Silicon Labs’ Frustration Free Setup for Matter and Alexa Announced at Alexa Live

With the impending release of Matter expected before year’s end, device manufacturers, designers, and application developers are all eagerly looking forward to the ability for their devices to all connect and work together to improve the Smart Home experience. But with that opportunity comes a new layer of complexity: whereas individual ecosystems have built paths for consumers to onboard same-ecosystem devices into their existing Smart Home setups, how can they plan for cross-ecosystem integrations?

One of the leading Smart Home platforms, Amazon Alexa, has already established their guidelines for Frustration Free Setup, and this week I had the privilege of joining Amazon Senior Principal Software Development Engineer Chris DeCenzo to talk about Frustration Free Setup at the Alexa Live Developer Conference.

Frustration Free Setup Helps Make IoT More Accessible

Amazon created their Frustration Free Setup program with a clear understanding that not every consumer is an engineer. When they start to read about Zigbee, Bluetooth Mesh, and Matter, many of them are confused and the first F, frustration, begins to set in.

Recognizing that the sometimes small teams of application developers or designers behind a particular IoT innovation may not have the resources to think through every aspect of the user experience of device provisioning, and that customers just want to take a device out of a box, plug it in, and have it work, they created Frustration Free Setup to leverage existing devices in the home to quickly bring the new device on-board. Many Silicon Labs customers, like Philips® Hue and Tuya Smart, are already members of the Frustration Free Setup program, and today Silicon Labs is announcing that we are extending our support of the program for Matter.

Silicon Labs Frustration Free Setup for Alexa and Matter

As a silicon vendor and the leader in pure-play IoT, Silicon Labs plays an important role in connecting platforms like Amazon’s Alexa, designers, developers, and consumers. That’s why we’re pleased to announce that we will be collaborating with Amazon to offer a pre-preconfigured, pre-tested System on a Chip (SoC) that supports Frustration Free Setup for Matter. This helps our mutual customers to reduce development efforts and accelerate time to market. We are completing pre-certification and will bring pre-configured solutions to market. Our device partners will also have our renowned Simplicity Studio Development Suite by their side in the development journey - it takes them through an optimized workflow, enabling quicker project progression, device configuration, and application optimization.

We believe that Matter brings us closer to a future where developers will be free to focus on experiences, rather than connectivity. That freedom will unleash a new wave of exciting innovation. Let us know on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn how you would use Frustration Free Setup to build new IoT solutions with Alexa, Matter, and Silicon Labs!