So I’ve been happily using a small Matter/Thread network – seven devices connected through the Open Thread Border add-on to whatever the HA Yellow has on board (/dev/ttyAMA1). (The 40-odd Zigbee devices are using the Sky Connect.)
I’m about to update the dusty, six-year-old Apple TV to the latest model, which means I’ll have another border router in the house. Should I share the devices with this router, assuming that’s possible? Will it make the network more robust or just easier to break? What’s the latest recommendation?
Well, I’m not planning on using any of Apple’s automations (HomeKit or whatever), but wondering whether just having another router on the network would help. I’m a believer in building good bones, from my experience with Zigbee.
Maybe it’ll just happen automatically when I plug in the new Apple TV? I’ll find out this afternoon/evening.
Nice! Would be good if you could explain the steps you went through for this to get Apple TV and OTBR on the same Thread network.
Yes (sort of, but no, not really … read on).
The more Thread routers including TBRs you have the better. In theory, having more TBRs located in different parts of the house should make things more robust using a protocol called TREL which allows a broken Thread mesh to be stitched back together over your Ethernet LAN via the TBRs. However, TREL still needs some more work/improvements, and can actually cause problems, so for now having multiple TBRs is not recommended (See here) .
Just to update this thread for any lurkers. So far (knock on wood), I’ve not seen any TREL issues and the devices are still all working as desired. I don’t think this is a particularly good test, though. The Apple TV and the Home Assistant Yellow are in the same room and I only have a handful of devices.
As to how I did it, I didn’t do anything at all. I just plugged in the new Apple TV and the new TBR showed up in the existing network. I think that’s probably because it came second? In other words, I’d probably have had more trouble if I had an existing Apple network and wanted to add the HA one.
