Continuing with the summer of Matter announcements, TP-Link’s Tapo has just released the industry’s first Matter-enabled smart switches. The Tapo S505 and Tapo S505D are now both available for purchase. Tapo is TP-Link’s smart home brand. TP-Link makes a wide variety of home Wi-Fi routers, business grade networking equipment, and much more.
HomeKit Weekly is a series focused on smart home accessories, automation tips and tricks, and everything to do with Apple’s smart home framework.
With Matter support, it’ll work perfectly within Apple’s HomeKit ecosystem along with offering support for Amazon Alexa and Google Home. Matter’s industry-standard design eliminates the need for smart home manufacturers to build in support for individual protocols and platforms. Consumers know that regardless of which platform they use (or switch to in the future), Matter enabled devices will work great.
The Tapo Tapo S505 and S505D are similar functionality with the added advantage of smart dimming on the latter model. Adjusting the light dimming range from one to 100 percent is done by moving your finger up and down on the switch itself, through the app, or via voice commands over Siri, Alexa, or Google Assistant. Both the Tapo S505 and S505D require a neutral wire and work with standard-size wall plates.
Matter also enables local LAN control, allowing all Matter-certified devices in a home network to continue working even if the home internet is offline. Matter allows communication directly between devices, without the need for a specific forwarding device. For example, a Matter smart switch or sensor can turn a Matter bulb on or off directly without being connected to a cloud service or smart home platform. It all works locally inside the network.
Tapo app use cases
With just an iPhone and the Tapo App, you can easily control your lights from anywhere over its Wi-Fi connection (no hub is needed for this aspect). These switches can completely automate your lighting based on your presence at home or away. To enhance security, TP-Links Away Mode can simulate occupancy by randomly turning lights on and off inside your home deterring potential burglars.
Wrap-up
While Matter is a huge step in the right direction for compatibility, it can’t do everything. Today, Matter v1.0 only supports basic controls. So in HomeKit, you’ll be able:
- Turn the Tapo S505 and Tapo S505D off/one
- Change brightness on the model with dimmer support
- Grouping
I am particularly interested in checking out Tapo’s Away Mode for randomly turning your light off and on. That sounds like a pretty innovative feature and something that should come to Matter and HomeKit as a future feature. You can buy both products from Amazon and directly from TP-Link.
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