I’ve got an existing pure Matter/Thread installation, based on Apple Home. That uses two Apple Homepod Minis as thread border routers (TBR). All of my devices are from Eve (70 in total, all Matter).
I’m experimenting with HA, since Matter supports multiple ecosystems concurrently. My HA installation includes a “Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus V2” running as an Open Thread Border Router (OTBR). Here are three screenshots to set the stage:
Question 1: Why does OTBR offer me four opportunities to “join” the existing thread network (last screenshot)? It is already part of it, as can be seen from the first and second screenshots.
Question 2: The OTBR topology map (first screenshot) does not provide labels for any of the nodes. Is there a way to configure things so that the 3 x TBR, the 8 x routers (Eve Energy) and the endpoints (Eve Thermo and Eve Thermo Control) are labeled in that topology diagram? Note that I have not yet added most of the endpoints to HA, but I have added a number of the routers, which are named.
Note that the OTBR software is a Home Assistant add-on, and not yet widely used, so there will only be limited help from this forum. This is the only documentation I could track down for either the Join or the Topology tabs of the otbr-web interface (and it refers to buttons that don’t even exist anymore). It is surprisingly poorly documented, and vendors that use OTBR underlying their commercial offerings (like OpenWrt, GL-iNet, and Eero) have built their own web interface, or use the CLI in their docs, rather than use otbr-web.
Re Question 1, I’m not sure. I checked the Join tab of my OTBR, and I see (up to) six options — five are presumably my Apple TBRs (edit: see below, I confirmed these are Apple devices) and one is something I completely don’t recognize: on a different channel and unknown PAN ID. Could be a neighbor’s Apple TV for all I know. Sometimes I only see fewer options, indicating the scanner is timing out before it sees everything. I suspect this is just showing all the Thread devices (TBRs or otherwise) broadcasting within range during a network scan. I wonder if you run it enough times you will see all your (routing?) nodes.
Re Question 2, I suspect the answer is no. You can click a node to see additional details but unfortunately “name” does not appear to be one of them (edit: ExtAddress can be used to painstakingly determine nodes, see below). It appears to be a feature request opened just a few months ago.
Edited to add: the Hardware Address (ExtAddress in the topology) can be found in the _meshcop._udp.local mDNS announcement under the xa field. For example, the Discovery app on MacOS shows xa={length = 8, bytes = 0xHWADDRESS}
I did not realize that the OTBR is a not-yet-widely-used HA add-on. Is there a forum or group or github project where I can rub shoulders with the folks that put it together? Perhaps some feedback from me, as an “early adopter”, would be of use to them.
I think its more the WebServer GUI part of the AddOn that is not widely used (the AddOn itself is widely used). I seem to recall that the WebServer GUI comes with the source code for the OTBR and the HA developers kept it but have have discouraged its use.
One of the main reasons that I installed the OTBR was to get a view of the network topology, to help me in placing routers. Given that the the OTBR developers have already solved this “hard part”, I would have thought it was fairly easy for the HA developers to clean up the cosmetics, putting meaningful device labels onto the nodes.
I’ve now got all of my Matter/Thread devices (about 70) registered with two Matter hubs: Apple Home and with HA.
I am going to do an experiment: turn off both of my Apple Homepod Minis. These act as Thread Border Routers for the Apple Home Hub.
My question: will the HA hub continue to work (meaning: see and control the Matter/Thread devices) using the hardware OTBR which I have installed in the HA host? I am about to do the experiment, but am curious if anyone here can predict the outcome.
These act as TBRs for your network. Thread doesn’t care what hub a device is taking to, it’s just a network router.
Probably not, because it depends on your mesh. If all the devices can reach a device that can reach a device (etc) that can reach your OTBR, and assuming the OTBR is working properly, then there should be no impact losing two out of three TBRs. But if disabling some TBRs segments your mesh and isolates a device, it will have no connection to the last TBR and will go offline.
It also depends on your setup, as your HomePods might be the Matter controllers for your Apple Home, so if they are shutdown then your Apple Home will go offline. Maybe you have another Apple Home hub, like an Apple TV without Thread, in which case OTBR is all you need to connect Thread devices to your LAN where the remaining Matter controllers reside, and there will be no impact.
Thanks for your help, it’s nice to have an expert providing advice and explanation!
What I should have said is, these appear to be the only TBR that the Apple Home hub is aware of. I don’t have the impression that it is making use of the OTBR/radio on the HA server. Is that wrong?
I have approximately 10 Thread hardware repeaters in the house, set up so that any of the three TBR (including the OTBR) has a path to any of the other devices.
Indeed, when I pulled out the power on the two Apple TBR, there was a period of about an hour, during which the Thread network did self-repair, and went from non-functional to working correctly.
So, the experiment was a success. After about an hour of down time, I was able to see and control all of the devices purely with the HA hub operating via the attached OTBR/radio. The Apple Home hubs were powered down.
The HomePods do serve as the Matter hubs for Apple home, and from what I can tell, the Apple home Matter hub is unable to use any other TBR other than an Apple branded one.
I’m quite happy with this experiment, I was at first disappointed when I switched off the two Apple HomePods and the HA dashboard blanked out. But then it gradually repopulated as the Thread network rebuilt itself.
Another question: when I installed my Eve/Apple Matter hub system, there were a number of automations provided. For example, if I open a window in a room with an attached open/shut sensor, then the thermostatic radiator valve in that room shuts. Another example: I have a room with three radiators and an Eve Thermo control (wall-mounted thermostat). If I change the temperatures on any of those four devices, then the temperature setting of the other three devices change to match.
If I wanted to replace my Apple Home hub with an HA one, then I would need to program corresponding automations in HA, correct?
What would happen if I had both sets of automations running, one set on the Apple Home hub, and an equivalent set running on HA. Would there be any problems/conflict?
Final question: the majority of my end devices are battery-powered. Will running two Matter hubs, one for Apple Home and one for HA, drain the batteries faster? In other words, does each hub individually interview devices? Or do the devices broadcast info on the network, and any listeners are free to pick it up?
