Hello, I'm Tristan from Smart Home Point. So back in 2019, the smart home community was ABUZZ
(is that a word?!) ABUZZ with talk about Connected Home Over IP... or CHOIP. This was
apparently the saving grace that would FINALLY allow us to take our 500 different smart home
devices produced by 300 DIFFERENT companies, and allow them to seamlessly talk to each other.
Okay, the reality will almost certainly be different,
but regardless it's still a positive development. However CHOIP has now been renamed to "Matter",
possibly because they realized that CHOIP was a stupid name - who knows. Now, Matter could be a
big deal... some might even say that it matters. That won't be the last cheesy pun in this video...
anywhoo, Philips Hue have recently announced that they WILL support Matter. This seems like
a pretty big deal because if someone in the future comes out with an awesome new RGB remote (which
is better than this) that is Matter compatible, it can be used to control your Hue lights - no matter
who produces that new RGB remote. Another example: imagine that Elon
Musk develops a fancy new smart voice assistant that takes over the world.
The Musk Smart Speaker is awesome in every way. Control your Tesla,
smart home and love life using your brainwaves... or maybe just your voice. Supports Thread,
Matter and the Martian atmosphere. Brainwave control requires a Neuralink
Pro subscription. Martian support requires SpaceX Premium. Both available separately.
The Musk Smart Speaker, here to take over the World.
I'd buy that. If the Musk Speaker is Matter compatible, this could ALSO control your
Philips Hue system - even if Philips Hue as a 'company' no longer exists, for that matter.
That's because Matter is a "connectivity standard", which is a fancy way of saying that
loads of smart home companies have come together and are agreeing a way for their devices to speak
to each-other in a common way. And this can work locally, without the internet being required.
It doesn't matter whether a smart device uses Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or Thread:
as long as the device is Matter-compatible, it can speak to other Matter-compatible devices. And
that is no laughing matter. After all, right now most smart devices seem to support Amazon Alexa
and often Google Home, but HomeKit support is quite hit-and-miss. And support for lesser-known
smart hubs and voice assistants is rare. But the Matter project can change all this - by finally
agreeing and enforcing a common way that all your smart devices can speak to each other.
Back to the matter at hand, how does all this help Philips Hue? In-fact, DOES it help Philips Hue?
Well... yes and no. I already mentioned that if there's a fancy new RGB remote or smart speaker in
the future, as long as it's Matter-compatible, it can control your Philips Hue system.. And
that's naturally good, but guess what? You can do that already, as a matter of fact. Zigbee-enabled
devices can already control your Hue lights, as we've seen with Amazon's recent Echo devices
that contain a Zigbee chip and support Philips Hue lights without requiring a Hue Bridge.
Plus right now, all that being "Matter-compatible" means is that it will probably support Amazon
Echo, Google Home and HomeKit-based devices. But Philips Hue supports all three of these
anyway! When Elon Musk launches his new smart speaker that takes over the world,
Philips Hue will just do a software upgrade to the Hue Bridge to support the Musk Speaker as well.
And whilst it's good that a lot more companies have signed up to the Matter project than the
ZigBee alliance, I must shed some light on this matter and point out that Philips Hue
supporting Matter could actually be a BAD thing. Wait, what? Well, Hue has confirmed that the Hue
BRIDGE will be upgraded to support Matter. This means that the individual Hue lights and switches
will NOT be Matter compatible - they will still run over ZigBee and require the Hue Bridge.
And this gets us to the root of the matter: your individual Hue lights,
motion sensors and their accessories will be unable to talk to other Thread-compatible devices.
So the biggest benefit of our future smart homes - access to the robust Thread-based mesh
network - will be unavailable to the individual Philips Hue components. You still need the clunky
Hue Bridge for that, and even then the Hue Bridge won't be 'speaking' Thread - it'll be Ethernet.
I realise that I haven't discussed "Thread" yet and I don't want to
confuse things and make matters worse, so... Thread is a low-power, IPv6-based protocol
that forms a mesh network. This means that it's a rival to ZigBee and Z-Wave because they also form
mesh networks - whereby each device can link with other devices, creating a fault-tolerant network.
If one device goes offline, it's fine because your smart home commands can just be routed
via the other devices in the Thread network. Thread is Internet Protocol based, meaning that
it fits much more into the internet-based world that we live in. After all, it's likely that some
internet routers in the future will support Thread, but none really support ZigBee.
So whilst it's not exactly a matter of life and death that Hue lights won't support Thread,
it's still unfortunate because Thread is the main communication protocol within the Matter standard
(alongside Wi-Fi and Bluetooth). ZigBee isn't even an option within the standard.
You would have thought that it's just a matter of time before Philips Hue brings out a Hue Bridge
v3 that DOES support Thread, but right now that doesn't seem to be planned - the Hue Bridge v2
seems here to stay. What this means in practise is that - as I mentioned earlier - your Philips
Hue lights and accessories will not be Matter or Thread compliant. They will continue to be ZigBee
based, and then just the Hue Bridge v2 will be Matter-compatible - but NOT Thread compatible.
And so the actual benefits of this are going to be fairly minimal, in my opinion. Remember that Hue
could just introduce a software update for the Musk Speaker when it takes over the
world - whether or not Matter exists too. So that wraps up my thoughts on this matter.
The fact of the matter is... what's the matter?... sorry, I don't know what the
matter is with me today! Summing up, it's good that Philips Hue will support Matter - but the
real-world difference will probably be minimal. What matters more to me is whether Philips Hue
lights will start to introduce Thread support in future generations. Doing this will allow Philips
Hue to get rid of the Hue Bridge entirely. We'll see. For now, I hope you enjoyed this video.
If you did, please click the thumbs up button which will tell YouTube
that more people should see this video. Please also consider subscribing to my channel
and clicking the bell icon which will notify you when I release new videos. Thank you!