Matter and ECHONET Lite: Similarities, differences, and a bridge solution for interoperability
Van Cu Pham, Toan Nguyen Mau, Marios Sioutis, Yasuo Tan
Abstract
With the increasing number of connected devices in smart homes, ensuring compatibility and interoperability is becoming increasingly more important. Matter and ECHONET Lite have been introduced to tackle this issue. While Matter is gaining significant attention globally as the future protocol for smart homes, ECHONET Lite has a long history of development and adoption in the smart home in Japan. Therefore, it is essential that both Matter and ECHONET Lite devices are interoperable to provide maximum benefits to users. In this paper, we provide an in-depth analysis that compares the architecture and features of Matter and ECHONET Lite, highlighting both their commonalities and differences. On top of that, we introduce a solution to bridge ECHONET Lite devices into the Matter ecosystem, enabling them to collaborate seamlessly with other Matter devices. This bridge solution is developed, implemented, and tested within a real smart home testbed installed with commercial and experimental ECHONET Lite devices. Our results show that the proposed solution effectively enables the smooth integration of ECHONET Lite devices into the Matter ecosystem, making it suitable for everyday use in smart home environments.