The Open Home Foundation (link) has announced plans to rebuild Home Assistant’s certified Matter server on a new foundation. Instead of relying on the official Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) Software Development Kit (link), the server will eventually be based on the alternative open-source project matter.js (link).
Matter.js Becomes Part of the Open Home Foundation
The TypeScript-based matter.js project may already be familiar to regular readers of this blog. Its lead developer, Ingo Fischer, introduced it in an interview some time ago. Fischer now works full time for the Open Home Foundation and has donated his project to the organization. With this added personnel capacity, the OHF aims to participate more actively in the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) and contribute more substantially to the evolution of the standard.
Reasons Behind the Architectural Shift
Home Assistant’s current Matter server is based on the official Matter SDK, which is written in C++ and was not optimized for controllers. According to Paulus Schoutsen, president of the Open Home Foundation, this presents a challenge: “For some time, we knew our initial approach was less than ideal,” he writes in his newsletter (link). C++, he notes, is “less suited for rapid open source development at scale.” The plan is therefore to transition the server to matter.js and certify the updated server again.
For users, the switch is intended to be “seamless”, without major visible changes. Once the migration is complete, however, Schoutsen expects the Matter development capacity increase – in size, scope, and speed.
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