I’m waiting for this, because i have a few matter and thread devices i want to use.
My Idea: Using the Amazon Echo 4gen as the Matter / Thread Border Router Device and get the connected devices to my home assistant installation within the same network of the echo.
At the moment, one matter device (a eve energy device) is connected with my echo and works (just since yesterday, before i was not able to connect the eve device over the matter code to my Echo). With other devices which can only “speak” thread but not matter i probably have to wait, i think they will be supported by the echo using the thread border router functionallity, but maybe this takes a few days until the echo receives the needed update for this new feature…
BUT: I expected that i should be able to use this eve energy device which is connected with matter to my echo inside home assistant - but i have no idea how :/… Any advices for this maybe? Do i need a special addon to find and use this matter device? Or a addon to connect my home installation with my echo?
Absolutly lost, maybe someone can help :/…
Kind regards and thanks in advance for any help
You might find the documentation and discussions over at the Tasmota web site and github perhaps a bit more current and fleshed out. I posted the links in a recent post I made on creating Matter devices with Tasmota. It’s not Home Assistant focused, but that should not ‘Matter’ correct? Good hunting!
Tasmota works with Matter over Wifi, it does not support Thread. The major problem I have (and I believe the OP) is that there doesn’t appear to be any way to access the Echo’s Thread border router through Home Assistant.
In my own case, I can connect Nanoleaf Essentials A19 bulbs to the Echo via Thread/Matter, but I cannot find a way to then access them through HA.
I think I can rephrase the question simply - How do we connect the Alexa Echo v4 Thread border router to HA? When I try to add the Echo as a TBR, I get a prompt asking me to enter the URL of the TBR REST API… and there is no documentation on how to find that (at least none that is understandable).
Edit - granted, this may be more of a problem with Amazon’s implementation of Thread & Matter than HA…
Yes, I see now what you are trying to work on. I have two devices on the todo shelf to learn about Thread based devices, but of course I got side tracked. Especially when this Tasmota ‘border router’ to other Tasmota devices popped up.
I still think the Tasmota Matter discussions is a good stop for current knowledge, while not doing Thread, there are folks sharing a lot of experience with Matter on the ‘big 3’.
Far from your happy place I know, however have you thought of bringing up a Matter Border router within the Home Assistant universe and then putting your NanoLeaf’s on both the Amazon and Home Assistant ‘fabric’ in parallel? As I am learning, Thread devices are supposed to be able to join up to five separate “Matters”. Again, not ideal, however if it works for the NanoLeaf devices, you should be able to control them from both Alexa and HA and see their status on both regardless of where changes to the NanoLeaf’s where done. Good hunting!
I think I’ve found the answer to the OP’s question (and mine). Or at least an answer, until someone tells me I’m wrong (which would be great).
I can use the Echo TBR with Alexa. I can see its TBR with HA on my PC, and with apps on my phone (Android) and iPad. But at least as of right now, it will not allow either HA or any of the apps to connect via its TBR to send commands to anything connected to that network.
It appears that the Echo v4 will only onboard devices to work with Alexa, and only works to send commands from Alexa to the devices in its Thread network - so I can only access the connected bulbs through Alexa. I can’t even see them in HA without a separate TBR that HA can access.
I’ve got a separate Zigbee/Thread dongle on its way for my HA server, and I think that Amazon is going to get a return of one v4 Echo, and I can’t wait until I can get voice support working in HA so I can sh*tcan the rest of my Alexa devices.
Just a clarification question, when the device is connected to Alexa/Echo Thread Network, did you use the HA Android companion App to try and add this same device as a Matter device, and if so did you get some kind of error message?
Also, just another thing to try out of curiosity, is I have heard of people who add a Homekit Thread device to Homekit, and then use the Home App to remove the device, they have found the device still remains connected to the Thread Network (and reachable by HA), and somehow are then able to add it as a HA Matter device. Maybe try the same by removing the device from Alexa App and then try HA companion app adding it as an HA Matter device, just to see if it works.
I have just bought a bunch of Nanoleaf bulbs too, and can’t even get them to pair with my Echo Gen 4. I can see the border router function is enabled in the echo as it is showing in HA thread as ‘other netwrorks’ - but can’t see any way to set it as a preferred network’, and can find zero documentation or explanation as to how to add it in HA using the REST API URL method.
I reached out to Nanoleaf support, but just got their canned response on how to set it up, which is not working no matter how many times I repeat the process, reset devices, etc.
This is beginning to drive me nuts and making me question both my sanity and my technical abilities
Just connected a nanoleaf bulb to echo 4th gen via selecting matter. No issues!
My AMz thread network is detected in HA but this bulb is not showing up? Running HA on VM Windows11. Any advise, do i need to buy a sky connect like donge!
Once you have added your NanoLeaf bulb as a Matter device to an ecosystem (Amazon/Echo) it is now part of that ecosystem. Matter does support having a device being added to additional ecosystems, in this case Home Assistant. To do this, the Amazon/Echo system has to have a way of opening up a commissioning window (stays open on the order of a few minutes) for the NanoLeaf bulb that is in its ecosystem. Some systems call this multi-Admin and you’ll have to look around to see if Amazon/Echo supports this and how to activate it. If you are able to do open a commissioning window for the NanoLeaf bulb, then while the window is open, you should (in theory) be able to add it as a Matter Device to HA.
Also, you should not have to buy a SkyConnect. Any Thread Network with a TBR will make devices on its Thread network available using IPv6 to other entities like HA which lives outside of the Thread network
I switched from a Google Nest Wifi Pro 6E mesh to an Eero 6+ mesh and my Eve Matter/Thread devices were no longer available in Home Assistant. I re-onboarded the devices to the Eero Thread fabric using the Alexa app on my phone, then used a sharing code from the Alexa app to add the devices to the Home Assistant app.
The devices are now accessible to Home Assistant. Unfortunately, for one of them, the entities are duplicated. This doesn’t seem to happen if you delete the existing Matter devices (from the old fabric) from Home Assistant before re-adding them.
I have a similar setup, eero 6+ and aqara p2 sensors. The aqara door sensors are working in alexa app, and i generated the share code, but where the heck do you put it in within HomeAssistant?
I actually can’t remember, now, sorry! I ended up adding the devices directly to Home Assistant rather than via the Alexa App. I only have one Thread network, now, that runs on the Eero 6+ mesh, but I shared the Thread credentials (via the TLV provided by the Eero app) with Home Assistant. Then, I use the Home Assistant companion app on my Google Pixel 7 Pro to add devices (it onboards them to a dedicated Matter fabric over Wi-Fi/TBRs, first, before handing over to Home Assistant to onboard them there, after which, I delete the device from the dedicated/temporary Matter fabric that my phone uses for onboarding). If I need to control any of the devices through Alexa, I just expose them to Alexa from Home Assistant. That way, Home Assistant is ultimately in charge of everything.
Maybe try the HA Companion App… UI->Devices->Add Matter Device, and when it pops up the camera for scanning, instead of scanning QR code, pick “More options”, and hopefully a place to paste the share code.
Good hunting!