The “Open Home Foundation” (OHF) officially announced the adoption of “Matter.JS,” a community-developed, TypeScript-based project, which was donated to the foundation by its main developer, Ingo Fischer (@Apollon77). This move is central to the foundation’s commitment to advancing the “Matter” standard within the open source community.
Ingo Fischer has joined the foundation full-time as Lead Developer for “Matter.JS,” transforming the project from a hobby into a supported, full-time endeavor. The OHF sees this personnel addition as key because having a dedicated expert allows the foundation, as a participant member of the Alliance, to play a “more active role in shaping the Matter standard”.
What is “Matter.JS”?
“Matter.JS” originated as an open source project and provides a TypeScript/JavaScript implementation of the “Matter” specification. This implementation makes “Matter” development easier across different software and hardware platforms.
The project has already demonstrated significant utility and credibility. It is mentioned in the "Matter handbook" as an alternative SDK, and it is utilized by multiple companies in their certified products. The Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA), the organization that oversees “Matter,” previously hosted the codebase on “Matter’s” own GitHub repository, a fact the OHF noted was a “big vote of confidence” that helped drive its growth.
“Matter.JS” is currently integrated into several open source projects, including Luligu/Matterbridge, ioBroker Matter Adapter, Node-RED Matter Bridge, OpenHAB, and Gladys Assistant. Luligu/Matterbridge, for example, functions as a “Matter” plug-in manager capable of bringing devices from platforms like Shelly, Home Assistant, and Zigbee2MQTT into Matter ecosystems.
The technical shift for “Home Assistant”
The adoption of “Matter.JS” precipitates a major change in how “Home Assistant,” the top open source smart home platform, handles its “Matter” device integration.
Home Assistant has been running its Matter integration using the “Python Matter Server” add-on since June 2022 (v0.1.0), before the Matter 1.0 specification was officially released. This add-on currently acts as a “wrapper” around the official C++ Matter SDK.
The OHF confirmed that this existing certified “Matter server” is not going anywhere, but acknowledged that the initial C++ based approach was considered “less than ideal”. They noted that the “Matter SDK” is not optimized to be a controller, and C++ is “less suited for rapid open source development at scale”.
The OHF intends to migrate their existing “Open Home Foundation Matter Server” to utilize “Matter.JS” and then re-certify the updated server.
Lower the barriers to building with Matter
For developers and the wider open source community, the transition to the TypeScript-based “Matter.JS” offers several key advantages.
The OHF anticipates that once the migration is complete, their “Matter” development capacity will “increase in size, scope, and speed”. Since “Matter.JS” is based on TypeScript, it is “more approachable for new developers,” and the move away from the raw C++ SDK gives the foundation “greater flexibility”.
With the backing of the “Open Home Foundation,” “Matter.JS” is expected to achieve official “Matter” certification. This certification is important because it ensures the project is “well maintained and properly tested by a Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA)-recognized lab”.
For end users of open source software, this shift promises significant long-term gains, even if the transition itself is “less noticeable for average users”. The OHF noted that projects like “Matter.JS” “lower the barriers to building with Matter”. The community will gain access to a certified, “open source, high-quality, flexible, and fully featured Matter implementation”.
The foundation believes “Matter” is fundamentally changing the smart home industry by preventing people from being locked into walled gardens and allowing them to control devices locally without reliance on the cloud. The use of open source in the standard also allows the wider world to observe the inner workings of “Matter”. This adoption of “Matter.JS” is expected to foster growth and collaboration, thereby “strengthening the entire ecosystem”.
(Source: Open Home Foundation; Image Source: Open Home Foundation)
