The more devices there are, the harder it is to achieve compatibility...This "pain point" of smart homes is expected to be ended!

In addition to the usual lights and thermostats that learn your habits and can be controlled from your smartphone, and video doorbells that let you see who’s at the door even when you’re not home, there are exciting new products on the horizon: mirrors that let you check your calendar while you wash up, pipe monitors that spot leaks and shut off the water if a pipe bursts, kitchen appliances that offer recipes based on inventory, and cameras that prevent you from burning your dinner.

These colorful trends will make homes safer and more interesting, but the problem is that when it comes time to install, you may find that the system of the home products is not compatible with the existing system. You need to spend more time and energy to complete the preparation work, and the network setup will be more complicated than you imagined. All this will be worse over time because the products you installed in the past may not be able to work with the new products.

The complexity of accommodating new features, and the challenge of having to add additional layers of software and hardware to make everything work together, makes it difficult to create a "smart" home experience.

Why is it that we are here today? Why are there so many compatibility issues with smart homes? In part, it has to do with technology evolution. Many early options for the connected home leveraged low-power, low-data-rate protocols, such as IEEE 802.15.4 and Bluetooth Low Energy, which predate smartphones and the cloud. These early technologies are still around today and coexist with high-power, high-data-rate protocols like Wi-Fi. It can be challenging for these connectivity protocols to coexist in harmony.

Another reason for interoperability issues is that the major players in the consumer market (Amazon, Apple, Google, and Samsung) have all launched their own platforms, which are often not compatible with each other. Using a single ecosystem does simplify setup, but it is not very convenient if you are set up in Apple HomeKit but have your eye on a cool device designed for the Google ecosystem. In addition to this, professional service providers in the market provide dedicated subscription-based options (such as home alarm monitoring) based on their own ecosystem, so your smart home needs to accommodate another form factor.

Worse still, in addition to causing frustration and confusion, interoperability can also create security risks. With so many different protocols, each with their own security layers and authentication mechanisms, it becomes increasingly difficult to prevent unauthorized access.

The systems involved in smart homes collect a lot of information about our daily lives and habits, which makes it easy for hackers to break in, steal your identity, or launch a cyberattack. Without the right protections, the number of vulnerabilities that hackers can exploit (what cybersecurity experts call the "attack surface") will only grow.

The good news is that industry leaders are paying attention and reaching a consensus to solve the interoperability problem. A new project launched by the Zigbee Alliance promises to bring unification, security, and plug-and-play operation to the smart home market.

The internal name of this initiative is Project Connected Home Over IP, or Project CHIP. The new name of the technology will be announced in 2021. The goal of Project CHIP is to create a common language that network protocols such as Thread and Wi-Fi can use, allowing them to talk to each other without the need for additional software and hardware to translate .

This common language will support connections using the Internet Protocol (IP); the same protocol that underpins the Internet. To encourage broad support and remove barriers to entry, we are using an open source approach for both software and specifications to create the common language, and will provide royalty-free rights to use it (only certified Zigbee Alliance Project CHIP working group members will receive IP rights). The project will also define certification requirements to verify compliance of devices using the new standard.

Project CHIP was officially announced in December 2019 and has since gained broad support and attracted a diverse group of leading companies in the semiconductor, systems, software, consumer, and commercial sectors. Amazon, Apple, and Google have also joined Project CHIP.

NXP sees Project CHIP as an important initiative to enable the growth of the smart home and the broader Internet of Things (IoT). We are a principal member of the Zigbee Alliance (with a seat on the Board of Directors) and actively participate in Project CHIP.

We are leading the way in contributing to and deploying Project CHIP because the initiative’s key goals (compatibility, connectivity, and security) align with our strengths. We offer one of the most comprehensive IoT portfolios, providing advanced options for a wide range of applications, from low-power MCUs, high-performance MPUs, to wireless protocols (including Wi-Fi, Thread, and Bluetooth Low Energy), backed by trusted banking-grade security features. We will leverage this expertise to help Project CHIP achieve its goals.

We believe Project CHIP has the potential to help the smart home market reach its full potential. By improving compatibility, Project CHIP can increase security, simplify configuration, and optimize compliance.

With Project CHIP, device manufacturers will be able to invest confidently in products that work across multiple ecosystems without having to stock multiple versions of the same product. And service providers will be able to rely on third-party organizations (rather than their own employees) to obtain compatibility certificates. Most importantly, Project CHIP means consumers can more easily create smarter, more intuitive smart home experiences.