The KNX standard works well by being vendor-independent, with the standard (and devices’ compliance with that standard?) being managed by a consortium – and then different manufacturers are free to design and manufacture devices which comply with that standard. An end-customer is free to mix-and-match devices from different manufacturers, safe in the knowledge they will all work together.

The Matter standard follows a similar philosophy – with the Matter standard itself being defined by the Connectivity Standards Alliance (who also ‘own’ Zigbee). As of the end of 2025 Matter is still relatively new – unlike KNX which has proven track record over multiple decades – but it shows promise and is certainly no worse than other competing (but more ‘closed’) technologies which typically bundle together the lower-level and higher-level protocols.

Matter evolved from the earlier Connected Home IP (CHIP) project and can run over different underlying IP(v6) transport technologies. Typically these are either WiFi (which is well understood but relatively power-hungry so not good for battery powered devices) or Thread, which is much less power-hungry. Typically people refer to either ‘Matter over WiFi’ or ‘Matter over Thread’.

One annoyance with Matter is that it seems to require a very ‘flat’ network topology, which constrains the way it needs to be deployed in a non-trivial network environment.

For a nice explanation of the technology underpinning Matter (and Thread) see https://www.derekseaman.com/2023/10/part-1-smart-home-matter-and-thread-deep-dive.html

Matter by Marsh Flatts Farm Self Build Diary is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.