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.