Matter 1.3 pushes the standard into your kitchen, laundry room and garage

The Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) has rolled out version 1.3 of Matter, giving smart home brands another opportunity to extend their technology to the kitchen and other areas of the home. One of the cornerstones of the update is the ability to control important, even essential, home appliances. This includes ovens and stoves.

With the former, owners can check “oven status,” such as whether it is preheating or cooling, and monitor its operation. You can ask the appliance to start grilling the ribs placed inside. Cookers will benefit from a similar level of control. Users can turn it on or change the temperature remotely.

As for laundry rooms, the CSA adds support for tumble dryers and allows you to control several functions such as changing drying modes. The machine will even send a notification letting you know when your clothes are dry. If you’re curious about support for washing machines, this was added in Matter 1.2. Version 1.3 expands this support.

Utility management

There’s more to owning a home than just appliances. Utility management is another important aspect. To achieve this, CSA has enhanced the energy reporting capabilities of the standard. Connected smart home devices will now tell you how much electricity they use, how much they generate, and other important metrics like power voltage. The energy features also extend to electric vehicles. With Matter 1.3, electric vehicle drivers can control the charge level based on the desired range. They can do this by specifying a “set departure time” or by manually turning off charging.

Additionally, Matter can monitor your home’s plumbing. Your app will display information from installed pipe detectors, letting you know if the house has sprung a leak somewhere or if the pipes are frozen.

Notable improvements

Everything we’ve covered so far applies to previously unsupported devices. The rest of the patch includes new software features and improvements to previous hardware.

Scenes are now supported, according to the CSA, allowing owners to create special conditions that activate with the press of a button. For example, a scene can dim the lights in your living room or change color instantly.

Matter 1.3 also allows users to group multiple commands together so that they execute one after the other. The CSA says this will minimize the “popcorn effect,” which is a long delay between commands being sent to a smart home device and their visible execution. Software improvements in Matter 1.3 include the ability to see notifications from other gadgets on smart TVs as well as several bug fixes.

If you’re looking to improve your home, check out TechRadar’s roundup of the best smart home devices for 2024. We’ve got speakers, cameras, thermostats, and more on the list.