Tutorial: Build an ACK-based Matter Device

In this tutorial, you build a Matter-enabled smart light that connects to Alexa and other Matter-enabled assistants. The ACK SDK for Matter includes a sample app that enables users to control a light with voice and the Alexa app. The app supports turning the light on and off and changing the color and brightness.

Matter-enabled Amazon Echo devices can connect and control Matter smart home devices seamlessly. With the Alexa app, a customer can add a Matter device to their compatible Echo. The Echo acts as the Matter administrator to discover and connect Matter devices to Alexa locally.

When a user asks Alexa to control a device, Alexa converts the user utterance into a directive and sends it to the Matter-enabled Echo device. The Echo converts the directive to a Matter command and sends it to your device. The app on your device processes the command, performs the requested action, and then sends a response to the Echo indicating success or failure of the request. The response includes the current state of the device. The Echo converts the Matter response to an Alexa response.

For details about ACK-based devices, see What is the Alexa Connect Kit?.

Follow these instructions to build and to load the sample app onto the development board, connect the board to a Matter-enabled Echo, and test device control with Alexa.

Prerequisites

Before you start, make sure that you have the following items:

  • An Amazon developer account. You can use an existing Amazon account to sign in, or you can create a new Amazon developer account. The account is free.

  • Sign up for an Amazon Web Services (AWS) account. The AWS account gives you access to resources as part of the free tier of services.

  • To access the ACK SDK for Matter, contact Amazon about your project. Amazon assigns an ACK support engineer to your project who gives you access to the ACK SDK for Matter, and assigns a test Matter Vendor ID (VID) and Matter Product ID (PID) for the sample light prototype.

  • To build the sample light, purchase the ESP32-C3-DevKitM-1U board. You connect the USB port on the development kit to your computer to download the sample app to the board.

  • To test the device, you need a Matter-enabled Echo device and the Amazon Alexa app on your mobile device. For instructions about how to download the Alexa app, see Download the Alexa app. Make sure that you sign in to the Alexa app on your mobile device with the same credentials as your Amazon developer account.

Steps to build an ACK-based Matter device

To build an ACK-based Matter light prototype, complete the following steps.

Step 1:
Build the Sample App
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Step 2:
Provision the Device
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Step 3:
Test the Device

Other learning resources

This tutorial focuses on a simple ACK-based Matter device. Alexa supports many types of smart home devices. For details, see What can you build with ACK?

For more details about building ACK-enabled devices that support the Matter protocol, see Alexa Connect Kit SDK for Matter Development Guidelines.

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