Summary
- Matter 1.3 brings new energy management features, allowing users to track consumption for devices like electric vehicles and major appliances.
- The Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) oversees Matter, ensuring interoperability and security among smart home devices for better management.
- With continued development, Matter has the potential to revolutionize smart home technology, offering a unified platform with useful features such as those announced today.
While there are several smart home devices that can help you reduce the impact of your carbon footprint, they can only help so much. Depending on how much you are using and managing these products, they may not be greatly benefiting you or your green efforts. Matter, the smart home standard, was created with these issues in mind. The standard, which is managed by the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA), is designed to maintain interoperability between smart home devices. Now, the latest version has launched, promising even more management features than before.
Matter explained: What is the next-gen smart home protocol
Your devices will finally work together as they should
The CSA has announced that Matter 1.3 has been released with continued goals of increasing interoperability, security, and device value (via 9to5Google). This time around, though, the new version comes with more energy reporting functionalities to help users keep an eye on their consumption. This can assist homeowners as they monitor their larger products, in particular, that are responsible for the bulk of their energy use.
More support has arrived with Matter 1.3
Matter 1.3 has support for electric vehicle charging equipment, for example, which allows users to manage how they recharge their car while away from the device. The reporting feature also gives users the option to gain insight into everything from real-time energy consumption to energy usage over time. Major appliances are supported now, too, including ovens, laundry dryers, microwave ovens, and cooktops. In terms of existing features, functionality improvements have been made to Matter casting to TVs, and several bugs have been resolved.
Matter has only been around since 2022, but it has undoubtedly had a positive impact on those who juggle several smart home devices. At launch, 1,135 devices were already certified for the standard, and more companies teamed up with it after it debuted. While it has developed some competitors along its journey to success, it’s clear that Matter still has plenty of potential. Whether more smart home device users open up to the idea of leveraging the technology has yet to be determined. Developers can now access the Matter 1.3 SDK release by visiting the CSA website.