Apple-Supported Aliro 1.0 Smart Lock Standard Officially Released

Which standards does my lock need again? Wi-Fi? Zigbee? Matter? Z-Wave? Thread? NFC? UWB? BT LE? BBQ? BBBQ? (The extra B stands for BYOBB.)

Umm…why isn’t this part of matter? You know, the smart home standard that everything else already supports?

$20 to $50. Push buttons. We have ours ten years on our door. The standard it uses it called physics.

Umm…why isn’t this part of matter? You know, the smart home standard that everything else already supports?

Matter is more of a transport standard, not an interface for control of items. Think of it as a parallel wifi network (that's how I do anyways) that connects them together. This is about having a uniform control system that's easier for everyone to implement, so that all the locks can be controlled from any phone app that implements the standard. It's very useful, especially for Apple as several locks don't support HomeKit right now but have their own setup...we'd get access to all of those locks in the Home app (where right now they may use their own app or maybe even not have one for the iPhone).

We just started adding electronic locks to our home, and it's a bit iffy finding ones that work well and take advantage of what HomeKit can supply. I didn't get ones that allow the door to unlock just by walking up to it, those were just coming out, but we can tap on the locks to unlock which is pretty nice. There are a couple I think I may have gone for but they didn't support HomeKit at all so they weren't an option...in the future Aliro should make that go away for companies that join it (which doesn't include Schlage or Yale so far, they don't support HomeKit well either).

Umm…why isn’t this part of matter? You know, the smart home standard that everything else already supports?

Because this is a completely different use case than what matter sets out to do. Matter is focused nearly completely on the smart home and enabling the connectivity of all of those devices to a smart home manager or automation platform, such as homekit, smart things, etc.

Aliro is the connection between mobile wallets and smart locks, and while it does cover the home market that matter serves, it also covers a lot of other markets beyond what matter does including multifamily, commercial real estate, enterprise and institutional uses, etc.

The problem Aliro solves is that lock or reader manufacturers were using either MiFare DesFire, HID Seos, or LEGIC. All of those have something in common: they solely use symmetric cryptography to secure them. In practice that meant if I provisioned a wallet pass for one manufacturer, it would only work with that vendors locks because vendors do not share their secret keys with each other. If I have both HID and Schlage on my property, I have to have people get two wallet passes to open the various doors, which is stupid.

Aliro lets you have one pass and open all the locks and readers you are authorized for with that one wallet credential as long as the vendor supports the aliro standard because it uses asymmetric cryptography to perform key exchanges.

Aliro standardized the wallet to lock/reader interface for pretty much any market you can imagine that has those devices. Matter standardizes the home smart lock to home automation platform.

Hope that helps.

Reference: I am a member of the CSA and have contributed to Aliro.

Best wishes to all who install this stuff.

Given the mish mash of support on all my other smart stuff over the years, I'm not at all interested in anything like this due to support concerns over the long term.