SMHUB and OTBR - has anyone actually got Matter working using SMLIGHT's SMHUB?

Configuration Matter/Thread
1

I bought the new SMHUB from SMLIGHT for Matter as I wanted specifically to run OTBR on the device with the radio but also have the freedom to place it in a good location using ethernet rather than being directly connected to my HA server.

However, I cannot get my IKEA Timmerflotte to work when I run OTBR on the SMHUB. Has anyone actually got this working?

It appears the device isn’t setup properly to run OTBR. I had a look and the package it installs when you add OTBR just literally copies the OTBR files and add a service for it which is insufficient. If you look how to correctly install OTBR you need to do some config on the host for IPv6 forwarding and announcements, not just run the binary.

I verified this by installing the OTBR addon in home assistant and using socat to expose the SMHUB’s radio over TCP:

socat TCP-LISTEN:8888,reuseaddr,fork FILE:/dev/ttyS2,b460800,raw,echo=0

You can run that by SSHing into your SMHUB. Then if you add the OTBR addon to your HA and specify a network device of :8888

Now if you try and add the IKEA device it should work fine. Obviously this isn’t an solution, it just demonstrates the radios on the hub are fine just at the moment I do not think this device can run OTBR, it doesn’t seem they have set it up properly.

I packet captured traffic from the SMHUB directly from the switch and also watched mDNS and when I’m using OTBR on the SMHUB I don’t get any IPv6 related traffic from the SMHUB or any mDNS announcements for the device (_matterc._udp). When I run OTBR on HA I can see the device in mDNS from my computer as well as relevant IPv6 traffic.

The OTBR on the SMHUB also doesn’t report any netdata:

smlight@SMHUB:/opt/openthread/sbin$ sudo ./ot-ctl netdata show
Prefixes:
Routes:
Services:
Contexts:
Commissioning:
7291 - - -
Done

It just seems like they claim you can run OTBR but it doesn’t appear to be the case as whilst, yes, it will run you can’t actually add any devices as they won’t get correctly announced or routed over IPv6.

2

Actually I faced the same issue.

Got my SMHUB Nano yesterday and followed their manual page to use it as OTBR.
Activating a MoT device with the HA app went to the connectivity check and then nothing.

With a SLZB06 which I had lying around here and a docker OTBR I got the Thread network working and could join an Ikea Alpstuga.

So I opened a ticket at Smlight today.

3

With today’s FW upgrade I got the OTBR to work.
Will see if it remains stable.

4

I’m still unable to get it to work correctly. What device did you add? I’m wondering if it might work correctly with mains powered matter devices but not with battery powered. My reasoning for this is I discovered the SRP server is disabled on the SMHUB OTBR which according to the docs is what is responsible for announcing battery powered matter devices so they don’t have to keep waking up and draining the battery.

If I enable it:

smlight@SMHUB:/opt/openthread/sbin$ sudo ./ot-ctl srp server state
disabled
Done
smlight@SMHUB:/opt/openthread/sbin$ sudo ./ot-ctl srp server enable
Done

I make some progress, I see the device being announced via mDNS and the matter server notices the new device:

(MainThread) DEBUG [matter_server.server.device_controller.mdns] Discovered commissionable Matter node: AsyncServiceInfo(type='_matterc._udp.local.', name='E1D15F76B3FD1950._matterc._udp.local.', addresses=[], port=5540, weight=0, priority=0, server='86041C391CAD97C5.local.', properties={b'VP': b'4476+32773', b'SII': b'15800', b'SAI': b'2500', b'SAT': b'1000', b'D': b'1480', b'CM': b'0', b'RI': b'4E000CC46903EB88B57DB1FBDF45CDD36A47', b'PH': b'33', b'PI': None}, interface_index=None)

But my phone still gets stuck on checking connectivity and avahi on my computer indicates some kind of problem with the service:

Failed to resolve service 'E1D15F76B3FD1950' of type '_matterc._udp' in domain 'local': Timeout reached

So I still think it needs more work on the SMHUB side.

5

I’ve had some back and forth messages with their support who has been working with their engineer on this and they’ve released new versions of several components today:

OS 0.3.11
openthread 0.3.1-2
smhub-services 0.2.8-1

and I can confirm that it appears to be working correctly now after upgrading to these versions. I’ll monitor it and now I’ve got it working I plan to purchase more devices. Will feedback my experience after using it for a while just in case anyone comes across this.

I purchased this device as an early access device so I did expect problems and honestly I am impress with smlight’s support and their willingness to look into and fix issues. So thumbs up from me.