[Note: Project CHIP is now known as Matter]
What is Project CHIP?
In December 2019, Amazon, Apple, Google and the Zigbee Alliance announced the start of Project CHIP (“Connected Home over IP”, sometimes referred to as “Commercial and Home over IP”) that aims to create a unified standard for communication between smart home devices. Its aim is to simplify development of smart home devices by ensuring that products which conform to the new standard will work with leading ecosystems, such as Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Google’s Assistant and Comcast’s Xfinity.
Project CHIP, as the name implies, is based on the well-established IPv6 protocol. This means that, unlike some other smart home standards, it can be used on existing IP-carrying networks without the need for specific hubs or protocol translation gateways.
Project CHIP aims to unify the various application layer standards that exist today in the smart home. It will be based on the work and experience that its founding companies put in their respective market-proven home automation standards, including Amazon’s Alexa Home, Google’s Weave, Apple’s HomeKit and the Dotdot data model from the Zigbee Alliance.
CHIP also chooses IP
The creators of the CHIP standard chose for the protocol to be based on IP. In principle, any IP-based network can be used for CHIP. The project’s initial focus is on Thread, Wi-Fi and IP-based Bluetooth Low Energy (such as Thread’s Bluetooth Extensions).
It can leverage the existing Wi-Fi infrastructure that many people have already deployed in their homes, and specifically adds Thread support as it is the premier secure, low-power mesh networking technology that allows for reliable networking of many IoT devices, including sensors and buttons that will work on a single battery for years.
Unlike other network technologies used in smart home applications, Thread was developed from the ground up to be fully based on the well-established IPv6 protocol. This allows for direct, end-to-end encrypted communication between all the devices in the smart home network and the Internet, enabling secure and flexible out-of-house communication and connections to cloud services. Its security is not affected by hubs or gateways that need to translate IP-communication into proprietary protocols and back again.
Project CHIP in commercial applications
Although Project CHIP is initially focused on residential applications, its creation can be considered an important development for the commercial world as well.
Many basic commercial applications, such as small buildings and offices or small retail kiosks, can use smart home technology for their IoT needs. In these situations, operating the lights, controlling door locks or window blinds or setting the HVAC system can be performed using off-the-shelf equipment.
These commercial applications benefit from the increased level of compatibility with a wide range of smart home integration apps and voice assistant products. Users have access to a variety of products that will work together.
How does Project CHIP affect building automation?
Larger-scale building automation systems usually have additional requirements, such as a centralized Building Automation System that will be designed to target the specific needs of a building and its occupants. Such a system allows for the dynamic allocation of workspaces, offers the ability to analyze usage data, integrates with a company’s IP-network backbone and might be connected to cloud-based solutions. Thread, with its Commercial Extensions, was specifically designed for these needs, and has been selected by many commercial grade building automation standards like KNX and BACnet as the low-power, self-healing wireless mesh networking technology of choice.
In the past we have seen technologies that have been widely adopted in the consumer market, have also migrated to commercial applications. They are either adopted as-is, or are being used as a starting point to add specific commercial functionality. Think of Wi-Fi, which started in the consumer domain and later became ubiquitous in the commercial world as well.
This has the major advantage of economy of scale. With many vendors making components that are used in the large consumer market, prices come down faster and the range of options increases at a higher rate. This way, a large selection of components and products in the consumer domain will directly benefit commercial applications as well.
Since Thread is the low-power mesh technology of choice for Project CHIP, the number of Thread-based components and products is likely to grow substantially in the future.
Thread’s flexibility in commercial app layers
Thread has always been agnostic to the application layer that is being used on the network. In this regard, it is similar to any other IP-based networking technology like Wi-Fi or Ethernet. The Project CHIP announcement does not affect the Wi-Fi standard, and the same is true for Thread: it remains the de facto low-power mesh networking-technology that is fully designed for IP-communication.
This makes Thread ideal for IP-capable commercial building standards like KNX, BACnet, OCF or Dotdot. Smart building designers can use any of these IP-based technologies (and even use multiple standards concurrently on the same network) and leverage Thread’s strong commercial functionality in terms of security, scalability, commissioning, the flexible creation of subnets and network roaming
The Project CHIP announcement furthermore underscores that the industry has recognized the flexibility that IP-based networking offers, and how Thread is a vital part of that.
Read more in Like Wi-Fi for the IoT: How being application agnostic sets Thread apart from the rest to see how Thread can be used in large-scale commercial grade applications and how it works with established building automation standards.