A smart home from Apple, Amazon and Google: you need to know this about Project CHIP

A open sourcestandard for smart home products. This is a mouthful, but the bottom line is that, thanks to Project CHIP, you can use smart products from companies such as Apple, Amazon and Google together in the future. The abbreviation stands for “Connected Home over IP”.

The project was started in 2019 by a coalition of more than 170 major tech companies, including well-known names such as Apple, Amazon, Google, IKEA, Samsung and Philips Hue. They have agreed to use one standard for smart home products together in the future.

Project CHIP can therefore be seen as the universal power strip that can handle all light networks (read: smart products from Apple, Amazon and Google, among others).

Project CHIP consists of three existing wireless technologies: bluetooth, wifi and thread. The former two are well known, but thread may need some explanation.

This standard was created with the Internet of Things in mind, in other words the near future in which more and more household appliances have an internet connection and are interconnected.

Thread is a safe and energy-efficient way to connect security cameras and motion sensors, for example.

The main advantage of Project CHIP is that you will soon have much more freedom of choice in putting together your smart home. Currently, makers of smart lighting, cameras and thermostats are all on their own islands, so you are limited in purchasing choice.

Apple users, for example, have little use for one Google Nest Audio speakerbecause it doesn’t support HomeKit, the iPhone maker’s smart home platform. You can connect the speaker via a detour, but you will miss some functions. The same goes for using an Amazon Echo speaker in combination with Google Home: this is anything but accessible.

Another advantage of Project CHIP is that the new standard is open source. In other words: everyone can look under the hood and check exactly how the technology works. Hopefully, this is good news for smart home stuff rolling out updates.

That remains to be seen. On paper it is difficult to discover the disadvantages of the initiative. After all, Project CHIP solves a major problem in the smart home world: the lack of support. Time will tell whether the alliance also works in practice.

During the 2019 announcement, the collaborating companies said that Project CHIP was available from 2020. This deadline was not met because the pandemic threw a spanner in the works.

It is now the intention that makers of smart door locks, speakers and lamps will be able to apply for certificates for the universal smart home protocol from the third quarter of 2021. In theory, we can therefore expect the first products with Project CHIP by the end of this year.

Even if you don’t feel like buying new smart home products, Project CHIP is good news. The new network standard can also be brought to older devices via a software update. It is only unclear which companies (and products) will use this.