Their original products were zigbee when they had a hub for sale although with only a bulb and maybe sockets (as far as I can remember) it's not like these were a roaring success. These days they've hitched themselves to the Apple bandwagon, so you can probably be confident matter will be supported once it's fully integrated into homekit.
Standards are needed and this is the same battle we had in the operating system realm years ago. ODBC drivers abstracted the database and developers didn't have to know the details if it was SQLserver vs. Oracle or anything else that had a ODBC driver. Oracle survived by many methods outside of the developer integration with their product.
Matter as a standard has to leave room for the product makers to differentiate from each other. Looking at Z-Wave switches most have the common features but companies like Inovelli and Zooz have features that go beyond and is exposed at the hub into the automation platform . If Matter doesn't allow features to pass though I can see Belkin's point.
A bit of a contradiction in this. I can't see any device manufacturer seeing an advantage in supporting Matter. Matter would reduce, not enhance, their competitive advantage in the fullness of time (after the blush of early adopters). Nor can I see Matter allowing proprietary features to pass through, as that defeats the purpose of a standard. Were that to happen, Matter becomes the least common denominator, which isn't going to enhance value for anyone, really.
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It means is that the device makers need to sell something other than "works with Alexa/Google/Apple". Look at the Wemo line up. It's plugs, switches, and dimmers. And a video doorbell. If Wemo and most of the other switch/plug/dimmer/doorbell companies go out of business then who will care? There's plenty of competitors that will remain. The companies that remain will figure out how they compete, but it won't be the way it has been. All this probably ends up good for customers, the constituency that is the most important in all markets.
What I'm saying is that this is not a future that any smaller company would actually seek for itself. If all of the smaller smart device manufacturers go out of business, how is that good for consumers? Choice is good. Zigbee and Z-Wave are both standard protocols. I really wonder if Matter will matter to anyone except Apple, Google and Amazon. A "standard" that puts otherwise viable companies out of business doesn't serve competition -- it reduces it.
Do you think Lutron will support Matter for RA3??
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It would of been great if the CSA Matter 1.0 specification (all 894 pages) would of started with:
"Matter aims to build higher reliability, availability, serviceability, usability and installability (RASUI) for smart home devices."
But instead they went with:
"Matter aims to build a universal IPv6-based communication protocol for smart home devices."
Pretty sure there is a XKCD comic that explains this better than I could.
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And a buncha that stuff in the paragraph above would be really nice to have. I'm not sure this level of evolution in the standard would have to put the small businesses out of business. Call it Matter or call it Zigbee 5.0
It fact I can think of a handful of small outfits that provide us competent devices that excel at playing well by the rules and WITH the rest of the community of hubs & devices trying to make a market here. Individual creativity and novelty only goes so far in a space where RELIABILITY IS KING....and I think there is room for small outfits that have impeccable reputations for being reliable and well supported.
So does anybody know if Matter is the end of the road for the Zigbee Alliance (as Zigbee per se) or are they likely to pick up some of the stuff we'd like to see in the evolution of that standard, Matter or not?
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I don't think the world needs a lot of switch/plug companies. In the non-"smart" world there are only a few large ones with minimal differentiation. How does a small company survive? Zooz and Inovelli seem to be trying to drive product features (including Matter at Inovelli). Not sure what features Wemo have other than an app. Unfortunately Zooz and Inovelli seem to lack resources on the electrical engineering side. Also, do note that Wemo is part of Belkin which is part of Foxconn. Pretty sure that Foxconn wouldn't miss Wemo if it stopped today.
Matter devalues (in theory for now) the ability to connect in the "smart home" market. That puts more emphasis on making things work together. That should have an impact on Hubitat's plans. Hubitat's non-AV automation capabilities exceed those of even much higher priced competitors. That seems as much of an opportunity as a threat for you. Unfortunately the future isn't here yet and connections are still of of somewhat significant value.
As far as Lutron goes, IMO they can ignore Matter for the time being. They're large enough and already integrate with the larger targets. I can't explain why they've changed from being totally open via Telnet to being more restrictive via LEAP. Who knows what they will want to do in the future. The RA3 processor seems to be a proprietary and undocumented mix of Zigbee/Thread/Matter. And they obviously have a role in the governance of both Matter and Thread bodies. I do believe that if Thread/Matter is successful that it will affect how they compete.
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In case this hasn't been posted yet in this thread (don't have time to look), I'm reminded of this.
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I agree, but in my case with lots of Lutron Caseta devices including about 30 pico remotes mostly simulating 3-way switch configurations. I have enough Zigbee and Z-wave devices to have reliable meshes for both, the Casetas virtually never fail, and there is nothing that depends on my wifi network except the Alexa devices that give me voice control and a usable phone app, both of which fail all the time. 
So if Matter can find some benefit to leverage - such as a really large ecosystem that drives competition and creates much wider variety and lower prices than equivalent Zigbee or Z-Wave devices, then Hubitat will figure out how to support it, and I'll add it. But otherwise, other than annoyance at stupid and random-seeming initialization routines (power off and on 5 times for specific amounts of time for my Hampton Bay fan controllers? How stupid is that?), the stuff works.
I need some help understanding Matter. I thought it was an application-layer protocol that relies on IP. So it has to run on a physical layer that supports IP - Ethernet or wifi for powered devices, or Thread for low-power. Do I have that basically correct?
Might matter have a role with the miriad of IP devices now that really have no (or at least few) standards for interoperability? For instance, if Ecobee supported Matter, could there not be a local, common way of interfacing to Ecobee that did not rely on their cloud? Could it also be a solution for creating standard interface methods for devices like dishwashers, dryers, and TVs?
Or am I misunderstanding what Matter is?
So as @brad says, matter/thread will make things local. What will be cloud based is the main matter router. So if you use alexa, siri, google as a router, those will definitely be passing info back to the cloud but actual command and control will still be local. So if Hubitat gets their Matter/Thread stuff lined up, matter devices will not need the internet and of course you know Hubitat is not going to pass info upstream...
But what's the actual advantage over Zigbee and/or Z-Wave? Maybe they can standardize the reset and pairing processes somehow, but how do you make a contact or motion sensor that has one pressable button have the same operation as a fan controller with no accessible buttons? I'm just not seeing a reason why I'd be happier if any or all of my zigbee and z-wave devices used matter instead.
There are a lot of things available in other protocols that are not available in z-wave or zigbee. Some really cool stuff... Locks, sensors (some that work way better than zigbee or z-wave) certain lighting etc... I mean an example sort of is Lutron. While there are z-wave and zigbee switches, face it, Lutron typically beats them all. Zigbee and z-wave aren't going anywhere, but when HE adds an integration such as Lutron or Matter/Thread, that just opens up the pool of device we can use. As long as it can be contained locally like Lifx or Lutron, I'll be happy to buy them...
Sure, but at 2x to 6x the price or more. And the margin of "beats" is thin, especially with a good mesh. I say this having a house full of Lutron devices -- no complaints. But my Zigbee and Z-Wave things work just as well, even faster in the case of Zigbee bulbs.
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Worth it lol.... But that said, it still opens is up to more devices. Obviously quality will vary though like anything else..
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Search Amazon for a Matter device. Zip and pip. At this point, it's still all talk...
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No argument there. If Matter starts to matter, then Hubitat will bring out a C9 hub (or a USB plug for older hubs?) that talks to it, and I'll migrate. Maybe a really good ceiling fan control might win me over. But I don't see any reason why I should replace my 28 Zigbee contact sensors with new Matter based ones.
A Thread network does a better job of managing itself than a Zigbee network. Including managing and changing channels when appropriate.
Agreed..... Even the videos I see of available devices are having issues getting paired. I do hope it gets better. Time will tell.
