so does this mean my current non homekit smart plugs will work? i have a WEMO smart plug that will not work with homekit, i bought it by mistake and didnt realise until i opened the box and started to set it up.
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iOS 16.1 Begins Laying Groundwork for Matter Launch
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I’ve delayed a bunch of purchases for my home in the last 2 years waiting for thread and matter support to get rolled out. I have 75 devices currently on homekit, but connection delays and items dropping off and having to be rejoined is too much of a pain. Thread support will fix that, and Matter should make all smart home devices going forward compatible with homekit.
Once Matter officially launches, I’ll be spending a lot of money.
Once Matter officially launches, I’ll be spending a lot of money.
Only if the manufacturer is able to provide an update to the device to add compatibility.
See, the thing is everything that can be done with matter can already be done using Home Assistant. All it requires is a raspberry pi 3/4. It will get an update to support matter but as of right now, it supports over 2000 supported integrations, one of them being Homekit, which has the description below.. I can control my Phillips hue and Yeelight smart bulbs as one because the HA server acts as a hub so I don't even need a Phillips hub. Heck, it supports car integrations like BMW among others. There is also the community store, which adds 1000's more devices. That and you pick your own trigger words and they work with all voice assistants (Google, Siri, and Alexa). People have also created local voice assistants (This requires a mic hooked to the raspberry pi) that are 100 percent local. They obviously can't answer questions like a regular voice assistants but they can control all your devices locally without ever going out to the internet. They have a crowdfund for there first hardware as this is all open source. Their goal was 140K, last I checked it was at over 900K and will support matter also, which is actually redundant when you are already using home assistant.
The HomeKit integration allows you to make your Home Assistant entities available in Apple HomeKit, so they can be controlled from Apple’s Home app and Siri; even if those devices do not natively support HomeKit.
You can do all this already with a raspberry pi 4 and Home Assistant which is free and open source software. You can set it up to be a Homekit server and control devices via Homekit that aren't supported. Home Assistant already supports over 2000 supported integrations and that doesn't include the community store. Below is the description for the HomeKit integration from home assistants website. It will also support matter. Google "Home Assistant Yellow". It's honestly all you will need to control any smart device. Same trigger words that you get to pick so they are the same regardless if you use Siri, Google, or Alexa as a voice assistant. It discovers devices automatically and has a very user friendly UI although if your a techie you can control it all using YAML.
The HomeKit integration allows you to make your Home Assistant entities available in Apple HomeKit, so they can be controlled from Apple’s Home app and Siri; even if those devices do not natively support HomeKit.
