Home Assistant Matters, Says the CSA — As It Grants the Project Matter Certification
Home Assistant is now an officially-certified Matter "User Interface Component" — but Matter support itself still relies on an add-on.
Home Assistant has announced that it is now officially Matter certified by the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) — making it the first open source project, it claims, to receive such a certification.
"Home Assistant’s implementations of Matter, Zigbee, and Z-Wave are already industry-leading, so it only makes sense to clearly signal and give users peace of mind that we provide true compatibility," claims Home Assistant's Marcel van der Veldt. "This most recent certification is not just big for Home Assistant, but read on to see how it also helps any open source project looking to use Matter. Certification is proof that open source projects can sit among, or even above, big tech when it comes to providing the best smart home experience."
The CSA's Matter standard was designed to address fragmentation in the home automation and Internet of Things (IoT) market. Matter-certified devices are guaranteed cross-compatible, regardless of vendor: Company A's smart lighting will work with Company B's home hub through Company C's app — so long as everything is Matter-compliant. To ensure that latter part the CSA offers Matter certification, and it's this certification that has now been granted to Home Assistant.
The CSA has certified Home Assistant itself as a "User Interface Component," while the Open Home Foundation Matter Server has been certified as a "Software Component" — which means that Home Assistant itself won't be getting built-in Matter server capabilities any time soon.
"This separation is important because it means that we won’t need to go through recertification every time we update Home Assistant," van der Veldt claims. "This way we can keep the Matter-related backend isolated in both a software and certification sense. This is also why we will need to continue to have the Open Home Foundation Matter Server as an add-on, and it cannot be built into Home Assistant Core."
More information is available on the Home Assistant blog.
