Amazon is making it easy for developers as well as partners to develop across many device standards and protocols, including Matter, and interact extensively with Amazon’s Alexa-enabled devices. Today, Amazon gave a little insight into its own technique.
Amazon wants Alexa to work with as many smart home devices as possible, regardless of protocol. Customers can mix and match over 30,000 Works With Alexa products across protocols to create a wonderful smart home experience with Alexa. Matter will bring more devices and experiences to our customers.
The company is also adding ‘Matter’ compatibility to over 100 million devices across 30 Echo and Eero devices. More Matter-compatible controllers in homes will make Alexa’s setup and operation of Matter-enabled devices easier. The firm says that it is eager to make our homes smarter and simpler with this extraordinary effort.
To ensure quality experiences, we test every feature and device type with Alexa before releasing them. To improve Alexa, we’ll test stability, interoperability, and longevity with you.
Build high-quality Matter experiences
Amazon is establishing Works with Alexa (WWA) certification requirements for Matter devices as part of our continued efforts to improve connected device interoperability, responsiveness, reliability, and performance.
Customers will find your Matter goods and trust them to function with their smart home with the Works with Alexa badge. Making sure users can quickly find out if their Echo devices can be used as Matter controllers will help them set up their devices correctly, making the experience better from the start.
Matter devices must be Connectivity Standards Alliance-certified and pass our Works With Alexa certification. Furthermore, streamlining developer certification efforts if not already secured.
It will not re-certify Works With Alexa devices that obtain over-the-air upgrades to support Matter and pass Matter certification. Our customer feedback monitoring and audit procedure may require further testing for these devices to fulfil Matter’s WWA requirements.
Alexa Connect Kit SDK: Sengled collaborates with Amazon
Alexa Live 2022 introduced the Matter Alexa Connect Kit SDK. Developers and people who make devices can easily add local Matter connectivity to their products and take advantage of the unique insights and features of managed cloud connectivity.
The ACK SDK for Matter simplifies commercialization, delivers actionable product information for better customer experiences, seamlessly delivers new features and mission-critical software upgrades, and includes frustration-free setup. Sengled, a smart lighting company, used the ACK SDK for Matter to build their 2023 Matter portfolio to speed up time to market and simplify setup.
Amazon and Samsung: Matter setup experience
Amazon and Samsung’s partnership will streamline onboarding, enable Matter’s multi-admin capability, and create a home Thread network. Customers who opt in can use Matter devices with both Alexa and SmartThings without having to set them up on each system.
By sharing credentials, customers will be able to set up Thread-based devices faster and get better coverage on a single Thread network.
This partnership uses forthcoming Alexa APIs for bi-directional multi-admin quick setup and Thread credential sharing for Matter devices. These cloud-based APIs hide complicated technology and make it easy for users to connect Matter devices to their favourite services. This helps Matter achieve its goal of making smart home experiences easier.
Availability
The support will be delivered starting with Matter over Wi-Fi spanning 17 different Echo devices, plugs, switches, and bulbs with Android setup in December of this year. This will be followed by broad availability across iOS and Thread, with additional device types and remaining Echo and Eero device support early next year.
Speaking on the announcement, the blog post states that,
As a founding member and key contributor of Matter, we are incredibly excited about the completion of the Matter SDK program and Matter launch. Matter will help to simplify development and fuel innovation while lowering adoption barriers for our shared customers – an important advancement that complements our smart home philosophy of openness and collaboration.