material and yarn. It is two o’clock magic words home automation lately, and Apple has embraced both platforms so HomeKit doesn’t feel too isolated from competing home accessories, especially with the Ethernet model of the new Apple TV 4K.
Now, what is Matter and what is Thread? Or rather: What are the differences between the two platforms? Do they live together or does one need the other? Let’s clarify the doubts between these two terms, because in less time than you can imagine they will be very common both in Apple and in other manufacturers.
Thread is protocol, and Matter is standard
Let’s start with Thread, which can be defined as a communication protocol based on IPv6. Devices like the iPhone or iPad use Wi-Fi (among other things) to communicate with each other, and home automation devices will use Thread to do the exact same thing.
Its advantages over other protocols are that Thread networks have low latency, are trained in a mesh to optimize connectivity, and automatically resolve faults at any of their individual points. Moreover, they are based on completely open systems and platforms, without depending on any company to operate.
Matter, on the other hand, is a home automation standard. Like HomeKit, Alexa, or Google Home, but instead of being company-owned like these examples, we’re talking about an open standard that acts as a “bridge” between all of these ecosystems.
In this way, all home automation devices will be able to talk to each other even if they were originally designed for one of the closed ecosystems of Apple, Google, Amazon or another. Apple has supported Matter since the arrival of iOS 16.1 and equivalent versions of the rest of its operating systems.
To sum up, Matter wants to be a “Universal HomeKit” for all home automation accessories. And Thread seeks to be the optimized communication protocol with which to connect all these accessories. We, Apple users, We’ll probably go from looking for the HomeKit label on their boxes to looking for Matter and Thread.. This way we will know that whatever brand we buy will work as long as we have something like an Apple TV that integrates everything.
Picture | Diego PH
