The Amazon Web Services outage took down many sites and services, including Twitch, Disney Plus, and RIng. This outage also affected my home: my Christmas lights did not turn on.

Since I use smart plugs to control my Christmas lights, I rely on a combination of Alexa and smart plugs to schedule the lights to turn on and off. However, when Alexa and AWS were not working well, the smart plugs did not receive the proper commands to turn on at dusk. The result: our home lacked a Christmas mood.

The outage had an alarming impact on other services as well.

But there is a solution. [Next year, a new smart home standard called Matter will finally be available, and more importantly, the first devices that can use Matter Matter is an IP-based protocol that, in theory, will allow Alexa, Google Assistant, or HomeKit use, it will make it easier for the best smart home devices to work with any platform. It also replaces the myriad networking standards that already exist (notably Bluetooth, Zigbee, and Z-Wave).

But the feature of Matter that I am most interested in is local control when it comes to Christmas lights. Currently, all my outdoor smart plugs must connect to my router via Wi-Fi to send and receive instructions. However, Matter-enabled smart plugs create a self-healing mesh network, so even if the connection to the cloud is lost, I can turn the plugs on and off locally.

Having a local mesh network of smart home devices also means that the devices are more secure from outside intrusion. If the door locks do not need to use the cloud to get instructions, there is one less avenue for potential hackers to break into the smart home.

Still, it will still be at least six months before Matter-enabled smart home devices are available, and Eve was quick to announce that its devices will support Matter, but added that it won't happen until the final Matter specifications are rolled out, in June at the earliest. He adds that this will not happen until June at the earliest. And while major companies such as Amazon, Google, and Apple have endorsed Matter, they have not indicated when they will update their smart home products to support the new standard. In Google's case, Nest Learning Thermostat will not be supported at all.

I expect to see a decent array of smart home devices supporting Matter by the end of 2022!