Matter IoT Certification, Testing Tools Due Mid-Year, Says CSA
The Connectivity Standards Alliance will have certification and testing tools mid-year for the nascent Matter standard when the specification and software development kit are formally released, blogged Jon Harros, CSA director-certification and testing programs, Tuesday. The standard will allow disparate IoT devices from participating CSA member manufacturers to communicate with one another over IP-based transports, Harros said, “effectively eliminating many of the walls in the current IoT walled garden ecosystem.”
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CSA is planning additional Matter test events in 2022. It will offer certification across CSA program types -- product, platform, and certification by similarity -- plus some new testing programs for Matter applications, Harros said, referencing “huge implications for speed-to-market for new hardware and innovations.”
Harros recalled a “perfect storm” at the start of 2021 due to COVID-19 gathering restrictions that affected the certification program, which had traditionally relied on face-to-face testing events, followed by global chip shortages. The CSA had to “reimagine this facet of doing business” with new hardware and software tools that would allow member companies to enter a “virtual test scenario to schedule and track testing and results.”
Harros credited the CSA, hundreds of member companies and the “thousands of engineers” who completed a record number of tests in 2021. CSA hosted more than 38 virtual events across all its standards and working groups, including the seventh Matter test event with more than 130 devices from over 50 companies. “Certifications also stood up in the face of change as well,” he said: As of mid-December, CSA was tracking to 95% of the certifications completed in 2020.
Harros noted “a shift in the percentages of certifications by geography,” with the percentage of certifications from Europe growing from 50% in 2020 to 65% in 2021, “perhaps … tied to how geographies handled lock down and return to work.”
On expectations for Zigbee in 2022, Harros said the standard “ushered in the era of mesh networking,” putting in place a new unified testing harness that enables more efficient and effective pretest of designs against standards requirements. Members have been downloading the tool since its release, which should improve the speed and quality of the certification process for Zigbee Base Device Behavior, Green Power and Zigbee Cluster Library revision 8, he said.