tl;dr: What are the steps/requirements to properly enable ZBdongle-E multi-protocol (Matter/Thread & Zigbee) in HA?
I’ve had a functional Zigbee network using the Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus-E ( EFR32MG21) for several months now, albeit with only one device (Aquara Temp/Humidity sensor). Recently, I purchased my first matter-enabled device (Eve Energy Plug) and figured I’d enable the dongle to support Matter/Thread.
I followed this guide, but now I’m having two issues:
- My Aquara device is no longer available in ZHA, and the integration can no longer find it after I removed it and tried to re-add the device.
- When I try to add the Eve Energy Plug I receive an error “Thread Border Router Required”.
Config information and logs:
-
Silicon Labs Multiprocol Add-on
There is a potential port conflict with 8080, as other self-hosted services use this port. However, it is listed as a “disabled” port…do I need to enable it (and choose a different port value)? If so, do I need to change settings in any of the other integrations (matter, thread, ZHA) accordingly? -
Open Thread Border Router Add-on, Matter Add-on, and Matter Integration are all configured with defaults (and don’t really have configurable settings as far as I can tell)
Here is the output when I enter the url for the Matter server websocket. I’ve seen other posts comment that the thread_credentials_set should be true, but I’m not sure what I need to do in order to change this, nor if it’s truly relevant.
{
"fabric_id": 2,
"compressed_fabric_id": 9180593547347124107,
"schema_version": 4,
"min_supported_schema_version": 2,
"sdk_version": "2023.10.2",
"wifi_credentials_set": false,
"thread_credentials_set": false
}
- Thread Integration
- I confirmed that this integration and ZHA are both using the same channel (25)
- I’ve tried enabling the “Use router for Android + iOS credentials” field, but it hasn’t seemed to make a difference and I’m not sure what exactly it does. It is currently disabled.
- Zigbee ZHA Integration
- Initially, when I re-create my ZHA network after installing the Silicon Labs Multiprocol Add-on (as shown in the smarthomescene guide), it discovers and links with my Aquara sensor. However, the sensor goes offline within a few minutes. I removed it, planning to re-add it, but now the Zigbee network does not find it and I cannot re-add it.
Since Matter is an ipv6 network, I wasn’t sure if I needed to enable ipv6 support on my router, in HA, and in my nginx reverse proxy config. Details for the new configs are below, but these settings did not fix my issue.
- Router Settings
- NGINX Config
server {
listen 443 ssl http2;
listen [::]:443 ssl http2;
server_name <mydomain>.duckdns.org;
include /config/nginx/ssl.conf;
proxy_buffering off;
location / {
include /config/nginx/proxy.conf;
include /config/nginx/resolver.conf;
proxy_pass http://<ha host IP>:8123$request_uri;
}
location ~ ^/(api|local|media)/ {
include /config/nginx/proxy.conf;
include /config/nginx/resolver.conf;
proxy_pass http://<ha host IP>:8123$request_uri;
}
}
- HA Network Settings
Both IPv4 & IPv6 are set to “automatic” in HA. My network adapter is set to “Auto Configure”, and seems to be detecting both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses according to this screenshot:
http:
use_x_forwarded_for: true
trusted_proxies:
- 192.168.1.38 #location of NGINX proxy host
ip_ban_enabled: true
login_attempts_threshold: 100
Other details:
- The Eve Energy plug is one that came in a box with a matter sticker. My understanding is that it should work ‘out-of-the-box’ with matter (other variations of their plugs require a software update using the Eve app). To confirm this, I tried to add it to the Eve iOS app, however, I don’t have a Homekit Hub so this didn’t work either.
- I am not using any VLANs, etc.
- For the time being, all of my devices are on the same network (no custom IOT or guest networks)