Working on a presentation/article involving the Arduino Nano Matter: https://store.arduino.cc/products/nano-matter – the idea is that it uses the Matter set of rules to communicate using the Thread network. It needs a relatively new piece of hardware to use this type of radio, and I’m using an Amazon Alexa Show.

So far I’ve been impressed with how easy it is to set up once you have the Alexa app on your phone and the required hardware. It generates a QR code, you scan it, and it mostly takes care of things (though if you commission it to the wrong thing it seems there is some hassle involved, IIRC I went through that a while ago). After setting up the `nano_matter_lightbulb_color` example, the Alexa was able to control the light with commands like “Alexa make first light green” (it came up with “first light” as its name.

Anyway, Matter might be something that will be a big deal in home automation in the future, though I’m not sure whether to call it a protocol per se. I guess it is, but it sits on top of other protocols like Thread.

As for the Echo Show 8, it could be cool but I’m not thrilled that it displays quite a few ads. I need to figure out how to turn that off!