Brilliant Gen 2, Smart Switches, & Matter 1.4.1 with Guest Daniel Moneta from the CSA
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Welcome everybody to another exciting episode of HomeKit Insider. This week I have joining me Daniel Moneta from the, I can't even think of the words right now, Connectivity Standards Alliance. That is the organization that oversees Matter.io.

I'm pretty excited because we have matter stuff to talk about, the change in release schedule, the new update that just came out. We also have a massive list of news that we're going to walk through. So Daniel, thank you so much for joining me. I'm so excited to have you on. Hey, thanks for having me. And I guess this is the part of the conversation where I explain like the 15 different hats I wear and exactly like who I am from the CSA because I know you've had a few guests on. Absolutely.

We're going to get, I'm sure, into the, well, I've been promised we're going to get into the nerddom of all of this and how the organization works. But one thing to keep in mind is the Connectivity Standards Alliance, it's an open standards body. And there are staff and there are people who work for the CSA, like you've had Tobin, our president and CEO on the podcast before.

But a lot of the people who are also doing the work day to day are representatives of member companies. So for instance, I am not an employee of the CSA. I actually, one of my hats is doing product and strategy for Samsung SmartThings, and I represent them in the organization.

And through elected roles in Matter, and we'll talk about that I'm sure in a bit, I'm what we call the marketing and product subgroup chair and sit on the steering committee, which is sort of the mini board of Matter. So I'm here to speak from that role, but keeping in mind that I'm one of the many members, the hundreds of members of the CSA that work together to produce technologies like Matter.

I know. It's such an interesting thing because it's so cool to have all these companies working together, which seldom happens. But at the same time, you're trying to get all these competing different companies to work together. So there's a reason that seldom happens. So it's...

It's an exciting, unique, and I'm sure at times frustrating situation to be in a little bit, moving stuff forward. But there's been a lot of progress over the last couple of years. And yeah, we just had the new spring update. So that'll be fun to talk about. Yeah. Oh, it's a masterclass in negotiation and alignment. And it's like you have all these people working together, most of whom do not report to each other or are accountable to each other in any way. So like you really have to build relationships

between people, right? You can't just like say, this is how it's going to be. And, you know, I generally, there are frustrating moments sometimes and there are challenges in that. I think I have one of the best jobs in the world. Like I'm a huge, like you and I'm sure a lot of our listeners, I've been a huge smart home enthusiast and fan and nerd for a long time. And I just have the product manager of every single smart home device on Slack. So that's a pretty nice perk of the job.

That is a perfect situation. Like, Hey, this isn't working now. Help me troubleshoot right now. Like, yeah. Like the number of features that exist out in the real world, just cause like I messaged the guy and was like, Hey, this is happening. Go fix this. And like the same of all of us, like we all give each other a ton of feedback. It's great. Nice. That is so cool. Okay. We're going to come back to all of the matter stuff. Let's get into the news. Um, also just for everyone listening and or watching, um,

This is fun. I'm shooting remote this week. So like we're, there's a whole new setup. I have blankets draped everywhere. It's a, this is like my family's like old lake house. So connectivity and aesthetics are severely lacking. So we're doing our best. I have the whole, I got my mic and everything. So hopefully everything still comes together well for the podcast, but just in case something really sus happens as we're recording, that's what's going on. So yeah,

So kicking things off with the news, tvOS 18.5 came out. We got all the normal updates, you know, iOS, iPads, macOS, all of those. Nothing related to the smart home there. We did get one little thing, which was that tvOS added support for synchronizing Atmos playback for speakers over AirPlay or Bluetooth. So previously, that would not sync over when you were using those speakers, and it caused like...

Not alignment issues, but synchronization issues where the audio and the video were not properly in sync. So now if you go to settings, video and audio, wireless audio sync, it'll take care of that issue. When you're playing, it'll be at most content. So good update there, you know, at least somewhat here for the smart home users. The 0.5 updates were very, very small. So not a ton of changes, but it's at least something. We have more fun stuff now. Brilliant. Brilliant after...

You guys know I've been a huge proponent of Brilliant. I love their smart wall panel controls. I've got a bunch in my house. The company kind of... Mine's just out of shot right over here. Yeah. The company kind of folded, essentially. It was acquired by a few different investment firms, I believe. And now they are out with new second-generation panels. And I know when things were going poorly, they did so well.

so much kind of like you see other companies fold and it's like you're in the dark. You got, you got nothing. You got zero support, anything. They tried to keep like their support running as long as they could, their devices and stuff were still running while they figured out their next steps. And I know Aaron, their old CEO, he was talking about how like we were so close to launching second gen panels. Now they moved to a new team.

They were able to launch their new panels, which have several updates to them, and they're available to order now. So they have 2.4 and 5 gigahertz support instead of just 2.4. They have four times higher resolution screens on them and significantly faster processors. So what do you think of this, Daniel? I mean, we both like these. We both have them. You excited for your new models? Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, so honestly, to your point, like I was really happy that as, you know, there was uncertainty as to where the company was going. I haven't had a day that my panel has stopped working. And that's, frankly, I think a real feat. I'm sure we can talk about that and we'll get to it. You know, there's often stories about...

perfectly good working devices that unfortunately just become bricks because lack of support, updates, things like that. That's really difficult for users. It's unfortunate for sustainability. So I've been really impressed that they've kept these things going. Actually, the other day I went to go upload some new photos of me and my girlfriend to the panel, and I was even surprised that it actually worked and then saw the story about the second gen. So I'm like, okay, great. They're continuing to support that. So I'm excited. Yeah, I might upgrade.

I would love, love, love to see... I've been a fan of the Brilliant stuff for a long time because I really do think it makes sense to meet the user where they are. Hey, I've always been using this as a light switch and now it's a better light switch.

I think that it was a little bit ahead of its time. One of the challenges for companies of their size is like dealing with 10,000 different APIs just to connect to all the third-party devices. I think that was one of the complaints that people had, which is like, hey, this connects to a few of the major brands, but not everything. So I would love to see them start supporting Matter as a controller because then, you know, they don't have to do bespoke development for every single device. I would...

I think it was a bit of a miss. I would have loved to see them put thread in these things and then be a border router because it's such a perfect device. It's always on. It's connected to power. It's usually in a central area of the house. So hopefully we'll see them become more of that infrastructure of the home over time.

I agree. The thread thing was probably the biggest miss for me in this update, just because of that you have constant power supply and it seems like they already had to upgrade the wireless chip to get the 2.4 and five gigahertz, uh, networking. So it's like, I wish they would have went with, you know, something that did support thread. It,

Maybe because they hadn't gone the matter route yet, which I believe they are. They've been committed, quote, committed to matter. So I think that update should be coming, but it just made sense to me. So I am bummed that the thread was missing. Yeah.

It's probably fine. I mean, you and me especially, I'm sure we have enough thread devices already in our house that... There's a border router out there somewhere. Yeah, exactly. Sometimes that happens, like people populate the chips but don't turn them on. I'm not speaking on behalf of Brilliant. I have not seen it tear down yet. But there's plenty of folks like, you know, NXP makes like tri-band radio so you get Bluetooth and thread and...

and Wi-Fi, and so you may see more folks that have dormant stuff turning that on. Again, I don't know anything proprietary about that one. We have seen that, right? I mean, Apple had ThreadRadius. I can't remember if they turned them on right away or not, but they still have them in many other devices that aren't enabled. We know we had them in the Level Lock, which got activated when they did their Matter upgrade. So maybe...

It really is thinking something similar. They've got thread in there, but they're going to wait until a Matter update to enable it. So we'll have to see. But either way, I'm also surprised the prices stayed the same. I thought they were going to decrease. Aaron seemed to make it sound like they were going to be more affordable. So I was hoping maybe they would be more affordable. But I also know that they've been... I feel like they've been doing more commercial and, like, to installers and stuff versus homeowners. So the price won't be, like, as...

kind of pronounced, I guess, or noticeable. So I don't know, but I'm excited for it. It seems like a really good updager.

Okay, new Sonos stuff, a bunch of little things happening here. Sonos did another interview, so their new interim CEO, Tom Conrad, spoke to Wired, and he basically kind of more copped up to the things that had been going on and talking about some of the bigger problems that the company has had as they're looking to improve things, make things a lot better. The biggest thing they said was they knew they were missing features, but they went ahead with that app launch anyway.

they found that like, they're like, oh, these are very little used features, so it'd be fine. But what they didn't kind of take into consideration was that they were little used, but they were very important to those that did use them. So that caused so much strife with consumers. At the same time, they also updated the UI drastically without any kind of sort of, you know, step into that. I mean, even Apple doing a software update to the UI was

takes so much backlash. Like we saw what happened with the Photos app. Everyone was so mad about it that they backpedaled half of it. Same thing with like changing Safari a few years ago. So people can be upset with the change of a UI like that. And he does admit that those were some of their biggest problems.

They also said they didn't test every fringe case when they were rolling out that new app. People's homes are so unique and different that it's really hard to test all those things, and they definitely didn't test everything, which led to some of the

connection issues that they also had been experiencing. So they've been doing things better. They've been working on it after getting regular updates as we kind of continued up to you guys on the podcast. Conrad also says he would like to stay on the CEO right now. He's just interim CEO kind of while they find out their longterm plans and goals. He has great plans for the company. If he does get to stay on, if the board chooses that, but you know, right now we'll see. So I don't know. I'm still a huge Sonos fan. I love their products, their soundbars, their,

I think they're great companions for Apple TV. They have AirPlay support and everything. So I really like them. I hope they continue to do well. I am bummed that they canceled their streaming box, but...

That's probably the only thing. Yeah, I mean, that was an interesting read, and I appreciated him going into the detail and background of it. I've been a Sonos user for a long time, but really only a little bit. I really dug into the ecosystem actually after the app update, and so I've sort of only known this new world, and aside from some bugs here and there, I haven't had too much trouble, but

The article was really interesting. Like I think the, the part that he spoke about that, like I really felt in, in my heart and my gut was just like talking about how, um,

how important these devices were to people's lives and, and how, how much it had integrated into their lives. And so then how frustrating that is when, when they go wrong. And I, like, I feel that, I think like anyone who's a smart home enthusiast probably feels that really to their core, um, or, or early adopters of all sorts, because there's so many, um,

There's so many products, particularly in the smart home and otherwise, where this company, this product is asking to be a mission critical, everyday, indispensable part of your life. I'm sure many of these product managers have as their personal OKRs or KPIs that the user says, "Oh, this is one of the top three devices I couldn't live without."

But, you know, if that's the relationship you want with your users, then like you have to do your part of that relationship too. When something goes wrong or when they need your help, you need to be there for them and you need to treat that like an indispensable product. And I know, you know, we've all had experiences where companies like live up to that and support their products. And we've all had experiences where like we have that indispensable product and then we call the company for support and they're like, oh, okay, send it in and we'll repair it. It'll take three months. And it's like...

you're not, you're, you're not, uh, being a part of the relationship in a way that, um, that, you know, you're asking to be. And so, um, I think it was really the fact that he recognized that and, and sort of that's part of their philosophy going forward is, is really good to see. Cause, uh, as I, as much as I'm an early adopter, as I get older, like that's how I spend my dollars on companies that like, uh, in live up to the relationship that they want to have with me.

Yeah, totally agreed. And I know they still take flack from consumers. I'll do a video on Sonos and I'll have a lot of comments like never trying them again, this, this, this. I'm like, I have never seen a company respond as well as Sonos has to this. Like it was obviously a major misstep, but they have done so much from restructuring to canceling products, to ridiculous amount of software updates, to public Trello boards with update changes that they are doing and planning and roadmapping. Like they're,

They are really rolling out the stops to bring back their loyal followers. And I'm surprised that we still see as much backlash as we do.

Yeah. I mean, you know, man, you, you move a button on someone and people get upset because, you know, that's the way it's always worked. So I can understand people, people struggling with that, but you know, again, to this theme, right? Like it's a relationship. And if, you know, you had someone in your life that wanted to be indispensable, but then flaked on you whenever, you know, you needed them, you'd be upset. But, you know, we, we also have relationships with people where like, you know, they make mistakes and they recognize it and own up to it and are trying to

to be better. And that does seem to be what they're doing. And so I, you know, I do respect that. Absolutely. Okay. So we talked on a previous episode about switches, like for fans and light switches. And this is always such a, yeah,

Oh, boy. I am so excited to hear what you have to say. So I was mainly talking about how, like, sometimes you'll have rooms and there'll be, like, one switch on the wall. And you turn it and it'll turn on both the fan and the lights. So you have to, like, to try to make that smart...

is hard. Then there are other rooms that have two switches, one for the fan, one for the light, and then you can set up independent controls, things like that. But you still have to have a fan controller on one for speed. There's a lot of different cases here. And we had Jared actually reach out and send me an email on this company, Inovelli, which I probably have heard of, but it didn't ring a bell right away. So he sent over this switch, the Inovelli switch, which does work with...

I believe Apple Home. I'm not sure if it has Matter on there. I can't remember. Yes, it's Matter over Thread. It's Matter over Thread. Okay, perfect. So just my quick notes that I wrote down on it. You can put it into smart bulb mode. Brilliant does this as well, which basically leaves it completely powered on, and then you trigger it as a button press. So you press it, and it turns on the lights in the room. So you can use it in like this smart bulb.

bulb mode. It can support multiple taps for triggering different automations and scenes for people who want to do that. You can customize this little LED light bar on the side. You can have a favorites button on there so you can press it and it can set a scene, whatever you want to do. Non-neutral compatible and as you said, Mad River Thread. This looks like a solid option. I'm

I'm trying to figure out still how I would specifically wire this up for our room, but it seems like a really nice smart switch. Yeah, I agree. Like, I guess going back to my comment a minute ago, like, huge fan of switches and buttons. Like, it's...

It's so funny to me, especially having worked for a couple major ecosystem companies, right? There's always so much focus on these really advanced ways of control, whether it's voice or other things, but we've been turning lights on and off with a switch our entire life. This kind of goes back to the interface discussion. You don't need to search for the perfect use case. We have one. Maybe it's not perfect. Maybe it might not even be how you would design it from the ground up, but...

we literally have muscle memory over it. Like we know how to turn a light on in a dark and, and, uh, we've been doing it every single day of our lives and it's worked a hundred percent. So in, and for, especially for those of us who are smart home enthusiasts and have probably tried to like bring smart home into the house and maybe met some friction with the rest of the house, uh, you know, at a previous company, we called that the household acceptance factor. Um,

Switches are amazing because everybody else in the home does not have to remember like what to say and what to press and all the stuff they just think they do the same thing they did before and so in a belly is doing such a great job of like making the light switch better rather than Trying to like put duct tape over the switch and tell you to go do something else and I love the fact that you know You can install these and like you said they can be a hard switch that is controllable by something else or they can be like a soft button and

still functions as a light switch, but now it's like a trigger for automations and other things. And I think, you know, going over the matter over thread route was great for them because it allows them to show up in the different ways that ecosystems might ingest that type of device, whether it's sort of a control-y or a controller.

Matter actually in the previous update in 1.4, we actually announced support for in-wall switches because typically people had been doing that, just treating them as effectively light bulbs until now. But they do behave and they do have some properties that are a little bit different in your mental model of how you set up your smart home.

So that's also going to set them up for success really there. So super, super excited to see that. I actually just, Eric came to, from Inovelli, came to speak as a keynote speaker at the Thread group meeting recently in Denver. And it was really fascinating to hear him talk about the customer challenges that they addressed and why they did matter over Thread and how it's really leading to great performance and a lot of excitement from their users. So looking forward to more from them.

Nice. Yeah. I think it's a really cool switch. They added a lot of little touches to it that we don't usually see on switches. Like I like that there's a favorites button. You can have someone, you know, like a family member or whatever come in and still use as a regular paddle switch, but you have like, you know, for you and me that want to get nerdy and want to set up like a double tap thing or, you know, the favorites button, like all these things you can keep adding to that. And again,

I really like the red. For a lot of these switches, the Wi-Fi is fine because they do have consistent power. So Wi-Fi is generally pretty okay for wall switches, but I do think that this helps. Our house is like brick and we constantly have like Wi-Fi and connection issues. And it's an old, it's like L-shaped house. From what I have heard, it was literally moved here to where we are now.

and then add it on to multiple times. So they brought it on a trailer, put it down, then added multiple additions onto it with more brick. So there's like brick in places that there wouldn't usually be brick. And it has caused so many connection issues. So in those cases, Thread is really useful because it can just keep jumping between everything and create that mesh network covering your home. And especially in spots where Wi-Fi might not reach or be as reliable.

I still think this is really handy. So thanks, Jared, for sending us over because I had not seen this before. Yeah, Eric had said, you know, one of the things their users really liked was that they're, especially because of Thread, like they're so responsive that it feels like a hardwired switch even when they're controlling smart bulbs. And I think that's so important, especially for the household acceptance factor, because you're replacing something that already worked 100% of the time perfectly well immediately. And so like the bar for performance really has to be high. And I think

I think Thread is helping to deliver them. This is why Matter adopted both Wi-Fi and Thread as a transport layers to enable these different use cases.

I also think the other challenge, especially for lighting devices, is you're likely to end up having a lot of those in your house. Think about light bulbs, let alone light switches. God help you if you ever change your Wi-Fi password or SSID. A lot of devices, especially simple devices like bulbs, the only way to change the Wi-Fi network is to factory reset them, which then takes them out of rooms, takes them out of all your automations. You could spend a month resetting your home.

Whereas if you ever did that, you know, with a bunch of thread devices, all you'd have to do is like reconnect your thread border router to the Wi-Fi, which you're probably going to do because it's like your TV or your hub or whatever. And then all those devices will come back online. So I think, you know, companies that make those types of devices are thinking about not just the day one problem, but that day 1000 problem. And it's great to see them doing that.

Yeah, no, I'm keeping my SSID for the rest of my life. You know, I set up my routers... I misspelled my SSID, and now I can't... It bothers me every day. It was like a joke, and I misspelled it. Oh, my God. I, like, set mine up in college, like, you know, because I ran, you know, our network. Well, I had Wi-Fi in our dorms because we barely even had Wi-Fi back when I was in college. So, like, I just brought my own router and tied it in and made our own network, which I'm pretty sure wasn't allowed, but it did anyway. So, like, that became...

my network name and then our house. And it's been like that forever. My son's going to be, you know, if they do, why is our Wi-Fi named this? Because that's where I lived in college. Like that's our old house name. That's what it's going to be forever now. So it is what it is. I'm not changing it. Yeah.

Okay, we've got vacuums. Ecovacs has a new vacuum. I think there's two, but the bigger one that I'm more excited about is the D-Bot X9 Pro Omni. So this is a new, I believe, kind of flagship model combining the best of their mopping abilities as well as the best of their vacuuming. So they're talking about their blast vacuuming technology that's more airflow to help suction up as much as possible, so not just higher pascals of suction. Dan Turk talked about it when he was on the podcast.

just kind of their marketing around that it's like not just about the strength of the suction, but how much airflow you're actually able to move to help suction stuff up. So we'll have to play around with it and see how that actually works. But they claim it's like their best vacuuming combined with their newer

Osmo roller. So this is like that mop that goes in the back and it actually juts out the side. It can extend to go all the way up against your walls, which is really handy. The mop lifts as well to go over things like your carpet. So those aren't going to get wet. Apple Home Support, thanks to Matter, of course. So that's being added here.

Other than that, it just seems like their latest and greatest version of their RoboVac. So if you were a fan of the Ecovacs, matter-capable one, this replaces or would surpass the X8 Pro Omni, which we talked about on the show not that long ago because it was the first one that I think got that matter update. So yeah, always nice to see a new update coming out.

Okay, this is a pretty minor thing here. Apple has confirmed that everyone needs to move to the new home architecture. If there are, for some reason, anyone listening to this podcast that has been putting off upgrading to Apple's new home kit architecture, you got to do it. This fall, it's going away with iOS 19, tvOS 19, all of that stuff. So do it. Just plan ahead. Be ready. If you got that alert in your home app a bunch of times,

Just commit to it and do it. And I don't know how much specifically Apple Home stuff you use, Daniel, but when I moved to that, I did feel like it was significantly faster in response times for my accessories. So not only is this just going to be useful for new features and things like that, but it was quicker. So yeah, everyone should update. Okay, let's talk about this one. I know you were excited about this. Govee has a new...

They have a new light with a skyline kit. It literally allows you to turn this strip light into a skyline in your house. This is the... Gobi comes up with some crazy stuff, man. Like...

This is wonky, but it is matter-enabled. There's a 4-meter version and a 6-meter version, 120 and 150 each. So this is going to work on the home app. And I don't know. What do you make of this guy, I think? Is it literally just a string that you're stringing across your ceiling? Yeah.

So this one I like because it almost felt like, oh, I could just take my existing light strip and 3D print some mounts to it. And I don't say that in a bad way. This was a cool innovation on their part. It looks like it's a light strip that they have some wall mounts that sort of like...

tension it and then it points upwards. And it looks, I mean, they've done more than just a lights. Like it looks like it has a little bit of structural stability there and then it points upwards at the ceiling. And so it creates this, um, like backwash glow, which is great. Like, I think that's how a lot of us use light strips, right? Like they're on a TV, they're under the bed. There's somewhere where they're just going to create this like ambient, uh,

So the idea of being able to project that up at the ceiling with like a really minimalist strip, I think is, is fantastic. Especially if you like, you want ceiling light, but you don't have a connector there. I mean, how I would like to see this in like hotels, like you walk into a hotel, they never put the ceiling lights in because no one wants to,

do that wiring and then like you have to run and turning on 10,000 lamps. So like, I think it's really cool. I definitely would have, would have got one if they were available in Canada yet. So I'll, I'll wait for that. I mean, I don't know if you can see on camera, but like I, my living room is like full of nano leaf stuff everywhere. Oh, you even got them on the ceiling. I love their, their stuff. Um, I love innovative, uh, nerdy lighting. So, um, you know, looking forward to more innovation like this and definitely love that it's matter controlled for sure.

Yeah, I think that's really cool. Govee has done such a good job with their... I know I said this before, but I never covered them because they seemed like they had lower cost items and they never supported Apple Home. And they were so persistent, like, I promise you, we're going to be quick to matter. Like, that's what they just kept telling me. And...

They were very fast to matter. And now they have such unique matter products. Like my son's star projector for his sky is matter enabled. So I can just say, you know, when I can say like, you know, time for bed for Harrison or something, it can like lower his shades and,

turn on white noise on the HomePod, turn on the lighting projector for stars in the sky, and turn off the bedroom lights, like with one little command. And I just love the added there. They also have the first Matter-enabled ice maker with an asterisk because it's not specifically...

Like an appliance, it's just an on and off switch, but it still is Matter enabled. So they've done some really cool things. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think it's a great example of like the promise of Matter and like why this was so valuable, not just for consumers, but for device vendors and that value moves to consumers, which is like, it just creates more choice, right? People were spending so much time trying to get their products to work with like each platform's

unique proprietary APIs and not even APIs, right? Like Amazon and Google you'd connect to over the cloud, but Apple you'd connect to locally and like it's just different architectures and you have to keep up with that constantly. And so it was difficult for companies to keep up with that and then also to direct their resources to innovation. So it's not surprising to see a company like Govee that's like every week they have some new

new permutation call. Okay, finally, we just have like one standard. We, you know, probably the software across almost all of their lighting is, is identical on the inside and they can just be compatible with everything. And you're seeing that show up now in the form of consumer choice and having like more cool stuff to play with. So it's great to see. I know. And I think the biggest thing that we're already starting to get into the matter talk, but one of the things that is so beneficial that, um,

It's the one app that you can control everything with. And even for products that you set up and leave, it's

I still think it's beneficial to have that control still in one place because I know with my wife, she's not going to download yet another app for robotic vacuum cleaner. She doesn't care if we swap them all out, but she wants that one app. Same thing for the front door. She's not going to download the Level app and the Schlage app and the Yale app because I'm testing all the time. And I know not everyone is switching their smart home devices every time, but when you set up a new one,

You have to say, okay, now go download this company's app, and then I'll add you as a guest or as a co-owner, things like that. Or they can just have the Home app or the SmartThings app or whatever one it is, and they can just control the home. It really should be that easy to do, and I'm glad that we're finally kind of getting closer to that spot.

Well, I think it's always a balance and like, yeah, let's not use your, in my home as a, as a average users. I think we have probably more, more churn than most from the household acceptance factor standpoint. I think, I think there's always going to be a balance there because, you know, you, you sometimes hear that particularly in, in media, but like, oh, there's too many smart home apps. You know, why can't I just control everything from one? But like,

God forbid we said, okay, you can now only control everything through this one app and no more third-party smart home apps or what they consider for... Everybody would also be just as upset. Why? Because that's where a lot of the differentiation and the innovation is, right? If Yale has features that are beyond sort of the basic features that Google, Apple, Amazon, Samsung support, you're going to want to go in their app to do those more advanced configurations. Fine, maybe you...

You turn on your vacuum, you set it to vacuum in the Apple app or the SmartThings app, but you go into the Virobot Vacuums app to do the mapping and set up your preferences and get some other notifications and understand more about the device. So I really think there's a balance there between...

Hey, for most of my everyday stuff or automations, I want to be able to use a central controller app, but I still want to be able to have the innovation and the differentiation, all the fun stuff that we love. And that usually comes through the manufacturer's app.

And I think the world where people got frustrated was the world we were living in before, and many still are, is like, I had to go into that other app to do stuff that was just way too basic. I should be able to coordinate this in the basic app. I shouldn't have to go into all these apps to do the basic stuff. But I think we'd all be pretty upset if those get taken away. And I think that was one of the reasons with Matter we wanted to... I mean, there were a number of reasons we based it on IP-based networking, because that's what the whole internet runs on, so that makes sense.

But that way you could have devices that connect locally to smart home platforms, but also connect locally to their apps or if there's value from cloud services can add to that. And you can really get that best of both worlds. And you as a user can decide, do I want to just use it in the centralized app or do I want to use these third party apps? Or to your point, different members of the household can have different workflows with them.

I think for me, it's always the other members because like you get too smart into it. It's like your guest, your grandma, even your partner, like you don't know how much they're going to want to get into those things. So I think like for you and me, we get into those things.

and play around more and do some of those extra things. But I mean, even just like voice control, like it was really annoying when you couldn't have voice control, you know, for the light. Like it's not even about like what app you're using, but you couldn't use voice control because they wouldn't integrate with, you know, Apple home or Amazon or Google, whatever, like whichever one you wanted to choose. Right.

So now they've added matter. Like, I mean, so many things. Like I can just say, do the vacuum and my wife can say, run the vacuum without having to create personal shortcuts on her device. Like with her repeating a bunch of phrases and then you'd have to do like 30 phrases, clean this room, clean this room, clean this combination of rooms. Yeah.

Because you had to do every single individual shortcut. So it's, it's such a good step up for usability and like combining the smart home world with just normal use cases where things have to just work. For sure. And I think it goes the other way too, right? You might have some, well, members of your household or maybe, maybe like you said, like visitors or guests or things like that, who they actually really only need like access to a device, right? So you,

They might just use that, the device vendor app, not get invited to like the full experience in your home. And you're starting to see people experiment with that. Like, you know, it's smart things we now have sharing, but you can be discreet with like what you share to those third parties. But, you know, I have, you know, my brother has access to my home, but like he's not, he doesn't have access to my whole smart home system. He just has like the August door lock app to get in and out. So, you know, I think...

The whole challenge of the smart home is similar to what our friend at Sono said is like everybody's house is different and there's so many permutations. So you really need that choice and flexibility to satisfy everybody.

Absolutely. Okay, we need to just get into talking about Matter. Last thing I wanted to hit really quick is apparently Hue is working on a new bridge. Okay, that's the story. That's the title. They've had the same bridge for like, they technically have had this is their second generation bridge that added Apple Home support and everything. But they've had this round bridge or this whatever square one they're on now, I think, for ages. It's the square one, the squircle.

The squircle, yes. The app icon-shaped little dock that you need to do everything with. Obviously, the new one's going to support Matter because they've supported Matter for a while on their existing one. But the biggest thing is the new bridge is supposed to finally up the device limit. There's a soft limit of 50 bulbs or 50 accessories with a hard max of 63. But you start to definitely notice performance lagging and stuff before 63. Yeah.

So the new version should finally update that. I mean, it's such a weird thing because they had to literally go through a process of creating a new feature in the app where people could add multiple bridges to add more accessories to homes. So this should solve those issues. There's no timeline for this yet. It hasn't been confirmed by Signify, the parent company that oversees Philips Hue and everything. But it sounds like it is getting closer to being released. And hopefully there will be a nice little migration process

assistant to go along with it. Cause I can't imagine someone who has like two or two of these hubs already with more than like say 60 or 70 bulbs, motion detectors, uh, things like that. And then having, and all of those in the ecosystems and then having to move to a new bridge and having to literally delete everything and re add them all back in. So hopefully there will be a manageable way to do this. Migration paths are important. Yeah. Yeah.

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We saw the update, the spring update to Matter, 1.4.1, not the 1.5 that many people had been expecting. You know, the CSA has promised two updates a year. So they delivered on their spring update, but I think it was, you know, smaller than people anticipated as it was like a point-to-point update or a dot-dot update. And the biggest changes here are going to be for setups.

They are now supporting NFC for setup just to tap your device on it and it will pair just like they supported on Apple Home. They added bulk QR scanning so you can scan one barcode or one QR code and add like a whole set of smart bulbs. If you buy like a huge multi-pack and they can all be added at once. And then they also had...

Oh, the terms and conditions approvals. So there's any additional TMCs that you've got to get through. Yeah. So new enhanced setup workflow, all that stuff. So those are the big changes here in 1.4.1. Tell us kind of what got you guys to this point.

fill in any more of these details on this update, you know, make us feel better that we didn't get a major update with any new features too. So let's hear your side of the story. I'll say this as a marketing person, you know, there are two problems you can have. One problem is we hear what you're selling and we don't want it. And the other problem is we want more of it.

There's not enough of it there. And so I think generally Matter has had that challenge. And I will take that every day, right? Initially, people were like, well, where are all the Matter devices? You know, two seconds after launch.

It takes time to get devices out into the real world. And now it's like, hey, where's our next major update? So I'm really happy that people are so excited. They're anticipating and they're waiting for those major updates. So 1.5 is coming. We're still working on it. We're still targeting that for this year.

But I think that sort of speaks to how this stuff gets done and how it gets made. There is a process that goes from someone had a neat idea for a feature through approval and technical work and moving on to that feature. And we found a couple of things as we've been also learning about this going on.

that, you know, one, sometimes things take longer than expected. And so a feature that was targeted for, you know, a 1.x release isn't ready yet and needs to move to the next one. And sometimes there are...

If that next one maybe isn't coming for six months, but it's ready sooner, there's good reason to maybe have an in-between release to get that feature out the door, especially if it's not a major feature and it can be incremental, then this gives us tools to do that. There's a bit of a different work back and testing process for the minor releases and the major releases, so that can help accelerate things.

it helps space out the work a little bit. Like, again, as I mentioned right at the top, like this is all, I'm not going to say volunteer based because like we, we all have day jobs at all of our companies, but like most of the work is done by member companies and people who like, this is probably not what they're doing full time. They're working on this in addition to other things they're working at, you know, back home. And so concentrating so much effort, particularly, you know, writing a lot of the test case and things like that,

right up to major releases can, you know, limit how much we can do. And so having something that's in between helps us sort of space out those efforts more.

And also, some of it is just a bit of a nomenclature. Like if we don't have new major device types, we'll tend to do it as a minor release. But this, as you mentioned, this was our first minor release. Like we're learning as we're going. This is evolving as Matter matures. There will probably be more of these, I don't want to call it a maintenance releases, but minor releases that like are more incremental improvements versus like, hey, here's 10 new device types. I mean, at some point you'd run out of device types also, so.

So I wouldn't treat this as a, oh, we got this instead of a major release, but it's that, hey, we're getting more frequent and incremental updates.

That makes sense. I think I was just so... I talked about it last week with, you know, Francie from BirdBuddy. I'm like, oh, man, they're going to have, like, spring announcements. It's going to be perfect to have, like, because we saw all these garden, you know, accessories being added to the repo for 1.5. And I'm like, this is going to be such nice timing to have, like, new garden accessories announced at spring. I think a public GitHub is, like, the weirdest...

It's great, but it's the weirdest thing to have between like, we're going to make official announcements, but also like if you poke hard enough at the public GitHub, you can kind of see what people are working on. And I honestly, I think it's a great thing for a technology where there are so many people who are like really nerdy and excited and enthusiasts and are willing to poke around in that.

Well, the way that I looked at it with the 1.5 release was like, okay, we're not going to get these things this spring, right? Because the way that you know how this works, like you guys announced the spec, which means companies can officially start integrating into their products and to release it later. So especially for something like that is a new device type that isn't even like around yet, right?

That's like connected. You know, we're not going to get that right away. So you're going to announce that spec is finalized. They can start doing it and it's going to be months before product is announced or released at best. So in my mind, it's like...

Fine. Maybe we'll get the 1.5 in the fall. We can get announcements at CES for product, and then we'll have new devices hit this time next year. I want to have you on the podcast next spring, and we have our first soil sensor or something on that came out in 1.5. So I'm hopeful because I know all these things just take time, and that's why I've been nervous about the camera. That's such a big deal to Add2Matter.

And I'm so nervous that it's taking so long to get cameras done. And then it's going to take six months to a year before we get our first product after that. So I talk in the podcast, like it's going to be, you know, don't expect cameras in home and matter until, you know, at least 2026 to 2027 at this point. Yeah. So, you know, I think it's really hard to make general statements about this stuff. You're correct. Generally the spec comes out.

Um, you know, at that point it's now stable and there's testability and there's certifiability. And so people can go work on that with confidence. Um, there's also that, that I guess it's been described as chicken and egg. I don't really agree with that, but like,

the platforms have to support it and the device companies have to support it right if there's a bunch of devices but no platforms support it that doesn't make any sense um it's actually one of the reasons that i like i'm gonna put my smart things hat on for a second so we actually publicly committed to supporting new device types within six months from matter spec launch and one of the reasons is because like in you know in the game of chicken and egg we're we're the chicken right like you

the platforms have to support it for it to be worth it for device vendors to build. So we wanted to make sure we could give confidence that people would see that that support is coming. So I think that situation is improving. So it's not just a technical time, it's also

I'd even call it the business development time. When do device makers feel the time is right to go to market, they can get all the badges, the platforms that support them, there's enough support there that they can go and put a product on the shelf and the majority of users will be able to use it. So there's that time too, and it takes time to update packaging and put stuff out there. I think there are some device types where, yes, you will see those longer periods,

And I think there are some where because people have been working on it already and maybe for a long time and, you know, have it in sort of prototype mode, you'll see things sooner after launch, especially if there are, you know, really, really core use cases and maybe business models and things like that around it. So, you know, I think the next year is going to be a pretty exciting one for people that are excited about some of the stuff that might be coming out.

Well, that's good to hear. Okay, let's touch a little bit on that topic a little bit more about the chicken and the egg, I guess. This is something that I hear from, and it goes from everything from like the Home Depot store level to the actual brand manufacturers. But it is like, oh, I don't know. We don't want to necessarily do matter yet because none of our customers are asking for it. But how do you, you know, but customers need to see it.

in products to know they need to ask for it. So especially, you know, wearing your marketing hat, um,

How are you guys tackling that issue? Because you have to convince both of them, respectively, that everyone's on board, and you have to inform consumers of what Matter is, convince stores to care and promote Matter. I still only see basically Google Home and Amazon and Ring. Those are the three badges I see in Home Depot, I'm pretty sure, despite so many of the products supporting Matter. There's LIFX in there. The Hue stuff is in there, several of them. Sure.

So how do you go, how do you tackle that? What's the strategy for informing consumers as well as convincing brands that they need to do it? So it's a really good question. And this is what like in marketing you call like ingredient brands. Like this is, this is a, a part of a product and its value proposition. And, you know, I think it's really different for different user groups, right? Today,

probably most of the people who even know what Matter is or are using it as or are shopping for it specifically are smart home enthusiasts like you and me. You know, we've had a lot of hard-learned lessons in the past. And so, hey, something that's like really interoperable, that's really easy to set up, that works with multiple ecosystems, like all of that is solving a lot of problems that we've had in the past. And so we will look for Matter devices to differentiate because they're differentiated based on that experience.

I think a lot of consumers, for a lot of consumers, they want a product because it's going to fulfill a particular need that they have. They're getting a smart home product to solve a solution. They want their lights to be a certain color in the morning. They want to be able to run their sprinklers automatically. They want to be able to start their vacuum cleaner, etc.,

And so they're not necessarily, they don't even necessarily think about protocols. They're not shopping protocol first, they're shopping product first. And so there's a couple of ways that, that matter and thread also like fit into that equation. So one is, and this is one of the hardest problems I've had in, in my career as a marketer is,

The goal of Matter is making the smart home work the way you thought it was supposed to work in the first place, right? Like, my expectation is, yeah, I go and I buy a light bulb. I bring it home. It's really easy to set up in a couple of taps. It's not like, you know, we did a study at a company I worked for previously that, like, the average smart home device takes 32 screens to set up. And that's for, like, a basic device. Like, that's insane. So...

The fact that Matter makes it really easy to set up, that it's interoperable, that it's local, that it's, you know, ideally really responsive and reliable, that it works with whatever platform I have. Like, for users who haven't had the growing pains of the smart home, that is their expectation already. And so I think there are going to be many users that, like, they may never...

think about matter, they may never think the shop specifically for it, it's just going to, they're going to go out and they're going to buy a matter product, incidentally, and they're going to have a good experience with it. And they're going to grow their smart home. And, you know, those products that are performing better and are meeting their expectations are going to are going to do better.

We've seen stats that are like 36% of people fail to set up their smart home device for the first time or total, and a similar number for reasons given why they've returned a smart home device to the store. That's an astronomical number for customers, for customer support, for satisfaction, for retailers that they really hate returns. And so I think we're going to start seeing that

matter whether the user knows it or not is driving growth with those users, is reducing returns, is giving users a performance that they're expecting from the smart home and you'll start seeing that on the shelves. Yes,

There will be users like you and me that know that there are 35 different permutations of USB cables, and we'll know exactly which USB cable we want to buy for the specific technology that our phone uses. And there are some people that are just like, does this work with my Galaxy or my iPhone? Okay, great, thanks. And I think we're solving for both of those users. So like you said, you're going to have consumers who are like, they're going to look for one that just works the platform that they're using. SmartThings, Amazon, Google, Apple. They're going to just go and pick those up. So...

in that scenario, you don't have to worry about the consumer. So you have to worry about the company. So is your pitch to the companies then your stuff doesn't work as reliably as it should and matter should make it better. What happens if they think, Oh, our product already works really well. Why would I bother adding matter to it? Listen, if you're a product manager and you think your product already works great and it's delivering what you need and it, and it's your, you know, you don't have any barriers to sales, um,

I can't tell you go spend a bunch of time and money completely revamping it, but I think what we've seen in the industry, and keeping in mind, Matter was not just started by Samsung, Google, Apple, Amazon. There are 400 companies in this alliance working together to solve this, and some of the most passionate people are the device vendors because the world that they lived in was...

I just want to make a light bulb and I have to effectively make like four different light bulbs in one. And I have to manage a cloud and manage the overhead and have four different ways to connect to four different ecosystems. And like, you know, God help you if you wanted to connect to a fifth or a sixth ecosystem that wasn't, you know, a major fortune 100 company. And every other week those companies, you know, have a brilliant idea and change their APIs. And you're, so you're constantly like, it's literally like how many engineers does it take to turn on a light bulb or keep a light bulb turned on?

And that just consumes so much resources that you're not using for innovating and being able to drive new features. And if you have a new feature idea, now you have to go to every single one of those platforms and hopefully get them to maybe adopt it just for you. Whereas an open standard like Matter, you can build it once.

It works with everybody. If there's a cool innovation or feature that you think, you know, the industry should support, you can bring that into the standard and make that part of the standard. So it's easier for everybody to adopt. And even from a process standpoint, like, so yes, I think there's those works with badges are still going to be around for a while because again, a lot of users, they just want to match. Hey, I have,

Samsung SmartThings at home, I want to see the Samsung badge. I have Google, I have Apple, I want to see that Apple badge. I'm matching. I'm not thinking about matter compatibility necessarily.

And that's been a big pain for all those companies as well because they have to go through all these different certification programs. So actually in Matter, we just recently announced that many of those sort of works with programs are now adding that to the Matter interoperability lab, which is part of the interoperability

testing, it's like an optional testing facility for Matter products. So if you're participating in the lab, which does sort of real world long-term testing of Matter products, you can use those results to submit for your works with certifications from a lot of those ecosystems. So that makes the life of a device vendor a lot better as well. So there's lots of good reasons for device companies to do this and

I suspect given some of the benefits we talked about before, you are going to see retailers, they're not always the sort of the first ones jumping on this, but are going to start requiring certain features. Today, many of retailers require particular ecosystem badges. I could see getting to a point of maturity where matter is required, just like, you know, I doubt most electronics retailers would have a TV that doesn't have HDMI. Right.

Yeah, exactly. I'm just curious at how things like coming from like a big box store of what they're going to know. I've still gone into Home Depot and just out of curiosity, like, oh, do you know which of these work with Matter that I can use? And they're like, I don't know what that is. And it's like, okay, even if a consumer, like, even if I just want to know Apple Home, right?

If it has a Matter badge on there, the store still needs to know that Matter means it'll work with that. And there's still knowledge that has to be dispersed. And I'm curious of how you are handling that. Are you guys trying to get more education into retailers so that they know? Are you waiting for that? And maybe down the line, trying to help educate associates so that they can better match up.

No, it's a really good question. Every time I walk into a store like that in the smart home section, I think of that like Ron Swanson moment of like, I know more than you when he's talking to the hardware store associate. And

So I think that like for the enthusiast, like that's sort of taken care of, right? Like, you know, you and I are walking into a Best Buy, et cetera, looking for, Hey, I need a light bulb. I need a light strip. I need a smart plug, et cetera, that, that is matter compatible. I know what I'm looking for. And I think, you know, at the moment that's, that's serving the purpose, right?

I think, you know, when associates can do the same thing that consumers do, like do the matching, like, hey, what system do you have at home? Google, Samsung, Apple? Okay, oh, this one says that on the box, so you're good. And I think for the most part, you know, that's going to serve both ends of the market.

I do think so we as the the connectivity standards alliance, as well as many of us who work in marketing at major platforms and device vendors, we have relationships with retailers. We're talking to retailers. We're making sure that like they especially in an executive level are educated on all of this stuff.

And I think we're probably getting to a place where, you know, this is probably going to start coming more and more into the like, you know, floor level education for staff, especially as the matter, like physical matter badges are showing up more and more on devices, threads becoming more popular. And, you know, you want to make sure you're showing border routers. And I think retailers, you know, they are motivated by sales. And so, yeah,

As time goes by and as they are seeing that they are seeing more customer satisfaction, less return, more customers asking about Matter and Thread devices, they're going to respond to that and say, hey, oh, this is somewhere we need to invest in. So I think sometimes that just takes time. But certainly those are conversations that are ongoing.

Very cool. I'm still so curious. There's things that I'm just very curious of how they're going to evolve in the Matterspace. I want to know what is going on with water heaters. It's such a random device type that makes perfect sense in the smart home, and yet there's...

the world of water heaters has not changed all that much, but clearly somebody was like, because like you said, it's a member led organization. So somebody, there is a water heater company out there that was like, man, I really want smart ones. And they did all of the work to get that into the spec. And you know, that's now in the matter of spec. We haven't seen any home or not Apple home, but no matter water heaters announced yet. But I'm so curious at how that's going to happen. And then,

what's that going to be from the consumer side. And of course we have to get the apps to actually update them, like at least Apple Home, Samsung, smart things out there, you know, launching support so quickly, making everyone else look bad. But, you know, we're still waiting on so many basic appliance types and that would open a whole other can of worms for us to talk about of making sure people know when things work because it could have a Matter badge, but then it wouldn't even work with the platforms that don't support it. But we don't have to go into too much. I think that's,

That is a pain for sure. And again, you know, it's one of the reasons we're trying to differentiate with our matter support at SmartThings. I think it's a growing pain. I think we will get to a point where most of the platforms support, you know, I'm pulling a number out of the air, but let's say like the top 10 to 20 device types to a reasonable level.

where 95% of consumers use cases are covered by that. Some of those use cases are more complicated, are trickier, involve safety, security, energy, et cetera. And so people have take different amounts of time to make sure they're getting that one right for users.

10 years from now, there may be some more esoteric device types that are more niche market, maybe more in commercial that maybe the major platforms won't support, but there will be other ones out there that do. And again, this is all about consumer choice. If the platform that you...

choose is not doing a good job of supporting the device types you want, you can move to another one without losing everything. So you're losing the investment you've made in your smart home. So I think that's going to help to generate compatibility and competition. But, you know, one thing you said you were talking about, like the water heaters and not to speak about water heaters specifically, but I think one of the things that's important to understand is, yes, we're member driven.

whether something gets in, lives, dies, succeeds, et cetera, is all based on like members being able to commit resources to it.

And I love that because that is, it means we're market driven, right? It's not just a bunch, I mean, it's definitely a bunch of nerds in the room, but it's not just a bunch of nerds in a room thinking of neat things, putting it into the spec and then walking away and doing the next thing, right? Companies are only going to invest time and resources and things if they believe there is a user need, there is a market need, if they want to build devices based on it. So that helps to make sure that we're building to what the needs of the real world are.

But there are also thresholds you have to cross. So it's not just like one company showing up and saying, hey, I like this feature and shoving it in this back. There's various thresholds from conceptualization from like, hey, I think this is a neat idea. Let's work on it. Even then you have to have

at least three companies saying, we have to have three companies saying, we agree this is a neat idea, and at least another three saying, and we are willing to do work on it. And by the time you get, I won't bother you with all of the milestones you have to get through, but by the time you get all the way to spec release, you also have to have a plurality of

companies that have built an implementation and tested it so it's again not just one company's viewpoint or or input and not the device that's going to be orphaned somewhere so I also really like that aspect but to your point earlier you know there are devices that like have way longer deployment or development cycles you know or are targeting certain milestones that might take a little bit longer to get to market yeah that makes a lot of sense that's very cool and like you said it it

If they're developing it, their plans to release it, like release it, support it, things should be coming. It's not like you guys are completely separate from the manufacturer. You don't just put something in the spec and then hope someone adopts it

The companies who are making the products are doing the spec. Yeah. So I mean, like literally usually the engineers doing the development are all the ones working on the product on the other side of their, their job. And, you know, no one would put this amount of effort into it. You know, it's in a theoretical exercise. Yeah.

I'm so focused on the hot water heater because I know I want to replace ours. Ours is very small. And, you know, with the kit and everything, I know we're going to need more hot water. So I'm like, I'm going to be buying a hot water heater, but now I can't get it out of my head that I have to have a matter one. Like, you know, I want this thing in there for 10 years. I'm not putting something in there that's going to not be matter enabled. So they're going to need to move along on that because they're going to need that for the next year or so. So sure. Well, you know, contact your favorite water heater maker.

go post on Reddit. I can tell you as someone both in the standards body and someone who's worked on products at both device companies and platforms, we do read the comments section. We do read reviews. At the recent members meeting, we had a whole UX user sentiment research report that was

Some of your listeners, I'm sure, had quotes from their angry Reddit posts up on the big screen that we were all reading together. We read those and we respond to it, and companies invest in things that they believe their users want. So if companies are hearing, hey, we really like a Matter version of your device, that's super valuable for them to hear. So please stay loud, whether positive or cranky. It actually helps us understand what people want.

Perfect. I think that's a great spot to end this on. Gives everybody an action item to do. Go to Reddit, go to Twitter. No one needed instructions to do that.

Oh, Daniel, thank you so much for hanging out today. I know we could have just kept talking for a significantly longer amount of time about all the smart home stuff, but it has been a long episode already. So thank you so, so much for hanging out today, walking through the new Matter release. Hopefully we'll have more announcements from companies throughout the year, and hopefully that 1.5 makes it out this fall. Very excited to see what continues to come out of the Matter spec. Anything else you want to leave us with?

No, I'm sure we'll talk again soon. Yeah, well, I think this is going to be a really interesting year for Matter. You know, I'd love to come back both with my SmartThings hat on and then talk about some exciting stuff we've got planned for users coming up soon too. So really great conversation. And, you know, we'll talk more about how this all gets made when we have the next release.

Absolutely. I do really like smart things. I do have – like despite like testing the Amazon devices and the Google Home displays and everything, I have several smart things devices because appliances that were quick to adopt smart things, TV, fridge, washer, dryer, all in there as well as like the – so we have more to talk about is what I'm saying. So yes.

We will get into it. We will talk more smart things as well as Apple Home. So thank you again, everybody. If you want to listen, you watch this video version. You can see it over on YouTube.com slash HomeKit Insider. You can give us a 5, 10, 100-star review on your podcast player of choice. If you have any questions that you want us to address on the podcast, you can send them over to me at Andrew at AppleInsider.com or on Twitter at Andrew underscore OSU. I'm also on Threads if that platform still exists. I'm sure I have a username there somewhere. So you can check that out too.

Otherwise, we'll see you guys all in the next episode. See ya.