What is Matter? Unifying IoT Devices for the Smart Home | Digi-Key Electronics

[@AdityaMehendale]

Trust Shawn to take a complex topic and break it down to bite-sized, easy-to-follow chunks :) Thanks!!

[@AdityaMehendale]

PS, thanks for not editing-out the "failed to load" attempts :)

[@mustang607]

Matter is starting to become mainstream but it seems there are a number of facts people don't know and aren't told but really should be.

[@TobyReLaXiN]

Go on…

[@qcnck2776]

I hope I'm wrong, but what I can gather is that Thread (a word that implies connecting things) is a connection methodology, and Matter (which would imply an object) is also a connection methodology. What a mess. A really complicated mess. Millions of words in the English language, and this is what they come up with!

[@ShawnHymel]

Agreed..."Matter" and "Thread" were terrible choices for SEO and making things easy to understand.

[@gzoechi]

Thread is pure connectivity, like Ethernet but with mesh and low power consumption.. Thread doesn't care about the meaning of the data sent between the devices. It just takes care the receiver gets the data. Matter doesn't care how the receiver gets the data (Thread, WiFi, Ethernet, ...), it just cares about the meaning of the data and who should receive what messages.

[@RogerTannous]

Great introduction from Shawn, but it seems a little bit concerning when it comes to getting devices to connect. How will engineers design systems based on Matter (and Thread) and ensure almost no human intervention is required. Will they suffer disconnections when unattended power cycling occurs ?

[@ShawnHymel]

Great question! The connection issues I had came from faulty BLE code for the Raspberry Pi. For designing a seamless, easy commissioning process, engineers would do well to make sure their BLE code is rock solid for the commissioning process (both on the commissioning app and Matter device side).

[@RogerTannous]

@@ShawnHymel thanks a lot for the clarification. Will be waiting for great videos like this!

[@anthonytalley55]

Thanks for your help

[@pumpkingal]

It uses Ethernet, WiFi, BLE, Thread. But why not LoRa too?

[@gzoechi]

Because nobody built a bridge for LoRa to any of the other Matter-supported networks yet. Matter doesn't use BLE except for bonding of devices.

[@mnemonicator]

This kind of compatibility is already available in the market for long period if time and known as KNX, I don’t see any advantages with matter.

[@gzoechi]

KNX is a great standard, but the lock-in mentality is quite off-putting. There are only hacky solution to make KNX interact with the outside world. They try hard to prevent end users from maintaining their own smart homes and rather want to keep it a lucrative business for professionals. It would be nice if Matter would steal some stuff from KNX. What I completely miss in Matter currently is some autonomy of end devices, like a switch switching lights without consulting a central unit. Matter is supposed to support that, but I haven't seen this used or even mentioned anywhere yet.

[@richardautry9594]

Get your facts straight! You seem to have gotten one little fact wrong, it wasn't Hirohito who didn't want to back down, it was the military leadership. It wasn't until the Nagasaki bomb that the military leadership agreed to ask the Emperor for his advice, that he pointed out that the war was going badly and the people were suffering too much.

[@SolarizeYourLife]

You failed to tell all of us, that we actually need a matter hub that actually works locally especially when the Internet goes down!!! 👎🏽😡

[@BlindBatG34]

Queue XKCD comic #927: Standards

[@ShawnHymel]

LOL! That comic did cross my mind when I was researching Thread and Matter :)

[@Rohan-su9en]

First here ??

[@Timhogs]

You and KZbin have a lot of nerve thinking I'll be willing to sit through a 17 minute advertisement to watch a five minute video.

[@0dbm]

Could it get more complicated ? It’s ok , A I will handle it