Jennifer Pattison Tuohy

Trident IoT is a boutique silicon engineering firm / one-stop shop for smart home device makers. It plans to provide silicon solutions and engineering expertise for all the protocols, plus help with those arduous Works With certifications.

But it’s kicking off with Z-Wave and will be the first third-party chipmaker to offer Z-Wave sillicon since the protocol opened its source code last year. Read Stacey Higginbotham’s analysis for more on why this ... matters.

There are few details, other than a new square shape (the first-gen was circular) and the addition of 5 GHz Wi-Fi. Based on Eve’s other cameras, it’ll likely support Apple’s HomeKit Secure Video. But no Matter yet — the smart home standard still doesn’t work with cameras.

Especially if it uses Thread, which has specific requirements you need to know in order to use that new smart light bulb, motion sensor, or smart plug. Here’s everything you need to know to set up a Matter-over-Thread device in your smart home.

While the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) has repeatedly said robot vacuums will be part of the smart home standard, based on the slow progress of Matter, I’d say we’re still a ways out.

Garage door controller manufacturer Remsol (iSmartGate), coffee machine maker Keurig, and Loxone (an intriguing Austrian home automation company) also joined, according to the CSA, which now has 620 member companies.

The $8,000 Samsung Neo QLED 8K TV is a Matter Controller, Samsung SmartThings hub, and Thread Border Router, thanks to a new Thread/Zigbee module on board. And it’s also a sweet TV.

It does make some of the $500 Matter/Thread hubs popping up look like quite the bargain, but I bet they can’t stream Netflix in the same cinematic glory.

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Announced at CES 2023, the colorful LED panels work over Wi-Fi, feature addressable segments, multiple color displays, tunable white light, and on-device music syncing.

They’re part of Cync’s new Dynamic Effects lighting range, which includes A19 and BR30 bulbs, indoor and outdoor light strips, and neon-shape lights.

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