Matter 1.4 fixes smart home accessory management

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The Connectivity Standards Alliance just released Matter 1.4, which upgrades the integrated experience between several smart home accessories and hubs, such as Samsung’s SmartThings and Apple’s Home app. With this new standard, CSA enhanced the Matter ecosystem, allowing accessories and platforms to improve the multi-ecosystem user experience with Enhanced Multi-Admin, new Matter certifiable Home Routers, Access Points to help users save energy, and more.

According to the organization, multi-admin is “central to Matter’s vision of choice and interoperability, allowing users to connect Matter devices to multiple smart home systems.” Currently, users can manage Matter devices through multiple platforms, but they need to be added one by one. Matter 1.4 expands multi-admin support. By consenting once, users will be able to connect existing and new devices to multiple ecosystems automatically.

Alongside that, Matter 1.4 enhances network infrastructure with Home Routers and Acess Points (HRAP), as they can now be designed or upgraded to provide “more robust support for Matter-based smart homes.” These changes can make it easier for users to add one wThread device to their existing Thread networks rather than creating new ones.

The Alliance says it will publish more in-depth blog posts on how HRAP and Enhanced Multi-Admin functions work and how product makers can choose what best suits their applications.

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Finally, Matter’s new standard expands its energy management capabilities by supporting new device types like solar panels, batteries, heat pumps, and water heaters. With that, users can understand how much energy each device in their home uses while still creating better routines and automation to help them save energy and decrease energy bills.

Matter 1.4 will still take a while to arrive. If we take Apple as an example, Cupertino has yet to add support for version 1.2. Usually, companies take one to two cycles of products to update their connectivity features.

Since CSA has been announcing new Matter updates twice a year, we might get Matter support 1.4 by the time the Alliance revamps the standard with version 2.0.

José is a Tech News Reporter at BGR. He has previously covered Apple and iPhone news for 9to5Mac, and was a producer and web editor for Latin America broadcaster TV Globo. He is based out of Brazil.