigbee, where already companies like Xiaomi and Tuya made incompatible devices. The expectation is that most Matter devices will expose some basic features locally, but still require specialised apps for extra features.
      - A security best-practise was to move your IoT devices to a separate Wi-Fi network, so that any trojan horses could not easily access users' personal devices. With Matter that credo seems to have gone out the window. Where Zigbee still has built-in separation of networks, they moved away from that.

      A lot of these boil down to "Matter makes compartmentalization harder".

      There are other red flags. The Matter website boasts of "improved privacy", but when you look closer at that claim, it's about having improved encryption stength. A classic misunderstanding of privacy. https://csa-iot.org/developer-... [csa-iot.org]

      Similarly, the Development goals of Matter, as listed on Github, don't even mention privacy:
      https://github.com/project-chi... [github.com]

      I'm pretty worried.

      • Your missing some of the use cases.

        We where working on a similar problem at a company I was at a while back (Which sadly died due to certain senior engineers overengineering the shit out of it until we had run out of money just as things where finally going commercial followed by a reverse-takeover where we where hollowed out so the purchasing (technically we purchased them, but with their money) company could yeet our ASX listing without an expensive floating process.

        So heres where we where at. Our big use

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        - Devices can talk locally, which is great, but they can also more easily connect to the cloud. Since "hubs are evil", according to the Matter creators, storing data logs is implied to happen in the cloud.

        This is complete bollocks. If you look at the spec, devices don't require any cloud access to work, and don't have to log anything either. In fact most devices don't log because it just causes warranty issues when they destroy their flash memory. Ask Tesla about it.

        You have to secure all these border-gateways somehow, which will be extremely hard.

        I though you just said they considered hubs to be "evil"? In any case, by "extremely hard" you mean "trivially easy with even a consumer grade firewall".

        - A security best-practise was to move your IoT devices to a separate Wi-Fi network, so that any trojan horses could not easily access users' personal devices. With Matter that credo seems to have gone out the window.

        Except that the whole thing has been very carefully designed to allow that to operate, not le

        • > devices don't require any cloud access to work

          Don't require is not the same as "will not use". Check the Matter promo videos, they all talk about how it also becomes much easier to send data to the cloud. In practise even onboarding will likely use cloud-based certification/authentification. https://csa-iot.org/newsroom/m... [csa-iot.org]

          > destroy their flash memory

          There is a middle ground between storing data on the end-point devices and in the cloud: local smart home controllers. IKEA has done it this way for y

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      So just don't let them connect to the cloud. The Matter standard was designed to work entirely offline.

      My advice is create a second WiFi network that has no internet access. You then just need to create a firewall rule that lets devices on your main LAN/WiFi access ones on the Matter network, but not the other way around.

      Another option is to not use WiFi at all, use some other network like Zigbee, and simply set up your own hub that you have full control of.

  • Wolf in sheep's clothing (Score:4, Insightful)

    by devslash0 ( 4203435 ) on Sunday January 15, 2023 @08:03PM (#63211264)

    In my opinion, this protocol is a disaster from the privacy point of view. Right now, smart devices within your home are mostly siloed. Once you allow them to interconnect, instantly, all the manufacturers will have access to the entire data set gathered anywhere and everywhere in your house. No wonder Big Tech are spending so much money to promote it. They must have realised that non-Matter devices have physical barriers to Big Tech data-gathering capabilities limiting their future prospects so they made a Teams call, agreed on a compromise and came up with a data sharing standard under the guide of interoperability which benefits the Big Tech alone instead of users.

    • Re:Wolf in sheep's clothing (Score:5, Informative)

      by djb ( 19374 ) on Sunday January 15, 2023 @08:30PM (#63211316) Homepage

      Matter is based on HomeKit, which runs untimely on your local network You can block WAN access to all your smart devices on your firewall without any negative effects on the system. Eero routers have a setting for you to do this with out having to understand how firewalls work.

      I don’t get your argument here, Matter does the opposite to what you describe as it limits what data is sent out of your home, where as with Alexa and Google everything seems to be mostly cloud based.

      • His argument is that once the devices connect to Alexa (or Google, etc), all the data is going into the cloud.

        • Which is the case now, unless you want to use a dozen different incompatible apps and hubs to control all your smart devices. Which means securing a dozen different places trying to send data to god knows where. And who knows if those devices will still keep working at all without internet access.
          With Matter being a single standard, and "local only" being built into its design, all that bullshit can be avoided. Doesn't necessarily mean vendors will make it easy to do so of course, but at least at being

      • It does not do the opposite, it does both.

    • Right now, smart devices within your home are mostly siloed. Once you allow them to interconnect, instantly, all the manufacturers will have access to the entire data set gathered anywhere and everywhere in your house.

      Correct but you're missing the point. Let me translate what you wrote: Right now smart devices within your home are unable to talk to each other, and thus not smart.

      Being siloed is *not* a benefit for a smart home. It's a benefit for someone who has been suckered into the marketing thinking that needing one app to turn on the lightbulb and another app to check on the washing, and a 3rd app to see the doorbell camera is "smart".

      It's not. It's a dumb home full of marketing materials that use the word "smart"

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by znrt ( 2424692 )

        It's a benefit for someone who has been suckered into the marketing thinking that needing one app to turn on the lightbulb and another app to check on the washing, and a 3rd app to see the doorbell camera is "smart"

        i would never describe people who insist in using their phone to operate light switches, check their washing or even need a fucking "doorbell camera" as particularly smart. not necessarily dumb either, this stuff nowadays sometimes comes with the building, but the whole idea is just dumb marketing fad over some futurist cool. there is nothing "smart" in replacing switches by apps, any sort of apps, it isn't even more practical and besides the infantile fascination it's just pointless overcomplication and un

      • The core essence of the smart home has always been interoperability between devices, unless you can find:
        a) a vendor who does everything,
        b) a vendor who meets the requirements of a) and is guaranteed not to go bankrupt,
        c) a vendor who meets the requirements of a) and won't fuck your wallet just to replace a broken switch.

        There are existing hubs and open source projects that run on Raspberry Pi's [home-assistant.io] that handle all the major protocols: Z-Wave, ZigBee, Bluetooth, MQTT, Wi-Fi, HTTP etc. as well as be remotely controlled through the web (optionally) or through your iOS or Android phone.

        If you don't add a smart speaker/screen, you can all the data for yourself. But once you add Alexa, Siri or Google Assistant, yes all your data leaks to Amazon, Apple, and Google.

        "Matter" is just more lock-in marketing by its members to obtain ever

  • the first sentence of the summary broke my brain.

  • X10 is old but simple. It is adequate for many home-automation scenarios.

    Granted, it doesn't work well for everyone, but it's worth a look.

    • X10 is old but simple.

      X10 is very old, has low bandwidth, and only works for devices plugged into a wall socket. It won't work with battery-powered devices or devices plugged into a UPS.

      Very few modern devices support X10.

      • I loved X10. I began with X10 devices back in 1984 when I bought a GE television that had an X10 controller built in, with an on-screen UI that was "so neat!". Over the years my X10 system grew to using in-wall switches and outlets, fans, and other devices. But, sadly, the advent of CFL and LED lighting spelled the end of X10 for me as the switches and plugs couldn't accommodate those (lots and lots of flickering and dim-but-not-off). I switched out everything for Zigbee and Z-Wave, first with a Wink 2

    • Re:Keeping things simple (Score:5, Interesting)

      by RitchCraft ( 6454710 ) on Monday January 16, 2023 @01:05AM (#63211746)
      X10 was awesome! I grew up in an automated house in the 80's. My father programmed a couple of Radio Shack MC-10s to control all of the X10 appliance modules throughout the house to control lighting and other appliances. He then designed a custom PLC to control the heating, air conditioning, house UPS (yes, 10 big monster wet cell batteries!), and back up generator. When power would go out the UPS would instantly take over and could power the house for up to 20 minutes. While that was going on the PLC would fire up the generator in the shed, go through a warm up cycle, and then switch over to generator power. When mains power came back the system would switch back and power down the generator. We had that generator in 1978 (before the PLC and X10) and it was a life saver during the blizzard of 78. We were the only ones for miles around with power for the 3 days that power was out. The generator used to run a toll booth plaza on the Ohio turnpike. He still has it and the all the automation still works perfectly.

  • I've worked on this - consensus at the application (Score:5, Insightful)

    by FeelGood314 ( 2516288 ) on Sunday January 15, 2023 @08:44PM (#63211338)
    Consensus at the application level is brutally difficult. You think arguments about the MAC layer are hard, or voltages and connector shapes are hard try getting people to agree on how to turn a light bulb on. In some cases it is companies wanting to do it exactly the same way they currently do it with in their proprietary systems, in many cases it's because they can't be bothered reading what already exists but there are other reasons. Like someone has a bug in their implementation and maybe turning off and on 3 times in 2 seconds causes an issue* so they add a polling frequency feature and everyone else in the room says sure, why not, it's easier to say yes to bloat than to fight it. Then the next issue is that everyone wants to be gathering the information and controlling the devices from their cloud. They want to make it as easy as possible for their developers. Their developers who can push new code out anytime they want, onto their essentially resource unconstrained devices. Meanwhile the poor guys working for smaller companies that want to make the devices, the developers who are resource constrained, power constrained and cost constrained get drowned out.

    Next lets look at what Matter runs over. Thread started out as a beautiful protocol. It has lots of amazing features and they initially did security right (before Apple insisted on some painfully dumb features). However the entire model for Thread is wrong. At the end of the day it becomes like WiFi where every device will be calling back to its own cloud server. You will need a different app to control everything. Sure, Alexa could control everything but since the money is in selling your data, each device will eventually end up talking back to its own manufacturer who will then talk to Amazon. Your simple on off command is going to go through multiple different vendors.

    Lastly there is the alliance that runs Matter, and Zigbee and Z-wave. They have a track record of killing everything they touch. Matter isn't open. It's free to read but you can't redistribute it and you definitely can't fork it. It is about $20,000 if you want to help edit it and $150,000 if you actually want any say in the direction the standard goes. F#$K the Connectivity Standards Alliance.

    *This actually happens in the power measurement. Someone's implementation is so bad that asking power consumption too frequently breaks their device so they changed the standard.
  • Oh just fuck off with this bullshit.

  • Nothing. What's a matter with you?

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