is a senior reviewer with over twenty years of experience. She covers smart home, IoT, and connected tech, and has written previously for Wirecutter, Wired, Dwell, BBC, and US News.
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It’s finally happening. Three years after Matter launched, the interoperability standard now includes the most popular smart home devices: cameras.
The Matter 1.5 spec, announced today, adds support for all types of video cameras — from indoor and outdoor, wired and battery-powered cameras, to video doorbells, baby monitors, pet cams, and more. Matter support should be possible with an OTA update, so some of your existing cameras could become Matter-compatible. The new spec also adds garage door controllers, soil sensors, bi-directional charging for EVs, and more advanced integration with utilities for energy management.
So far, cameras have been among the least interoperable devices in our homes, and bringing them into Matter is a big win for the standard. With Matter, you should be able to add any certified camera to your smart home platform of choice, such as Apple Home, Amazon’s Alexa, and Google Home, and access it there alongside cameras from different manufacturers.
“Cameras might create even more momentum [for Matter]. Cameras might leapfrog everything.”
Cameras will use Matter-over-WiFi (or ethernet), which, as a local protocol, should improve reliability and latency, especially for things like streaming footage to your smart display and using camera events, such as motion, to trigger other devices and smart home automations.
However, all of these benefits will ultimately depend on how each platform and manufacturer decides to implement support — specifically, whether they decide to support cameras in Matter at all.
What capabilities will cameras have in Matter?
According to the Connectivity Standards Alliance, the organization behind Matter, Matter-certified home security cameras will support live video and audio streaming, two-way talk, and local and remote access. The standard also allows for pan-tilt-zoom controls for the cameras and the setting of detection and privacy zones.
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