Towards ECHONET Lite Web API as a RESTful API for Matter Devices

The ECHONET Lite Web API (ELWA) is a crucial part of the ECHONET 2.0 vision, offering a standardized interface at the IoT platform level for smart homes. This enables service providers to utilize home appliances from multiple vendors to implement intelligent services. However, there are limited options for commercial home appliances that support ELWA. In contrast, Matter is a new protocol that is gaining traction in consumer electronics, with a wide range of affordable products available. However, Matter primarily focuses on standardizing at the device level, leaving the IoT platform open to various ecosystems to develop. In this paper, we introduce our solution that integrates Matter into ELWA, enabling service providers supporting ELWA to work with Matter devices. This integration promotes a win-win scenario for both ELWA, which gains access to more compatible devices to attract service providers, and Matter, which avoids ecosystem lock-in issues at the IoT platform level. The proposed solution has been successfully tested with both commercial and emulated Matter devices using an ELWA server, following the latest ELWA guideline v1.1.6. This work paves the way for implementing intelligent services for smart homes, such as elderly monitoring and disaster prevention, by utilizing low-cost home appliances.