Hello, I am what most will call a noob when it comes to Home Assistant… For a several months I have been using Home Assistant with OREiN Matter Smart Light Bulbs and was doing good for a while. Then randomly out of the 6 bulbs they would be unavailable. One day it would a few and the maybe a few days it would be another few. I contacted their support and they stated that they work best with their app and that Home Assistant was still experimental. While I waited for their support I had ordered another Skyconnect thinking that maybe the first one may be already failing… I switched it and it still was doing the same thing… So I decided to get new bulbs ( Nanoleaf Essentials Smart LED Color-Changing Light Bulb (60W)) & a new dongle ( SONOFF Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus-E). I was trying to follow this video that I found on youtube (https://youtu.be/1iBHRvL8jiY?feature=shared). Well lets just say that didn’t work out either following that video. I had the dongle up and running than I got the channel mismatch that I have read a few times and since I don’t know how to fix it through the configuration file, I tried to a few thing other things and now the dongle is not working no matter the resets or firmware I try. So I went back to the Skyconnect and after a little grief I got all 7 Nanoleaf bulbs and 1 Orein Bulb working on top of the 7 Zigbee devices. They have been working since Sunday until this morning when ALL the Matter devices became Unavailable and few zigbee devices… I went around turned off and then back on the bulbs, shut down Home Assistant, and then power it back up. They all are working now including the few Zigbee devices… If anyone can please help, it will be definitely appreciated. I don’t know what the hell is going on. I’m sending back the dongle -e and will order a new one since it clearly looks to be defecitved (Failed to probe error) and order may be two Aqara Smart Hub M2. Maybe its just too much for the skyconnect to handle or something… Again I need help.
Firstly always use an USB extension cord to avoid electric noise from the HA machine.
Secondly you probably guessed right in trying to change the channel. WiFi, Bluetooth, Zigbee and Thread all use the same frequency spectrum and the default selected channel might be the most used one.
I know it can be a fight to get it to change channels on the multi-protocol setup, because it will have to be done for both Zigbee and Thread, but once you succeed it will probably run better.
Here is a map over the WiFi and Zigbee frequencies.
I’m using the USB extension cord for sure… The computer I switched it to from my VM in Unraid is a KAMRUI Mini PC Desktop Intel 12th Gen Alder Lake N100 (Amazon.com). After setting up the Skyconnect in Home Assistant and after a reboot it told me the channels for the thread & Zigbee were on two different channels and to put them both on the same channels which is currently channel 20. The router that I’m using is from my ISP (Spectrum). It’s a WIFI 6E Router (I just replaced their WIFI 6 router (Cause I was having issues with my printer and mobile devices))… I have a longer USB extension cord I can use, but I will need to order another shelf for the server rack since router is on the left and the Skyconnect is on the right side of the rack. The rack is W.I.P. I guess one thing I also do is find out what channels the router is using… I wish Spectrum gave me more access to the router… But I was also thinking since I have to two Skyconnects, I may flash one for Zigbee and the other to Thread. I just worried that I MAY have to redo all the Matter and Zigbee devices all over again which my family is sick of me doing…
I have to say that separating the Zigbee and Matter (Thread) seems like a good idea.
You can move the multi-protocol channels on the Skyconnect, but you have to do all kinds of jumps to make it happen. I had to shutdown the addons to make changes, then start them up again and restart the host and what order and combination this has to be done in I do not remember.
Only issue with 2 Skyconnects is telling them apart, since only having one protocol on each makes them fail if they get switched around.
The extension cables that comes wit the Skyconnects should be fine, but if you are having your server in a rack, then make sure that they are free of the metal casing, because that will block the signals for sure.
I’m afraid that you have been suffering a bit with making assumptions.
- The matter support in Home Assistant is reasonably stable, but it still very much beta.
- Multiprotocol is advised against as it has major stability issues.
- Of all the bulbs to go for - Nanoleaf, was frankly (for the time being) the absolute worst choice.
I’m in the Nanoleaf discord where we have been beta testing the firmware, the stable firmware has a tendency to crash the bulb - resulting in them randomly turning on for no reason. The beta firmware often the bulb drops off the network for no reason at all and just refuses to reconnect without a factory reset.
The current situation is that Nanoleaf launched with v1 matter firmware which had some stability issues, and the beta was based on matter 1.1, but the library is horrific and causes bulbs to crash, fail to respond and for many of us, has even affected other non nanoleaf devices on the thread network.
We are waiting for the next beta (hopefully today) which is based on matter 1.2 and should significantly improve the situation we are told. But that remains to be seen.
Anyway the point of this post was that don’t write off the skyconnect or anything else based on the nanoleaf bulbs, it’s the bulbs that are the problem, not your hardware.
I’m still looking into a few things before making the jump to splitting between to SkyConnects… I’m thinking that may throw in an Aqara Smart Hub M2 or two. Unless someone wants to recommend one that it better… I’m also been thinking that maybe the signal is not strong enough for the amount of devices without an hub or two. I don’t remember having much issue when I was using the Google Nest WIFI (https://www.amazon.com/Google-Nest-WiFi-Router-Generation/dp/B07ZPDN8T1?th=1), but when I converted to my ISP’s WIFI that is when I started to have these issues appear from what I can remember… I know I still have a lot to learn when it comes to Home Assistant… Hopefully when I have some real time to sit down and dive into it, I can get a better handle on it. 
I appreciate the info on the Nanoleaf Bulbs… I first started with the OREiN Matter Smart Light Bulbs (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BJK8561K/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1) and was having similar issues. Can tell which version of the Nanoleaf firmware I should be looking at to see if my bulbs are on that? I will admit though that since I switched to them, except for the issue that happened this morning, they have been more responsive and accurate than the OREiN. Which brand would you recommend?
I’d still recommend the nanoleaf bulbs because they are actively working to fix the issues. As for what firmware is best, they are all terrible. But it’s the beta firmware that has really caused the crashing network issues. The firmware they shipped just before Christmas, was not allocating enough RAM to the matter processes which is what was causing them to crash.
I had all my zigbee devices go offline and when I got that fixed, all the matter device went offline… It now suddenly can’t connect to the thread border router and I can’t figure it out… It gets all the way to end after getting the credentials to Checking Network Connectivity and then I get “Can connect to thread network home-assistant”. The only difference I can see is that I’m on channel 15 but when I had them working it was channel 20. That’s when they would become unvailable so I changed it to channel 20 which then cause the zigbee issue. Should I go back to channel 20?
