I googled, but can’t find a good answer (or any answer really).
Matter is the new smart home standard. It’s pretty new, but I’m somewhat surprised that there are very few Matter products on Amazon Amazon here.
I was looking to buy some light bulbs for a lamp I had and figured I’d buy Matter bulbs. I failed to find anything at all. TECHNICALLY Philips Hue bulbs (which are on Amazon) are now Matter compatible through the hub, but I was looking for a bulb that was directly compatible that I could use with my HomePod Mini.
The only device I was able to find (and full disclosure here, I’m looking on Amazon.co.jp in English) was the Nature Remo Nano, which claims to be “Matter Compatible” (possibly meaning it has Thread? From what I can tell it’s not actually usable in the context of Matter currently, so I’m not sure).
Anyway this isn’t super important or anything, but I’m very curious about the smart home market / technology here and why Matter does not appear to be present at all. I do understand that a LOT of apartments (most?) have their own dedicated lighting fixtures, but still there are lamps and things that could benefit from smart bulbs?
Thanks for your thoughts!
7 comments
search by product number.
Home automation is a fairly small market in Japan, and most of it is fractured into different closed ecosystems. As you’ve found out, very few of the ecosystems support Matter, so there’s no real reason for companies to release it here, especially when it comes with the cost of having everything certified for use in Japan (radio, electronics, etc).
I’m not using it, but Ikea’s Dirigera hub supports Matter and is available in Japan. They have smart bulbs and sensors that connect to the hub. Their lights are cheaper than Hue, but I prefer the color of Hue bulbs more.
Requires a hub again, but SwitchBot products are supposedly Matter compatible.
I’m planning to probably use exclusively Hue and SwitchBot products moving forward. Mixing too many brands creates a lot of inconvenience.
They only fairly recently figured out you can control your aircon with home automation after switchbot became a thing.
My dude, we are still sending faxes here, please wait 5 years for the newest technology to be broadly available.
As someone who just bought a Nature Remo nano last week, I can comment. I have a Daikin aircon and Panasonic lighting (which comes with a remote control for on/off, brighten/dimming and warm/cool lighting). I was looking for something with Matter support since I’m a HomeKit user. Up until recently, I used the dedicated remote control for my lighting and the Daikin app for controlling aircon (super slow and clunky, since it all goes through Daikin’s cloud servers).
I can gladly report that the Nature Remo nano is “pretty good” at bridging this gap, but still not perfect. Unfortunately, Matter 1.0 has a ton of limitations on what it can control – for example, it can set a preferred aircon temperature and turn on/off, but not the airflow or direction. For lights and TV, Matter only supports on/off (my lights will remember the last setting they were in, but if I physically power the lights off/on they will “reset” back to default brightness and warmth).
Finally, a huge annoyance is that the Nature Remo nano doesn’t have a temperature sensor – so the Home app annoyingly reads as “0.0-25°” (the correct temperature reading comes from my HomePod Mini). However, you can still set automations in the Home app based on your preferred temperature sensor, so it’s strictly a UI issue. If and when they release a more expensive model with Matter support, this should be fixed (currently, the pricier models do have temperature sensors but no Matter support).
I found this article to be useful which explains the merits and limitations in great detail:
[https://diysmartmatter.com/archives/2657](https://diysmartmatter.com/archives/2657)
The official website also has an explanation of what Matter’s current limitations are.
[“What can Matter do?”](https://support.nature.global/hc/ja/articles/19324667149977-Nature-Remo-nano%E3%81%8C%E5%AF%BE%E5%BF%9C%E3%81%97%E3%81%A6%E3%81%84%E3%82%8BMatter%E3%81%A7%E3%81%AF%E4%BD%95%E3%81%8C%E5%87%BA%E6%9D%A5%E3%81%BE%E3%81%99%E3%81%8B-)
Anyway, I can now use both Siri and the Nature Remo app to control stuff way faster and for ¥3,780 I can’t complain. It’s an affordable and “good enough” solution to transform most “dumb” Japanese homes into a smart one.
Switchbot Hub 2 also works with matter, and is a fairly larger company compared to Nature.