Partnership makes it easier to develop Matter devices

Silicon Labs has formed a new partnership with Arduino to advance the development of Matter over Thread applications for Arduino’s developer community, comprised of 33-million users. Developed in collaboration with Silicon Labs, Arduino has released its first Matter software libraries on the xG24 Explorer Kit from Silicon Labs and the xG24-based SparkFun Thing Plus Matter – MGM240P development board. Code samples, reference designs and documentation are available in the Arduino Core for Silicon Labs Devices GitHub page.

The EFR32xG24 Explorer Kit is a small form factor development and evaluation platform based on the Silicon Labs EFR32MG24 system-on-chip (SoC). It targets fast prototyping and concept creation of IoT applications for 2.4-GHz wireless protocols including Bluetooth LE, Bluetooth mesh, Zigbee, Thread and Matter.

(Source: Arduino)

The Matter-ready SparkFun Thing Plus Matter is claimed as the first easily accessible board of its kind that combines Matter and SparkFun’s Qwiic ecosystem for easy development and prototyping of Matter-based IoT devices. The Silicon Labs MGM240P wireless module provides secure connectivity for both 802.15.4 with Mesh communication (Thread) and Bluetooth Low Energy 5.3 protocols. The module is ready for integration into Silicon Labs’ Matter IoT protocol for home automation.

Phase one of their collaboration marks a key step in lowering barriers to entry to make developing a Matter device easier and faster, according to the companies, by leveraging Arduino’s software libraries with Silicon Labs-based hardware with leading security, energy efficiency and processing power for Matter.

By integrating Silicon Labs’ hardware capabilities into Arduino’s development environment, it is expected to deliver a combination of accessibility and advanced features that will open up new advanced IoT applications and make IoT development faster and more user-friendly.

Arduino offers an open-source ecosystem of hardware, software and cloud services that are accessible to everyone from makers to professional engineers. The company’s shared software resources offer a range of pre-compiled libraries to get their devices up and running quickly. For example, Silicon Labs set up a new board flashed as a Matter device, and it was ready to be commissioned into a new network in less than two minutes. (Silicon Labs shows how to program and commission new Matter over Thread devices in a Quick Look – Matter Over Thread for Arduino video on YouTube.)

A rendering of the upcoming Arduino Nano development board (Source: Arduino)

Phase two focuses on the co-development of a new Arduino Nano development board for small form factor devices. The new dev board will incorporate the MGM240 module from Silicon Labs. The MGM240 module is designed to provide a faster time to market, improve energy efficiency and simplify security challenges.

Based on the MG24 SoC, the module provides wireless connectivity using Matter, Thread and Bluetooth protocols. Key features of the MG24 include an ARM Cortex-M33, 10-dBm output power, low current consumption and the highest PSA Certification Level 3 security. It also provides large memory of up to 1536 kB of Flash, 256 kB of RAM and 32 GPIOs to meet the capacity and expandability needed for Matter.

In addition to partnerships like the Arduino collaboration, Silicon Labs also is improving its own development tools. The company will release the next update to Simplicity Studio later this year. The next-generation Simplicity Studio 6 will allow developers to integrate their own preferred IDE, which allows developers to program their devices in their preferred environment, using their preferred language.