Project Connected Home via IP (or CHIP for short), the ambitious smart home partnership that will see Amazon, Apple, Google, Samsung, Zigbee Alliance and dozens of other companies collaborate on an open standard, is now a new name: Thing.
The rebranding expects the first Matter certificates, which should arrive by the end of 2021. The new branding and logo are designed to help customers understand devices that work with the unified Matter system, With the logo set to appear on future hardware products.
Matter’s goal is deceptively simple: to ensure that the user is always able to use their smart home devices with their preferred voice assistant (or assistants), whether it’s Siri, Apple’s HomeKit, Amazon Alexa, or the Google Assistant.
At launch, Matter will run on Ethernet Wi-Fi, Thread, and Bluetooth Low Energy.
There are other big companies on board, like Philips Hue: The company has already promised to release a minor software update in the coming months that will make all of its past and current products compatible with Matter once they are launched.
It’s an ambitious goal, which could greatly simplify the confusing parts of a smart home setup, assuming companies are ready to commit to software updates and incorporate the standard into their current and future products.
As part of the announcement, the Zigbee Alliance (which created the Zigbee standard for interconnected smart home devices) has also announced that it will rename itself to the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) as it expands to focus more on projects like Matter, in addition to the existing Zigbee network.
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