My favorite robot vacuum now supports the material

This enables voice control and smart home integration, features that have been missing from the robot since its launch. You can now set up automations like “Run Matic when everyone leaves the house,” “Dock the robot when I get home,” or “Stop Matic when the door opens.”

The Matter integration is not yet approved and doesn’t work with all platforms, but it’s a good start. However, since it’s still unofficial, there are some rough edges.

The company notes in A Reddit post That while Google Home and Home Assistant integration are “solid experiences,” Apple Home and Siri still “feel clunky.” There’s no Alexa support yet, but Matic says that will come with full certification.

Matic is a US based robotic vacuum manufacturer founded by Two former Google Nest engineers. Its only product, Maticit stands out in the sea of ​​robot vacuums for a few reasons: it rarely gets stuck, it cleans well, it’s cute, but, annoyingly, it can’t reach under your bed. The biggest advantage for many people is that Matic can be run entirely locally – no internet connection required to clean your floors. All processing and mapping are done on the device.

This is one of the reasons it took the company so long to integrate smart home control. Matter allows for complete local control, but is not as easy to implement as connecting to cloud APIs, as most other integrations require.

According to A Reddit post from Matic“, “Building it the right way took longer than we wanted, especially since everything about Matic runs on the device, locally and privately. It wasn’t easy to make this interact well with external ecosystems without giving away what makes Matic special.” The company also says that only basic data, like room names and operating status, is shared with smart home platforms, and no maps or personal information.

My experience so far has been positive. Setup was quick; You just tapped the new “Connect to Smart Home App” option in the Matic app settings, then selected the “Enter pairing mode” prompt.

The app directed me to open the Apple Home or Google Home app and set up a new device. I went with Apple, using its setup flow to scan the Matter setup icon displayed on the little vacuum’s screen. It worked the first time, and I added the vacuum to Apple Home, where I can start, stop, and pause the cleaning process, direct it to the vacuum or mop, and enable automations like “When the last person leaves, start Matic.” I’m also able to control the robot by voice, using Siri to tell it to start, stop and pause.

I particularly like the audio upgrade as a way to control Matic. When I first started testing the bot, the only way to start it off schedule was through the app. Since then, they’ve enabled the button on the robot to start a full cleaning, but voice control adds another option. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to get it to respond to a voice command to clean a specific room yet; This should be some of the “hard” stuff Matic’s team is still working on.

I’ve been a big fan of Matic even without smart home support or voice control, and this update makes it even easier to use — and the fact that everything still works natively is a huge win.