Hoping someone here can help me. I’ve spent hours and hours trying to get the Silicon Labs Multiprotocol Thread Border Router working on my Home Assistant Yellow. I have followed all guides I can find and the Silicon Labs Multiprotocol border router shows as my preferred router in the Thread integration. The issue is whenever I attempt to add my Onvis Plug I get an error “Thread Border Router Required”. IPv6 seems to be working fine as I can ping my HA’s IPv6 address from another device in my network. Both Zigbee and Thread are configured to run on the same channel (15). I’m at a loss. I have no clue what to try next. Anyone have any ideas?
I am unsure if your issue is similar to what I experienced recently with connecting Thread devices to HA Yellow, but installing the integration Open Thread Border Router fixed my problems.
There are several combinations of things that just don’t work for HA Thread. One of the most common scenarios that don’t work is using iOS HA companion App to commission a Thread device onto HA Thread (there is iOS code development to be done, so this doesn’t work today). If you are using Android HA Companion App, then it “should” work. If Onvis has an App (iOS or Android) that you are using, and it sees the HA Thread network, then it should work, but would not be surprised if it didn’t.
There could also be networking issues as well… but hard to tell.
This would be frustrating as I did a lot of googling and reading numerous threads and not anywhere did it anyone mention that iOS wasn’t supported. Just seems odd that HA wouldn’t at least put a note on the Threads HA site to say iOS currently not supported so people wouldn’t waste hours trying to figure out why it’s not working. The only guide I found from HA was one that told me how to setup and then to use the App to add it to my Thread network.
Do you happen to have an idea on if there’s a timeline for when the HA App can be used, or should I go and setup Apple HomeKit, deploy all my thread devices in there and then just integrate my Apple HomeKit network with HA via the Thread integration so I can manage everything in HA? My goal with buying the Yellow was so I could use HA as my one and only Thread management network, but that may not be possible I guess.
The iOS HA Companion App for Matter commissioning a device directly to HA-Thread requires more development, and last I heard, Nabu Casa is still looking for a developer to hire to do the work and this has been an open issue for several months now. For now, the best recommended way is to use an Apple based TBR (like a Homepod or ATV 4K) and iOS HA Companion App to commission the device on Apple Thread Network, and then add the device to HA Matter.
I appreciate your responses and information. Just wish that the documentation would be updated to mention that iOS is a work in progress as it would’ve saved me a bunch of time. I had to get a new Echo for my office so just got the one that acts as a thread router and I’ll see if I can get that integrated. If not I’ll look into the HomePod but given that’s $300 versus the $40 I paid for the echo hoping I can get the echo integrated lol.
Update: I’m following some discussions on Discord… progress is being made now, and their is an iOS Companion App in Beta. It will also have a way to “sync credentials” from Apple Thread network to HA.
I had a fight with Thread too and learnt a few things.
First is that the Thread Border router require Ipv6 and the fe80 network.
The fe80 network exist on all interfaces and on all networks, but it is probably different network on the interfaces. This is an IPv6 thing that makes it different from IPv4.
Unfortunately Ha really lack a lot in IPv6 configuration and management, so there are no way to express an interfaceID to the IPv6 service (another IPv6 thing).
This all means you can probably not use IPv6 with static IPs and you can not use VLANs, where the HA is on another VLAN than the Thread Border Router.
Likewise it is not possible to use a HA setup with multiple NICs.
I’m able to provision using iOS already. It started working for me after they added the option to merge your thread network with Apple Thread (same update).