CES was a Matter love fest, said one show attendee on Twitter — and they were not wrong. The new smart home standard, formerly known as Project CHIP, was showcased by Samsung and LG during their keynotes and graced all the silicon manufacturers’ and smart home gadget makers’ booths, big and small. Playing spot the Matter logo was like the easiest game of Where’s Waldo ever.
As The Verge reports, Matter is an interoperability standard that’s designed to be the missing piece that makes the smart home “just work.” It was announced in late 2019 as a partnership between Apple, Google, Samsung, Amazon, and others to solve the problems of the smart home. Just over three years later, the standard is here, and the big players are still working together to make it happen. Not all of the chatter on the show floor in 2023 was positive, however. The promise of broad backward compatibility with existing devices seems less likely, and for a standard designed to simplify the smart home, it is confoundingly complicated.
But one thing was clear: every company with a toe in the smart home is paying attention to Matter. No doubt that’s because it has the best chance for a more reliable, more secure, and (eventually) easier to use smart home across all devices and platforms, not just within walled gardens.
Now the challenge will be continuing that momentum to drive Matter to become as ubiquitous and recognizable a standard as Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. For that to happen, Matter will have to deliver on some of its promises very soon, and all those competitors will have to keep playing nice for a lot longer.
While Matter was considered the best Home Tech Concept, the best Smart Home Device at CES was Aqara FP2, a small white sensor, one of the most boring devices in the smart home — but also the most crucial. The sensor that’s going to make smart home automation easier for the rest of us, the Aqara FP2 is a presence sensor that can accurately detect human presence from movements as slight as the rise and fall of your chest when breathing.
Kind of like a tech Santa Claus that knows when you’re sleeping, and knows when you’re awake, this means no more waving your hands when the lights shut off because you were too still while reading your book.
Presence sensing is a big leap forward from passive infrared-based motion detection, which relies on big movements. The $60 FP2 uses mmWave radar tech, enabling one device to detect multiple people and monitor multiple areas within a single room simultaneously. This type of intelligent motion detection will help provide the smart home the context it sorely needs.
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