Just wondering if someone can help, I’m trying to have my SkyConnect Border Router connect to the same Thread Network as my HomePod Mini but I think I may have broken something.
I am starting to receive an “Insecure Thread Network Settings detected” message (attached).
Also in my Thread Config settings I can see that the Border Router doesn’t sit in the same network. (Attached)
Is there a specific way that I can merge the networks?
Looking through the HA code, there is a description about this problem. It states: Your Thread network is using a default network key or pass phrase. This is a security risk, please create a new Thread network. The best I can tell, the Thread Integration attempts to discover all the Thread Border Routers and get’s the “dataset” that is used for that particular Thread network. The dataset includes information such as network keys and the like. One of your Border routers somehow created a Thread Network with default credential settings. If I had to guess, its probably your Silicon Labs one.
Very good question (that I don’t have an anwer to). In my research on Thread, even though multiple Border Routers are allowed on a Thread network, there are lots of questions I using multiple TBRs such as IPv6 networking, and how Service Registration works, amongst others. These have probably been worked out, I just haven’t worked through them myself.
It seems that that the problem that most vendors are working on assumes that there will be multiple (different) thread networks (one from Apple, one from Google, etc), and the vendors are working on a way to either share credentials or pick one set of credentials and use it across the different Thread networks, and with such, a device can roam across different Thread networks. As far as I can tell, it has to be more than credential sharing, as it has to also include pan-id, channel number, etc, which is pretty much sharing an entire dataset. If you read HA’s Thread Integration doc, it seems that HA’s approach is to be able to get credentials from one Thread network vendor and attempt to share it with others (or at least share it with the SiLabs OTBR). I think this is what the “preferred Thread Network” selection is about.
Anyway, if you manage to succeed joining SiLabs TBR to HomePod Mini Thread network, would be good to know how it works out.