Fresh install of HAOS, with sonoff dongle flashed for OTBR does not work

[TriGiamp]

Hello everyone,
As you may understand from my lack of proper jargon, I’m new to HA universe.
I installed HAos on RPi4, I bought a Sonoff Zigbee dongle v2 which with some struggles, I managed to flash to a just OTBR firmware (little OT, I’ve found several links to a web flasher hosted by a developer and I had no luck with that, there is now an official one on Sonoff website) , no multipan or zigbee, and I wanted to connect my freshly installed Aqara U200. The connections halt on my smartphone after checking credentials for my wifi network, telling me that it cannot connect to thread border router.

First stupid question, why it checks my wifi if thread is another protocol on other frequencies on other antennas etc.?

I’ve tried to do the pairing from my android phone, regularly updated, no root, no custom rom, HA companion app full installed by google play store. Credentials synchronization seem to work from the app, when done from the troubleshooting sub-menu (altough there is really nothing to share, but at least it doesn’t throw errors).

What I’ve tried so far:

• flashing and reflashing the dongle, currently I’m on fw 2.4.5 (link), I’ve tried also 2.4.4.
• Randomly, restarting services, unplugging and plugginn the dongle and such.
• Reinstalled HA, it’s not a big issue since I don’t have nothing except a smart lamp and the Aqara.

Any suggestion? Should I send back the dongle and buy something more reliable/user-friendly/cheaper/better? I bought this because it looked a good compromise between feature, price and availability.

Thread service:

LOG of otbr component:

-----------------------------------------------------------

Add-on: OpenThread Border Router

OpenThread Border Router add-on

-----------------------------------------------------------

Add-on version: 2.13.0

You are running the latest version of this add-on.

System: Home Assistant OS 15.2 (aarch64 / raspberrypi4-64)

Home Assistant Core: 2025.5.3

Home Assistant Supervisor: 2025.05.3

-----------------------------------------------------------

Please, share the above information when looking for help

or support in, e.g., GitHub, forums or the Discord chat.

-----------------------------------------------------------

s6-rc: info: service banner successfully started

s6-rc: info: service universal-silabs-flasher: starting

[17:29:10] INFO: Flashing firmware is disabled

s6-rc: info: service universal-silabs-flasher successfully started

s6-rc: info: service otbr-agent: starting

[17:29:11] INFO: Setup OTBR firewall...

[17:29:11] INFO: Starting otbr-agent...

[NOTE]-AGENT---: Running 0.3.0-b067e5ac-dirty

[NOTE]-AGENT---: Thread version: 1.3.0

[NOTE]-AGENT---: Thread interface: wpan0

[NOTE]-AGENT---: Radio URL: spinel+hdlc+uart:///dev/ttyUSB0?uart-baudrate=460800&uart-init-deassert

[NOTE]-AGENT---: Radio URL: trel://end0

[NOTE]-ILS-----: Infra link selected: end0

49d.22:53:08.010 [C] P-SpinelDrive-: Software reset co-processor successfully

49d.22:53:08.027 [C] P-RadioSpinel-: RCP => [C] Platform------: Reset info: 0x4 (PWR)

49d.22:53:08.030 [C] P-RadioSpinel-: RCP => [C] Platform------: Extended Reset info: 0x401 (HV )

00:00:00.048 [N] RoutingManager: BR ULA prefix: fd7b:31a4:ec23::/48 (loaded)

00:00:00.048 [N] RoutingManager: Local on-link prefix: fd7e:3c54:f562:c63f::/64

00:00:00.089 [N] Mle-----------: Role disabled -> detached

00:00:00.112 [N] P-Netif-------: Changing interface state to up.

00:00:00.130 [W] P-Netif-------: Failed to process request#2: No such process

00:00:00.131 [W] P-Netif-------: Failed to process request#6: No such process

s6-rc: info: service otbr-agent successfully started

s6-rc: info: service otbr-agent-configure: starting

[17:29:12] INFO: Enabling NAT64.

00:00:00.512 [W] P-Netif-------: Failed to process request#7: No such process

Done

Done

Done

s6-rc: info: service otbr-agent-configure successfully started

s6-rc: info: service otbr-agent-rest-discovery: starting

00:00:00.836 [W] P-Daemon------: Daemon read: Connection reset by peer

[17:29:13] INFO: Successfully sent discovery information to Home Assistant.

s6-rc: info: service otbr-agent-rest-discovery successfully started

s6-rc: info: service legacy-services: starting

s6-rc: info: service legacy-services successfully started

00:00:27.049 [N] Mle-----------: RLOC16 0000 -> fffe

00:00:27.130 [N] Mle-----------: Attach attempt 1, AnyPartition reattaching with Active Dataset

00:00:33.630 [N] RouterTable---: Allocate router id 0

00:00:33.631 [N] Mle-----------: RLOC16 fffe -> 0000

00:00:33.634 [N] Mle-----------: Role detached -> leader

00:00:33.634 [N] Mle-----------: Partition ID 0x4bcd7d1b

[NOTE]-BBA-----: BackboneAgent: Backbone Router becomes Primary!

00:00:38.594 [W] DuaManager----: Failed to perform next registration: NotFound

Thank you all in advance.

[Ash.xiao]

Have you tried adding the Aqara U200 using Matter integration?

[TriGiamp]

Yes, that’s the issue. It does not connect. My limited troubleshooting abilities brought me to check more on the Sonoff/RPi part of the system, but if you have suggestion I’ll be happy to try.

[TriGiamp]

Maybe I should have done a simple question before starting. If the sonoff dongle is correctly flashed and otbr plugin is correctly configured should I see something here? (Sorry for the non english language in the screenshot)

[TriGiamp]

And on another attempt to get something I got another Sonoff Zigbee dongle, just to be sure that it wasn’t something on the hw. Same result also with a new dongle. I am definitely missing something here.

[francisp (Francis)]

3 parts are needed

1 add-on

2 integrations:

[TriGiamp]

Thank you. All of those are installed and apparently configured (after add-on installation, otbr integrations was already there and thread was discovered and suggested). But I noticed one weird thing during today’s attempts to pair the smartlock. The error message I get on the smartphone always refers to ha-thread-864b. But that’s not my thread network, or at least not now. I’ve restored thread network a couple of times and made the new one my favourite each time. Currently this is the configuration page of thread integration:

I’m more confused than before…

[TriGiamp]

Digging into the forum I found this interesting discussion, where it is said that it not so easy to update thread credentials stored into a phone, unless one is willing to sacrifice the stability of its google apps deleting google play services data. Today I don’t have time to do that, but I’m interested in understanding if there are plans to not depend at all on google for thread and matter over thread devices. To me, this is one major issue that stops me from buying any other thread device.

[GuiPoM]

There is no need of having a plan, as you do not need a phone to commission your Thread devices, as you can do so directly from the Home Assistant (HA) Matter UI.
I even released a video (in French) demonstrating this process, and since then, I’ve had no issues adding Thread devices. It’s much easier and more reliable this way.

[TriGiamp]

I wish I knew it before. Link please, at least I won’t get mad next time.
I just cleared the google play services data and I managed to finally pair the lock with HA.

[GuiPoM]

It’s important to remember that this is a public forum, and most if not all people here are volunteers trying to help each other out. We’re not expected to cope with individual frustrations or personal issues.

Being kind and patient goes a long way in these spaces. A polite tone makes it much easier for people to understand your problem and want to assist you.

I will not link one of my own Youtube video as I have no idea if this is allowed or not on this forum. And I do not want to promote myself. But if you really need it, a quick search on Youtube with my pseudo, thread, commissionning, and you will have it.

[TriGiamp]

I cannot see the option to flag one of my previous reply as the answer. If a moderator can mark this as the answer and close the thread it would be fantastic.

After all the hardware troubleshooting on which I don’t have a complete understanding to be honest, I arrived to the point where I had a Sonoff Zigbee dongle v2 correctly configured and plugged into my Rpi4 running HA.

As explicitly told by the user interface of HA, the official documentation on matter integration and repeated in many configuration guides and resources here and elsewhere I used my android smartphone to do the pairing.When trying to pair the matter over thread device with my android smartphone, I got always the same error message: “Impossibile connettersi alla rete thread ha-thread-864b” (Sorry for the Italian, instead of translating it without the exact wording used in English, I think it’s better to leave it like this to help other people searching for the exact words), which was not the name of the thread network running on HA, so I understood that at that point the issue was related with the phone.
Finally, from what I read here, I found that the only way to reset the credentials on the phone was to delete google play services data and it worked. Now the Aqara U200 has been connected to HA running on Rpi 4 with Sonoff dongle for several days without issues. I hope Aqara updates it to give even more informations and options.