The Matter standard makes bold steps forward for smart home IoT, as illustrated in other presentations in this conference, such as a common data and application model, support by major ecosystems (no more lock-in), IP-based, strong security, unified install flow, and an open source SDK.
This allows a step forward from existing standards for smart home IoT devices - but to make adoption seamless for consumers with existing smart home devices, we need to make sure that they can use the new Matter standard alongside their existing devices, such as those based on Zigbee and Z-Wave. That way, they can keep using the devices they trust and love alongside new Matter devices - protecting their previous investments as well as preventing e-waste. In other words, the new standard needs to be an evolution rather than a revolution - which is required to give those which are not early adopters trust in stability for smart home IoT offerings.
One of the obvious solutions for the manufacturer is to create and provide a software update of the existing device to include support for Matter next to the existing functionality. However, this may not be always feasible due to device resources or other reasons.
The solution we have proposed, and which got adopted into the Matter 1.0 standard, is to standardize the concept of bridging: the bridge is a Matter device which exposes the functionality of the non-Matter devices (any protocol can be supported here) as virtual Matter devices towards the Matter controllers. Those Matter controllers can this find and use the non-Matter devices without needing to know the peculiarities of the non-Matter interface.
This bridging concept was adopted by many vendors to smooth the transition for their existing customers into Matter, and many have implemented and certified a bridge between Matter and their existing pre-Matter devices.
In the presentation, we will elaborate how the bridging concepts work for various device types such as actuators (lights, blinds, etcetera) which can be controlled from Matter controllers - as well as sensors and switches which can provide triggers to those Matter controllers.