Cannot add an ULTRALOQ Bolt F Matter device to Home Assistant

[Taipan]

I have just purchased and physically installed my first Matter over Thread device - an ULTRALOQ “Bolt F Matter” door lock. The lock only supports Bluetooth and Thread - it does not have any WiFi capability.

I have also installed a Home Assistant Connect ZBT-1 dongle on the HA server. And I have confirmed that it is running OpenThread RCP 2.4.4.0.

I have the Matter, the Thread and the Open Thread Border Router Integrations installed and configured.

I have followed the instructions here " To add a new device using the Android Companion app" and the process fails with the message “Can’t find device” …

I notice that in the screen titled “Get ready for setup”, it says in part to “Connect your phone to your main 2.4 GHz network, if available. Most Matter-enabled devices can’t connect to a 5GHz network yet.” But, I can’t see how that is relevant in this case as I am connecting to the lock via Bluetooth and the lock doesn’t support WiFi of any flavour …

My Samsung Android phone (an S22) defaults to 5Ghz and cannot be manually changed. I can, with a lot of mucking around, disable the 5Ghz band on my WiFi, but I cannot see how the WiFi band can be relevant in this setup process?

As both Matter and Thread are all new to me, I would welcome some advice or suggestions as to why HA cannot find the device, or what log files I should inspect …

[Taipan]

I finally managed to get the ULTRALOQ Bolt F Matter added as a device to Home Assistant. I did 2 things, but I don’t know which one actually solved the problem.

I configured my WiFi 3-node Mesh setup to work only on 2.4 Ghz and I factory reset the ULTRALOQ Bolt F Matter lock. After making those 2 changes, the “Add Matter device” process in the Home Assistant Companion app completed successfully.

I still can’t see how restricting my WiFi to just 2.4 Ghz contributed to this outcome, as this device (lock) doesn’t use WiFi, to the best of my knowledge.

Anyway, it is working as intended, now …