Smart home giants, including Apple, are joining forces to develop a standard for accessory development that aims to increase reliability, compatibility, and security.

Project Connected Home over IP is an open-source project with the ultimate goal of simplifying accessory development for manufacturers and reducing compatibility confusion for consumers.

The project aims to make it easier for device manufacturers to build devices that are compatible with smart home and voice services such as Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Google’s Assistant, and others.

As the name suggests, the open-source project will use IP (internet protocol) as its foundation and will incorporate technologies from contributors with WiFi, Thread, and Bluetooth Low Energy being the initial focus with other standards being added later.

What does this mean for my HomeKit home?

The new standard will not affect any of your current accessories as HomeKit will maintain support for HomeKit Accessory Protocol.

Though it is rather hard to say at this point, this could potentially mean that we see a flood of HomeKit-compatible gear hit the market. More importantly though, Apple’s open-sourcing of their HomeKit ADK will definitely ease the development process for manufacturers considering HomeKit implementationn.