CSA releases Matter 1.3 with support for more types of smart home devices – Image and Audio – News

The Communications Standards Alliance has released version 1.3 of Matter. This version of the global smart home standard adds support for new types of smart home equipment, including water and power management, electric vehicle chargers, and kitchen appliances.

Article 1.3 adds support For several new types of smart devices, including new types of home appliances. This includes microwaves, ovens, clothes dryers, smart stoves and smart hoods. Such Matter-enabled devices can be controlled across different smart home platforms.

This also applies to power management devices. Devices can now display specific power values, such as voltage, current, power consumption, and more. The smart home standard now also supports electric vehicle chargers. Users can turn these chargers on and off via the stand, adjust the charging speed and more. Matter is also receiving support for IoT equipment for water management, such as freeze detectors, rain sensors and controllable water faucets.

Furthermore, Matter 1.3 gets new general features, such as better support for media players and smart TVs. The standard now also supports Scenes, which allow users to easily save and activate presets for their smart home equipment. For example, users can save a scene that instantly adjusts the ceiling lights’ brightness to 70 percent and turns off the floor lights.

The CSA reports that the Matter 1.3 specification and SDK are now available to device manufacturers. They can now integrate this version into their products. It’s the second major update to Matter since the release of the smart home standard in 2022. Version 1.2 has already added support for many types of home devices. Version 1.1 was also released for this purpose, although it was a relatively minor update.

Matter is a global smart home standard set by several major tech companies, including Amazon, Apple, and Google. The standard should ensure that smart home products can work together more easily, regardless of manufacturer. Tweakers wrote a seminal article about the Matter standard last year.