More than 170 technology companies, including the well-known Amazon, Google and Apple, are currently immersed in the development of Project Connected Home over IP (CHIP), the new technological standard that claims to be a unified standard for managing connected devices in the home, so that users can purchase connected devices knowing that they will also be compatible with the rest of the connected devices they already have, regardless of the smart home ecosystem they use.
In this way, it is intended to prevent users from acquiring connected devices by filtering the options they have in hand based on the management system of the connected devices they have chosen for their homes.
Ensuring compatibility between connected devices
While the first connected devices compatible with the new standard were expected to appear by the end of last year (2020), theWith the arrival of the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic, they delayed the plans, so that the idea now is that the first connected devices compatible with Project CHIP will begin to arrive by the end of this year.ahead of the upcoming Christmas season, as revealed in the webinar held earlier this week by the Zigbee Alliance.
The first wave of Project CHIP certified connected devices is expected to include light bulbs, locks, televisions, WiFi routers and other connected devices.
The most interesting thing is that Manufacturers will also be able to provide Project CHIP support to existing connected devices through new gateways, thus preventing users from having to replace their connected devices with others.
In this regard, the new standard is also intended to deprecate some of the connected device management protocols such as Zigbee and Z-Wave.
Project CHIP is based on the use of three technologies: in Bluetooth LE to establish the settings, in WiFi networks for high bandwidth uses (let’s think of surveillance cameras, for example), and in Thread, an emerging technology that is already beginning to appear in the first devices, as are the routers from Eero, on the Apple HomePod Mini, and on the more recent Google Nest Hub.
Therefore, it will be a matter of time before we start talking about connected devices that have Project CHIP certification depending on the releases that are coming, so this program will become more familiar to us over time.
