Last year, Amazon pledged support for Matter smart home standard for its devices, and the company had provided a timeline for the devices to get support for this standard.

Now, in line with that, some of the older Echo speakers from the brand are getting support for Matter smart home standard through an over-the-air update.

The update being rolled out by Amazon turns the second-generation Echo, Echo Dot, and Echo Plus devices into Matter controllers. The fourth-generation Echo can serve as a Thread border router with support for adding Matter-compatible Thread devices.

Along with support for Android to set up Matter gear, it now also supports iOS, which in turn means support for Apple HomeKit. The Matter over Thread update also brings Alexa control to a range of Eve hardware, and it will also support Alexa setup for Eve Door & Window, Eve Energy, and Eve Motion later this month.

Last year, when Amazon announced support for Matter, the company promised that 17 Echo products would support Matter over Wi-Fi by the end of 2022 and a total of 30 Echo and Eero models by early this year.

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There are several smart home platforms these days, which is not surprising considering every manufacturer getting into the space is creating its own. While there are devices that work with multiple platforms, an alliance called Project Connected Home over IP (Project CHIP) was formed in 2019 to create an open-source standard. That alliance has now been renamed Matter, and its logo and branding, which will appear on products, have been unveiled.

Matter is a unified system that will allow you to use your smart home devices with any assistant of your choice. Unlike most products that work with only one of either the Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, or Apple Homekit, Matter-branded products can be configured to work with any one of them.

The alliance which was formed in 2019 has Google, Amazon, Apple, Samsung, Ikea, and Philips Hue as board members and will cover light bulbs, smart plugs, door locks, sensors, detectors, TVs, window blinds, thermostats, air conditioners, and a whole lot more. The unified platform will work with Bluetooth Low Energy, Ethernet Wi-Fi, and Thread.

While buyers will do well to look out for the logo when purchasing smart home devices in the future, it has been reported that some manufacturers such as Philips Hue will release an update that makes all of its past and present products compatible with Matter once it is official. This means you will also be able to purchase devices that don’t have the Matter logo but that support it. The first Matter-branded devices are expected to ship by the end of the year.

The Zigbee Alliance which owns the Zigbee protocol used by several IoT devices has also announced that it is changing its name to the Connectivity Standards Alliance as its focus expands to projects similar to Matter.

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