More and more tech firms are delivering on their promises to support Matter, the smart home standard that's designed to make it easier for devices from all manufacturers to talk to one another. Google brought it to their Nest and Google Home devices in December; Amazon brought it to its Echos and other devices in January; and this month Nanoleaf beat Hue to market with Matter over Thread smart lighting.
Now it's Eve's turn to join the smart home party. Following on from its recent beta firmware update that brought matter compatibility to some of its existing products, the smart phone firm has launched a Matter-equipped version of its Eve Energy system in the US, UK and in Europe. Door and Window sensors will follow in April. The firmware update for existing kit will become a full release on 17 April too.
How can you upgrade Eve devices to Matter?
From April 17th, all you'll need to do is use the iPhone or iPad app: that'll automatically install the firmware updates for your existing kit. The list of supported hardware is fairly short, but then Eve doesn't make a huge range of products. The devices that'll be able to get Matter updates from 17 April are:
- Eve Energy (Australia, Europe, U.K., U.S. & Canada)
- Eve Door & Window
- Eve Motion
All three of those product types are Thread-enabled, and you'll need a Thread-compatible device such as a 2nd generation HomePod or, Apple TV 4K 128GB. Once you've installed any updates for that, you'll then be able to go into Settings > Accessories in the Eve app and choose Upgrade To Matter.
It's important to note that in this case, moving to Matter is a one-way process: you can't downgrade back to HomeKit. As Eve puts it: " If your household uses Apple devices exclusively, upgrading to Matter is optional, and your Eve devices' feature set or performance will remain unchanged." In other words, if you don't need it, don't do it.
