ESP32-C6 has just come out in its final mass-produced version with calibrated ADC, so is there any chance that ESPHome will sometime in the near future start to support Thread on these chips?
There’s a good thread on the topic on the ESPHome Discord.
Search for “ESP32-C6” under the off-topic channel if that link is no good.
I had a skim and from what I could summise, there is little chance of official ESPHome support in the near future, but some individuals are making some good progress.
Thanks for the links.
Looks like the GitHub link is mainly for getting the ESP32-C6 to run with WiFi as the other ESP-chips.
I was hoping a bit on a Thread solution, but I will just see what I can mix up myself over the summer.
I tried some GitHib repositories, which made it possible to work as a Matter device, but the code part needed for the sensor cause problems and it is currently put on pause.
I will probably not get to look at it before July, so the Zerocode might be faster.
The new ESPHome major release, 2025.6.0, has now support for OpenThread. This means that ESPHome devices based on ESP32-C6 and -H2 can now communicate using Thread.
I flashed an esp32-h2 dev board yesterday and it immediately joined my Apple Thread mesh with no issues. This was way easier than the Matter-over-Thread ZeroCode image I also tried, which refused to join the Matter controller (DCL issue, I believe). ESPHome for the win.
I suspect, but can’t be sure, that this is a routing (repeater) node, since it is line powered? (unfortunately I don’t have another device to test this with). If so, this is a $5 mesh extender. [see edit below]
Traceroute from my Mac Mini shows it’s going through one of the HomePods mini, as expected:
peter@macos % traceroute6 esphome-thread-repeater.local
traceroute6 to esphome-thread-repeater.local (fd83:e66f:f1f9:0:6bab:9e56:1541:e6d0) from fdc4:4aab:e77f:e44c:1c53:e1b9:c62a:83dd, 64 hops max, 28 byte packets
1 fdc4:4aab:e77f:e44c:4cf:2809:9c06:5768 57.597 ms 6.986 ms 4.857 ms
2 fd83:e66f:f1f9:0:6bab:9e56:1541:e6d0 92.205 ms 28.495 ms 27.904 ms
Edited to add: This post confirms esphome can be a router/repeater node.