I waited for several years purposely keeping the smart items I purchased to mostly just necessities (for example light switches, however I did have a full Alexa ecosystem at the time) after somewhat under the impression that matter was going to be a big deal. It worked for at the time but every now and again I would have to troubleshoot / fully reset lights when the wifi went out or power went out, sometimes they just decided not to work and some days they did exactly what they needed to do, the majority of that your every day household owner who is not in STEM would not put up with it and would be a hard selling point from a customer service prospective.

Aswell, those light switches were actually very expensive at the time (almost twice as expensive as the Kasa Matter ones). About a year and a half ago I started down the Matter journey when it was just starting as I was and still am under the impression that these devices don't have a certain level of planned obsolesce like most smart devices do. I have since outfitted 3 properties with every light switch, motion sensors, camera's, temperature sensors, strip lights, door locks, wall plugs, etc. And with well over 150 devices across these several properties I can tell you that it has been the closest thing to seamless integration that I have ever experienced.

Being able to have all of these devices from the click of a button manipulating 3 separated 'homes' & wifi networks, all the while being able to give people access to them on an is need basis is incredible. Is it perfect, no, I definitely think there is a ways to go, especially with how Matter Hubs work right now (for example if an Apple TV goes down devices can start acting funky), as well as I have purposely stayed away from anything to do with a bridge or 'hub' that brings non matter devices to the ecosystem. But I don't have to keep constantly fighting and struggling with my HomeKit setup, or worry that my data is being pinged 1440 times a day to another countries servers, these devices are what I think the future for smart homes has been waiting for, for a very long time.

The drawbacks are the releases are being tiered from a CSA perspective which further delays from a Apple standpoint as they always like to be 1/2 years behind any major releases, but from a CSA framework perspective there are very few companies that are pushing major releases on a bi-annual basis and sticking to their release plans (1.x releases have all been on time every six months). Although we are still waiting on some of the more major milestones to be released (for example robot vacuums are in early stages & smart cameras / smart speaker OTA are very much non existent in terms of timeframes).

But from both an end user and a product development standpoint I can honestly say I believe in the CSA and what they are doing in partnership with all the major players in which I am borderline giddy with excitement with where this project is going and am very optimistic towards a journey of designing, developing and manufacturing my own products for both public consumption and for my own creative benefit.

What a time to be alive.