I think I managed to re-add devices into a new network, without resetting Google Play Services data (I didn’t lose any google wallet cards).
Unfortunately, I just tried a bunch of things and I’m not 100% certain which of the steps worked and which were unnecessary. Here is the rough order of steps that I’ve done.
- In Hass > Thread, I reset open thread border router. Made a new network as preferred, deleted old one, and clicked the button to “Use for Android + iOS credentials”
- I deleted the device that needs to be re-added in Hass. And also firmware reset the device.
- I found on Android phone an area where all matter devices and thread networks are stored. In Android settings, open Google > “All services” > “Matter devices” (there were also at times drop down in top right corner showing different grouping of devices). I deleted all those devices.
- I tried few times clicking in Hass Android companion app on “Send credentials to Home Assistant” button (in Settings > Thread) and on “Sync Thread credentials” (in Settings > Companion App > Troubleshooting)
- Also, in Settings > Google > “All services” > “Thread networks” I found my existing thread network. I think I noticed that once I reset the otbr in Hass, this area shows available networks with the new identifier, but it had subtitle as “unavailable” or “not configured” at first. After clicking on “Sync Thread credentials” in companion app, this subtitle disappeared and it looks like android phone now had credentials for this network. Additionally, in network preferences, I disable credential synchronization with the cloud.
- Throughout this process I also installed and uninstalled Google Home app.
- If I tried to add a thread device at this point, then the device would get added and connected to the phone, (the network id showing up on the phone would properly match the current on in hass) the device does get added to the phone and stored, but then when I attempt to add the device to Hass, it would fail after a couple of minutes of attempting.
- I restarted otbr container and matter server container. Somehow matter server restart got stuck and I had to restart the node running this matter server. (I suspect this might have affected IPv6 addresses, so maybe this was needed
) - I also restarted android phone (I suspect this might have also affected IPv6 addresses caches or something )
- After all of these, when in hass companion app I click on the button to “Sync Thread credentials”, I consistently get a message “Updated network from Home Assistant on this device” and when I click “Send credentials to Home Assistant” it says “You don’t have any credentials to import”.
- After all of these, I added a device like normal, and it got successfully added to Android phone, it had a matching thread network id to my current one in Hass, and then the device got successfully added into Hass as well.
I’m sorry for the wall of text, I was just trying to record all the things that I tried. I hope this helps somebody in the future, or it will kick off another round of investigation.