Hello!
I recently bought two of the cheap Ikea matter devices, the door/window sensor and the thermometer. So far I have been year-long zigbee enjoyer, but I wanted to try out the new best thing for my self.
I have read up instructions on how to flash my spare esp32c6 with software that allows it to act like a open thread border router and installed the open thread app into home assistant, on the second flash attempt it worked and adopted the esp as a router.
After that I saw it in the thread menu and selected it as my preferred network, lastly I went into the companion app on my Samsung s26 and synced the credentials into it.
Now I should be set-up…
First I tried the door/window sensor, I inputted the id of the device, it searched, connected to it, generated matter credentials and got stuck at “checking network connectivity”… Then timeouts..
Methods I have tried after reading similar forum entries:
Check and enable ipv6 in home assistant
Enable ipv6 on the vlan that home assistant is on
Create a WiFi network on said vlan and connect directly with my phone to it
Resetting the router and re-syncing credentials
Turning off open thread firewall
Trying a different phone (Samsung S10 lite)
Clearing play services cache and data
Putting the border router into another channel which has the least util according to my WiFi routers analysis
I am honestly stumped and now wasted more than 5 hours into this…
Could this be a border router issue and I should just get a ready-made one instead?
Is it an IKEA matter devices issue in general..?
Or something else entirely?
I appreciate any help with this
I am honestly so close to sending all this back and sticking with zigbee… The parking is easy and does not require a phone after all…
I use a OTBR add-on with a USB dongle, but my experience with trying to add some of the (mostly IKEA) devices has been exactly the same. Ultimately I got a bluetooth dongle for my HA machine and started adding devices that way. It’s not completely flawless (adding more than 2 in a row without rebooting the OTBR never worked for me) but it works far more reliably than the phones.
I have never had any luck with an Android phone. iPhone worked some of the times.
I had the same problems with mine tried all the same things as you but the last thing I did was to hard reboot my HA server eg: (pull the plug).
After that it all worked fine.
Oooh I already have a Bluetooth dongle in my home assistant machine, can you tell me more on how to pair it without a phone?
I didn’t seem to have come across anything yet. So far it was always phone related
I use ZBT-2 router and about 15 Ikea devices, got some dificulties to add some of them, but not such strong. I have a spare ESP32 DevKitC, yiu made me curious to experiment.
In order to do that you have to enable the ‘BLE proxy’ setting of the Matter server (Apps → Matter Server → Configuration → Options, you might have to toggle ‘show unused options’ first).
You also need to add the bluetooth integration to HA (Integrations → add integrations → Bluetooth) if you haven’t already.
Once the Matter server is up and running again go to it’s web UI (Settings → App → Matter Server → Open Web UI) and than click ‘Commission node’. If you have not supplied Thread credentials to the Matter server before it will ask you for it. You need the ‘Active dataset TLVs’. They generally look like a long line: 0e080000000000050000000300000f4a0300001535060004001fffe00208a2abc......11ab82358e01a559a183a770c0402a0f7f8 (shortened a bit here) - you need to get it off your Border Router.
(for those using OTBR - you navigate to the Thread integratio and click the little ‘i’ button).
One you copy that in the Matter server will remember it for future use.
You can watch the commissioning process in the logs of the Matter Server. It does take a while to go through all the stages.
you are a lifesaver btw!
i actually tried your exact steps a few hours ago (though with a bit older guide) and it worked INSTANTLY! It only took around 30 seconds to onboard each device
I wholeheartedly prefer this method over any phone method, why is this not the direct alternative in the matter / thread docs in home assistant (maybe there is and I am just blind )
After everything was confirmed to be working with the esp32c6, i actually found an unused Sonoff Dongle E which i flashed with their open thread firmware and switched the esp32c6 out with the new dongle, it worked perfectly after a quick restart of the Open Thread app.
I have this exact issue. I’m not using my Skyconnect in Thread mode right now. But I’m planning on removing the 3 things on that Zigbee setup to free up some spectrum and see if that helps.
However, my issue is even more bizarre. I’m using my Google Nest Hubs as routers, and was able to add one IKEA device after months of occasionally trying. But it keeps going offline. According to Matter Server, both routers can see it with good signal, but neither Google Home nor HA show it online.
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