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Home › IoT News › Connected Devices › Aqara releases Hub M3 with edge
capabilities and Matter support for private, local smart homes


AQARA RELEASES HUB M3 WITH EDGE CAPABILITIES AND MATTER SUPPORT FOR PRIVATE,
LOCAL SMART HOMES



With the Matter standard increasingly utilised in smart home devices, users are
looking for solutions that enable simple management of devices from multiple
vendors, while ensuring privacy. Filipp Shved, the senior product marketing
manager of Aqara, tells IoT Now how the company’s new M3 Hub addresses the needs
of the rapidly maturing market for local, private, unified smart home systems.

IoT Now: What new functionality does the M3 offer smart home users? How does it
enhance user experiences? 

Filipp Shved: The Hub M3 is a big milestone for Aqara and provides a significant
advance on previous hubs. It is targeted at two main groups of users. The first
is the vast community of Aqara Home users who are expecting improvements. We’ve
addressed these user requests with the M3 and added not only support for the
Thread protocol, which is the latest networking technology purposely built for
IoT, but also the capability to integrate third-party Matter devices. Aqara
already released two Thread-enabled devices, a door and window sensor and a
motion and light sensor, and we expect a rapid expansion of our Thread lineup in
the next 12 months. With the Hub M3, we can now provide a convergent experience
to end users between our classic Zigbee devices and the newer Thread devices.

A further improvement the M3 delivers is in stability. The M3 is an Edge Hub
with strong local automation capabilities and, right now, it is the most stable
Aqara hub for our devices. Data privacy is enhanced thanks to its end-to-end
encrypted, local storage. Moreover, the M3 advances its capability for local
automations, minimising reliance on internet connection and cloud service. It
means enhanced network stability and responsiveness for our users. 

The Hub M3 was additionally designed with a second user group in mind, the
third-party brand and platforms user that seeks seamless connectivity across
their devices and ecosystem – whether it’s Apple Home, Alexa, Google Home or
SmartThings. These users have traditionally purchased our Zigbee products,
specifically for their build quality and accessible prices. For these users, the
M3 serves as a Matter bridge that provides Aqara Zigbee devices the
interoperability and simplicity brought by Matter, without having to make a new
investment in Thread devices. In addition, the M3 also bridges the infrared AC
units to Matter, allowing local control and local automation of IR devices via
any platform. Last but not least, as a Thread Border Router the M3 allows owners
of those older Matter controllers without Thread protocol support (such as the
first-gen HomePod) to integrate Thread devices – whether from Aqara or other
brands – into their smart home setups, again without the need to invest in a new
Matter controller. 



IoT Now: Compared to other smart home control centres on the market, what’s
unique about the Hub M3? 

FS: One of the biggest differences is the M3’s edge capabilities. We believe all
smart home interactions should be done as locally as possible. With a growing
number of connected devices in each smart home, local automation that is
independent of internet connection greatly enhances the smart home network
responsiveness. Furthermore, it improves privacy and data security, giving users
peace of mind and control over where their data actually resides. 

This is why we focused on edge capabilities when designing the Hub M3. The M3 is
capable of managing over 100 Zigbee and Thread devices while managing and
leading other Aqara hubs. It means that the M3 can automate hundreds of smart
home devices locally on the edge, with minimum reliance on internet connection
or cloud service. Our goal was to provide consumers with local network
capabilities coupled with Aqara Home’s easy-to-use and powerful automation
engine.  

We’ve also designed the Hub M3 to be future-proof and better serve our customers
as a long-term investment for their smart home. Our long-term strategy for the
M3 is to make it not only adaptable to the release of future standards and
protocols, but also integrate exciting new features as they are deployed.
Planned features include local app control, which will allow users to connect
the hub to the Aqara Home app via a local network so that they can locally
control their smart home devices without an internet connection. 

Last, consumer privacy is at the core of this latest Aqara hub. The M3 addresses
some of the elemental privacy concerns that users have, as the hub does not have
any hardware features – such as microphones or cameras – and does not push user
data to the cloud 



IoT Now: What challenges have you overcome as you have built the Aqara
ecosystem? 

FS: From day one, we’ve been challenged by not having a full product line across
the various smart home categories. When consumers start to build out their smart
home, they are looking for a comprehensive solution in most cases. If you don’t
have smart lights, for example, you can’t offer a complete solution. For
example, not having a smart light immediately detracts from the attractiveness
of the purchase, so it has been difficult to convince users to switch to our
ecosystem. So we’ve focused on expanding our ecosystem beyond sensors and
controllers, and providing potential customers with a more robust product line,
and the Hub M3 is part of that expansion. 

The Hub M3 is the cornerstone of a Matter-enabled Aqara ecosystem. It ultimately
facilitates the expansion of the Aqara Home experience through the integration
of third-party Matter devices – elevating our overall platform experience. For
example,  Aqara Home users can now connect Matter-enabled Philips Hue lights and
Google Nest thermostats. And there are more exciting automation capability
announcements to come in 2024.

IoT Now: For what reasons have you developed the M3 for Matter devices? What’s
your view of Matter and its market traction? 

FS: The release of the Matter specification in late 2022 really moved the
industry and raised expectations as well as really opened up extensive
possibilities.

It’s taken some time to mature, but the benefits of Matter can truly be seen
now. We expect that later this year Matter will start fully executing on its
original vision of the interoperable home. I personally already use it a lot.

With this latest 1.3 release, we’re now navigating and addressing
sustainability. Water and energy management control features are part of our
future-proofing solutions and Matter makes it easier to deploy these
capabilities across ecosystems, platforms and devices.

IoT Now: What are some key trends you’re seeing in the smart home market? How do
these trends impact what’s next for Aqara? What developments do you see as
interesting for the company? 

FS: Users increasingly understand that local and private automation is how a
smart home should work. Several years ago people were OK with cloud automation,
but we’ve seen a growing popularity of local smart homes. User concerns about
privacy, and this is addressed with Matter. While many smart home players are in
the process of moving to Matter, we’ve been early backers and adopters since its
early days. With Matter as the foundation, Aqara will continue to develop the
ultimate smart home experience with unprecedented interoperability and
simplicity.

We are very excited with the private localisation of the smart home and the
value consumers are seeing in this type of investment. The Hub M3 provides a
fantastic way to cement our position as the private, local smart home enabler
that offers users protection and privacy coupled with adaptable features for
advanced capabilities that further add to their long-term smart home
investment. 

www.aqara.com  

Comment on this article via X: @IoTNow_

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Posted on: May 9, 2024

Categories: Cloud Connected Devices Connectivity IoT Insights Smart Homes
Talking Heads

Tags: Aqara automation cloud cloud automation connectivity devices ecosystem
interoperability interview IoT Now Matter network platforms private automation
smart home devices

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