Eve Motion won’t connect to my Home Assistant Thread network (keeps trying to join old Aqara Thread)

[andreasbiedermannch]

Hi everyone

I’m struggling to get my Eve Motion (Thread) sensor to connect to my Home Assistant Thread network and would really appreciate some advice.

My setup

• Home Assistant Green
• Thread border router: Connect ZBT-1
• Device: Eve Motion (Thread version)

The problem

This Eve Motion was previously paired with an Aqara Thread network (“AqaraHome-ad96”), which no longer exists.
Even after several factory resets, it keeps trying to rejoin that old network instead of pairing with my Home Assistant Thread network.

What I’ve tried so far

• Factory reset of the Eve Motion
  (holding the reset button inside the battery compartment for ~10 s → 5× red LED flashes)
• Restarted Home Assistant and the Thread border router
• Removed and re-added the device several times in the old Aqara setup
• Always get the same error message in the HA app:

“Cannot connect to the Thread network ‘AqaraHome-ad96’.”

Question

**How can I completely erase the old Thread credentials from the Eve Motion so it joins my Home Assistant Thread network?

Thanks a lot for any tips or similar experiences!
— Andreas

[wmaker (Tommy Long)]

Most likely you are using an iOS or Android App (such as the HA Companion App) and these Apps use the iOS/Android’s underlying Thread framework to manage Thread credentials. These frameworks pretty much stick with the first Thread credentials they ever learned, so in your case they are sticking with the Aqara Thread credentials. Are you using an App, and which one (iOS or Android)?

[andreasbiedermannch]

Hi @Wmaker

Thanks a lot for your reply!

I’m using the Home Assistant app on Android, and back then I had also set up the Aqara Thread network via the Aqara app on Android.

Do you happen to know if there’s a way (on Android) to switch or remove the old Thread network that the Eve Motion is still trying to connect to?
I suspect that some cached Thread credentials might still be stored somewhere in the system of the Eve Motion sensor.

Appreciate any hints you might have
— Andreas

[wmaker (Tommy Long)]

@andreasbiedermannch

Do you happen to know if there’s a way (on Android) to switch or remove the old Thread network that the Eve Motion is still trying to connect to?

There are many threads on this topic, here is one of mine:

Sync Thread credentials failed

Unfortunately this is a known problem. HA Companion App uses the Android framework for commissioning a device and the Android framework stores and uses the very first Thread network dataset it finds out about, and will only use that dataset. In your case, it looks like it has stored an eero-thread dataset. The only way to remove it is to clear out the Google Play (See here) . Just be aware that if you have anything else stored in the Google play, then it too will be cleared out. If you are s…

@andreasbiedermannch

I suspect that some cached Thread credentials might still be stored somewhere in the system of the Eve Motion sensor.

Yes you will probably have to factory reset the Eve motion sensor.

[andreasbiedermannch]

Quick update – issue solved!

Big thanks to @wmaker for pointing me in the right direction

In the end, it wasn’t a problem with the Eve Motion or Matter itself, but rather with my Android phone / Google Play Services framework.

Here’s what I did to fix it:

1. On my Android phone, I went to Settings → Apps → Google Play Services → Storage → Manage space → Clear all data.
   → This completely reset the cached Thread network data.
2. After that, my Home Assistant Thread network was finally recognized correctly.
3. To be safe, I also performed a factory reset on the Eve Motion sensor (press and hold the reset button inside the battery compartment for ~10 seconds until 5× red LED flashes).
4. I then had to reinstall the Home Assistant app, because after clearing the Play Services data, adding new Matter devices didn’t work until reinstalling.

After these steps, everything worked flawlessly — the Eve Motion immediately joined the correct Thread network.

Thanks again for the help and for the insight that the issue wasn’t with the device, but with the smartphone/framework itself.