I’ve been running “Thread + OTBR running on device” mode on an SLZB-MR5U for a while and it works great locally, but I’ve hit a wall with remote access on devices that need it (my case: a Nuki lock with Remote Access via Thread). Nuki requires the border router to support NAT64 so the Thread device gets internet access, and right now this mode doesn’t have that — only the OTBR add-on running in Home Assistant does.
I get that “classic” NAT64 (tayga + bind9) is a Linux thing and can’t just be dropped into the ESP32-S3 firmware as-is. But OpenThread has its own native NAT64 translator built for exactly this kind of embedded hardware without Linux underneath (it’s what HomePod mini or Nest Hub use), so it shouldn’t be a chip power issue, just a matter of someone implementing it in the firmware. SMHUB (your Linux-based hub) already has NAT64, so I know the team has the know-how — it’d just be about porting it to what runs on the SLZB itself.
Is this on the radar at all? With this, on-device OTBR would go from “great for local-only devices” to an actual replacement for the HA add-on even for stuff that needs internet. If there’s some technical reason it’s not doable (RAM, flash, whatever) I’d like to know that too.