Wyze Cams - What MATTER(s)

[carverofchoice]

I guarantee you’re not getting in any trouble for this kind of thread. This kind of discussion is very welcome, and beneficial IMO, especially when it’s an honest discussion like this.

I like Brian too.

@Sam_Bam

Wyze cameras will not support the MATTER standard

This is partially a misunderstanding about Matter…I’ll explain in a moment. First, if you haven’t done so yet, read this thread, starting here:

SmartThings Integration

We have been part of the Matter initiative since March 2021 and we never made it a secret.

And read all the comments made by WyzeFrederik through the rest of that thread so that you have an understanding of where Wyze is at on the Matter initiative. He is Wyze’s POC on the Matter initiative.

@Sam_Bam

there’s an expensive license to use MATTER

This is true. It is a proprietary standard with an opensource repository, but the specification is licensed by the CSA so you have to pay to play. Become a Member | The Future of IOT - CSA-IOT
Pay to Play Cost Summary:

Some relevant quotes from WyzeFrederik about Matter are as follows:

@Frederik

We know that bulbs, plugs and switch have the right chip to run Matter but there are still some uncertainty around the size of the library for Matter.

@Frederik

The reality of Matter is that it is still a moving target and we are not ready to talk about our plans with Matter. We are definitely interested and are looking at the impact on the current products, futures products and more importantly the current ecosystem that we have.
Also be sure that despite having 200 companies in Matter, you can be sure that not all of them will adopt Matter. I think all the traditional players will and we want to be one of them but timing is also going to be important.

Regarding Cameras with Matter:

@Frederik

Cameras are not included in Matter for the moment but there is no reason why they can’t be in the future but right now, I’m not aware of any work in that area.

This echos what Brian from automate your life said about Matter Version 1.0:

3:27 the initial device types that will be
3:29 released with version 1.0 of matter this
3:32 means that devices you have in your home
3:34 today like a smart home camera or a
3:36 smart home video doorbell are not slated
3:39 to work with matter come day one and i
3:42 don’t have any knowledge to give you on
3:44 a release date for version two and i
3:46 don’t know what other device types are
3:48 even planned for that the industry is so
3:51 focused on version one that there’s
3:53 nothing out there for version two it
3:55 doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist

So it’s not really that “WYZE CAMS” Aren’t supported, but at the moment, NO CAMS are supported in version 1.

It’s possible Wyze cams could be in the future, but don’t count on it for the V2’s since they have such limited resources. Maybe the V3’s (depending on what is developed by the alliance…nobody knows yet because it doesn’t exist for cams) and probably future cams should support it though. Here is some relevant discussion on that:

@Frederik

There is not a Matter chip as Matter is a purely software based solution but some of the chips are optimized for Matter or in the case of ESP32 have the SDK compiled and tested as part of the Matter development process.
The only requirement that Matter is putting in place is that the device should be supporting IPv6 and (optionally) Bluetooth for provisioning. So there are a lot of devices that are meeting that criteria. But since Matter is still under development, we have no idea the memory size that will be required, the amount of compute that will be required too, which makes predicting which existing devices to be compatible near impossible.
So specifically on the camera v3, I’m pretty confident that we have the amount of compute. I’m not about the amount of flash memory that we have and I don’t know how much work it will take to get Matter working with the ingenic T31X and last I don’t know how much it will take to make sure that we are not breaking any of the integration that we have with the Wyze ecosystem and the support for WebRTC. We are just too early to answer that.

@Frederik

The TL;DR is that right now, we are actively looking at Matter. I’m the POC for Matter for Wyze. I’m running several (raspPi) prototypes to understand the maturity and the complexity and develop the expertise around Matter. I’ve briefed the upper management on the business challenges and technical opportunities around Matter. I’ve also started to develop a plan for the adoption of Matter but we have not committed the development time for the moment on Matter because we have a serious backlog of features for the current products for the coming months and to support the launch of the products that have already been committed.

Basically, we probably have to wait for Matter to develop a little further first. Perhaps we’ll get lucky and @Frederik will give an update, but I am guessing he doesn’t have much to add to what he’s already said until later this year after the version 1 launches and we see how that goes. As for cameras, I doubt he can say anything about that until the Alliance develops the possibility for cameras to work with Matter. Since that doesn’t exist with 1.0, it’s almost pointless to discuss how it relates to cams at this point since nobody has a clue yet.

I hope that helps answer some questions at least I am very interested in and following up on this too.