Threads and Border Router hardware - what's the matter?

Configuration Matter/Thread
1

I’m feeling stupid (again) and hope someone can help.

I bought my first thread device (also the first device I’m using with matter, though I have some that can and I did briefly). I have local IPv6 configured and working.

I need a Thread Border Router(s).

I initially thought that an ESPHOME ESP32-C6 could be one, but that appears not to work since it requires Wifi (on at least one) and they can’t co-exist.

I thought my Google 4k TV could be one, because it has an option, but hours of experimentation and google’ing and AI’ing and absolutely nothing – no sign turning that feature on does anything. And lots of queries say only other Google devices, plus Apple TV 4k, etc.

I looked at HA’s ZBT devices but cannot use them because HA runs in a HyperV VM and can’t speak USB.

My AP’s (those in use are Unifi, I have a bunch of MIcrotik sitting around) apparently lack support.

I’ve got rPi’s in use for other stuff (including zwave) but they require add-on USB dongles and I worry the two in use would interfer with zwave on the same devices/proximity and a lot of my zwave’s are pretty far and weak signals (despite being LR devices). So don’t want to screw with those.

I just ordered an Aeotec Smart Home Hub 2, but that really seems overkill, it does a little of everything (interestingly except zwave which would have been nice).

Am I just missing something? Is there a shorter path to a working, first Border Router? Or is something like the Aeotec or Aqara hub my best bet (I do not want to change from the HyperV environment to physical).

And HA Hardware folks – how about a little love for non-physical HA users, like a ZBT-3 with ethernet and POE!

Linwood

2

The state of Matter Thread is still in a bit of flux. Despite the standards, manufacturers, like google, do things their own way for the moment and not everything connects

For what’s worth I would try something simple with what you have on hand. If you chose the pi that has ZWLR, you’re likely not going to have interference problems as Matter/Thread is more zigbee like and shares 2.4ghz airwaves with wifi, and ZWLR is 908–915 MHz.

Its more making sure the plumbing back to HA is there, which means ipv6 works between the 2:

  • The Pi runs OTBR, which provides a Thread Border Router API and advertises the Thread network via multicast IPv6. You could use a ZBT-2 in this case. I use it directly with an HA green, but the point is there is parallel development going on HW/SW wise.

  • Your HA VM runs the Matter server, which discovers the OTBR on the LAN and uses it to commission and manage Thread‑based Matter devices.

3

Thank you. I think I had conflated zigbee interference and zwave.

So should that Aeotec actually work as a Thread Router?

I’d like the idea of the ZBT-2 on a rPi better if it was available in a wall mount case not desk top. Both of my rPi’s are behind big flat screen TV’s (for handy POE ethernet). And yes, the screen may have some impact on the signal but it’s all working nicely (after some rough issues with SmartWings shades, their fault I think), out of the way, and hard-wired.

4

Are you sure is the google 4k tv? The one with an otbr is the Google streamer. I am using one now with a few thread/matter devices and is working ok (only one month of testing).

5

I’m sure, I just bought four of them a month or two ago.

I have not tried resetting to factory and starting over, I’m wondering if there were some setup questions I answered incorrectly. At this point the only thing I can see there is the on/off switch for thread, and the discover nearby devices (both on). It did pull an IPv6 address as well. I wonder if it only works on Wifi? I have wifi off… hmmm… I wonder if that turns off the radio… time to go check.

Update: Turned on wifi, nothing happened. Though I’m not completely sure what SHOULD happen, but as it is on the same subnet as my HA server I thought it should notice it and ask to add.

6

My zbt-2 and green are as far to the west side of the house as you can get. They’re on the bottom shelf of a tv cabinet nearest the west wall. Its kind of my house data center; cable modem, router, ha green, zbt-2 and yolink hub all right there and media/gaming controllers on top of them and the tv.

For thread I have 2 innovelli white fan swtiches in bathrooms almost as far east as you can go. I know from using my router that 2.4ghz wifi makes it there, as a comparison. Both switches work but the network diagram in the matter app/addon had them as red, low quality signal.

Today Iinstalled an eve outlet, which turns out to be a fantasic thread mesh router. I put it on a pigtail power cord and tested it in several candidate outlet locations. Found one where all endpoints improved, installed it and it greatly improved the mesh. Now I can implement thread lighting products without problems, once some come out with thread spec scenes and work the way I want.

7

Maybe I should order one and try. I’m using a ZST39 LR at each end of the house. When I got the smart wings shades, I had a LOT of issues, they sent more controllers, I moved antenna, changed firmware, and finally got them more or less stable, but I still have a lot of devices very close to the reported noise floor.

image
image537×925 54.6 KB

All these items work fine, though, now. But my 60’s vintage house is pretty hard on RF signals. My 2.4g iot stuff work, but I’ve put in 5 separate AP’s around the house to keep things (especially ESP32-C6’s with the built in antenna) functional. Much of the house walls inside are brick, others are 2 layers of wall board (one of them vintage 60’s and really sheet “rock”).

Maybe what I should do is get one of the zbt2’s and find a place to put it and see how it does instead, though moving each device is rather tedious. But I don’t really have a good spot for “central” with ethernet.

8

I took one of the google TV’s, factory reset it, and went through the whole setup leaving threads on from the beginning. No change, I see nothing in HA or Google Home about threads (other than the on/off option in the TV).

9

For me Matter over Thread is a big mess.
I did buy the ZBT-2 and did install Thread on it.
I do run HA as docker under Unraid so I do need to use Matter and Thread dockers to get it operational.
I did buy a matter over wifi device and a matter over Thread device, just for testing.
I did take me 3 days to get an OBTR preffered running at HA. That is not easy to create with a docker.
I did pair the wifi device easy. It is working but very buggy. It stops working severall times. I do need to unpower the device for abaout 10 seconds power it again and it is running. Not the way I like it.
The Threade device is even more buggy.
It is a cheep Tuya PIR. I did get it paired and running once. But it is triggering by itself every 2 hours, so useless as PIR for me.
I did let it run for about a month.
What is even more a problem is that I did reset the device and trying to pair again. That is not working.
I can not get it paired again. The OTBR is seeing the device and creating the protocol but pairing is never finishing anymore. I tried everything. Using my android phone, my iPad. trying 2,4 GHz and 5Ghz connection. Cleaning buffers, installed the newest Thread firmware on the ZBT-2, etc. etc. Notting is working.
So Matter over Thread is for me useless and an ivnestment I do regret

1 Like
10

Well… that’s an encouraging note. :disappointed:

Seriously though, thank you. At least it sets my expectations appropriately.

I did get some matter wifi lights (LIFX) but quickly found the native API integration was much more capable. I did get them working though with matter before I switched it off. But they were also wifi IPv4 (I thought it would require IPv6, but maybe that’s just thread – or maybe LIFX is just special, I had IPv6 configured and working anyway so maybe it ALSO needed it).

I’ve got the Aeeotec hub coming, so will experiment, but will set my expectations accordingly. The device of interet is a Heiman smoke detector, recently given some certification by Home Assistant. I need some new smoke detectors and they are ETL listed and don’t REQUIRE the network to work, but at least I could get status when away.

But I only bought one as a trial, so I’m not too deep in the hole for education.

Matter is not exactly new, even as standards go. It seems a shame it’s in such shape. It’s not that I thought ALL vendors would have their act together, but I did hope at least a few select ones did.

11

This one’s timely to follow up. Innovelli that I mentioned above, sent an email to all of their customers yesterday with an important fw update announcement. It was for their matter dimmer switch.

The announcement said if you have their matter dimmer, AND you have Apple Home, update to the latest firmware… BUT if you don’t have Apple Home, defintely don’t update??? So much for cross vendor compatibility… :thinking::crazy_face:

I like Inovelli, they are a small leading edge switch manufacturer, and actually not far down the road from me. The point is these smaller players are at the mercy of Apple, Goolge, et al. as they slug out ecosystem loyalty over standards loyalty.

At this point choose and deploy matter products carefully. I’ve picked brands that show they get it, or are big enough to survive the bumpy ride: Inovellie, Ikea and Eve.

12

Thanks.

Frankly, and it doesn’t work for batteries, I am VERY glad all my outlets and switches and dimmers are either Caseta or ESPHOME flashed wifi.

Wifi just works, I can monitor if it’s up, I can OTA flash easily. And it just works.

But sadly a lot of “stuff” needs to go where there’s no AC power readily available…

13

Well crap… I thought the Aeotec hub would work as a TBR without doing the whole smart things setup (and their site even says it works without a cloud), but the first thing it does is require a SMartthings cloud account. You can’t just add it to matter for example. At least I couldn’t see a way.

Shouldn’t have believed the AI summary.

Need to find a better thread border router.

14

Sorry, that truly sucks. And adds to the skepticism I have for border router products from manufacturers that act like they are coordinates 0,0,0 of my HA existence.

I’ve experimented just enough to decide that HA/ZBT-2 with its Matter and OTBR are the sieve for this exact thing. If products will connect and work on that, then they are truly native Matter/Thread. If I run into mfg/ecosystem restrictions to use it, they are not.

And definitely don’t want google, apple, amazon whatever border routers enabled on my thread network.

15

Yeah, I tried ordering one on Amazon - not available.

Tried Apollo who I’ve bought from before - sold out (they should get more within a week, they think).

Guess this won’t be quick.

16

Ameridroid, where I bought mine (as well as my HA Green), has them now.

They’re loosely associated with HA / Nabu Casa. Decent to deal with

17

Well, Apollo took my money saying they had them, so will give them a few days rather than trying to get a refund. A bit disappointed.

18

OMG, I’m an idiot. I never noticed there’s a Settings, Thread option now, not under integration.

And there are three of my four Google TV streamers in there (the other may have it turned off).

Now sure what to do next, but I can’t believe I’ve been going around in circles. There’s a lot of misleading instructions out there.

Off to try to get this to work now.

19

I’ve been seriously considering building an Open Thread Border Router, implemented on an ESP32-H2.
How to: Setup an ESP32-H2 as Thread Router - #33 by JamesW-AU

But agreed; it seems to be a bit umm, not completely solidified yet.

FYI- Just to complicate matters (Matters?), I already have a TBR in the form of Apple TV 4K, which does show up in HA. But is in another building, so necessarily separate Thread networks (if I ever use Thread stuff in that building). And I do have an Alexa Echo 4 Dot in the building where I do want Thread --but it’s not showing up as TBR in HA. --Or is TBR only on Echo 4, & not Echo 4 Dot?? Umm, this certainly isn’t straightforward yet.

20

Well, this is depressing.

Home assistant is just REALLY poor at handling thread.

I found the thread option, my Google 4K TV’s popped up there in multiple networks (which itself is wrong), and I tried adding a thread device from the companion…

It started really well, found it, set matter credentials, tested connectivity, adding to home assistant then “Something went wrong”. That’s the literal error message, no useful info.

Troubleshooting log is not much more helpful:

02-28 22:24:58.451 22781 27054 D WebSocketCoreImpl: Message id null received
02-28 22:24:58.452 22781 27057 D WebSocketCoreImpl: Sending message 19: {type=supported_features, id=19, features={coalesce_messages=1}}
02-28 22:24:58.463 22781 26778 D WebSocketCoreImpl: Sending message 20: {type=matter/commission_on_network, pin=79208919, ip_addr=fdd6:b911:1a1e:1:65ee:1509:4150:262e, id=20}
02-28 22:24:58.469 22781 27054 D WebSocketCoreImpl: Websocket: onMessage (text)
02-28 22:24:58.469 22781 27054 D WebSocketCoreImpl: Message id 19 received
02-28 22:24:58.470 22781 26778 W WebSocketCoreImpl: Response for message not in activeMessage id(19) skipping
02-28 22:25:09.001 22781 27054 D WebSocketCoreImpl: Websocket: onMessage (text)
02-28 22:25:09.002 22781 27054 D WebSocketCoreImpl: Message id 20 received
02-28 22:25:09.011 22781 22781 D MatterCommissioningService$onCommissioningRequested: Server commissioning was not successful (1)
02-28 22:25:36.295 22781 22781 D WindowOnBackDispatcher: setTopOnBackInvokedCallback (unwrapped): androidx.navigationevent.OnBackInvokedInput$createOnBackAnimationCallback$1@5c3e5a4
02-28 22:25:36.296 22781 22781 D WebViewActivity$onCreate: Matter/Thread step changed to MATTER_IN_PROGRESS
02-28 22:25:36.307 22781 22781 D WebViewPresenterImpl: Matter commissioning returned with non-OK code 0

Well, I then added it to google home as a matter-over-thread device, worked fine, shows up, all good.

So I go back to HA and try to link to it instead – starts off OK then just hangs, and times out. But it’s working fine in Google Home.

So I restarted HA, I refreshed the companion app and…

Now there’s no Thread option at all. Matter is still there, but the option in the companion app, as well as on the web page, is simply gone.

If I try to commission a thread I get an error that basically says my HA server does not support thread.

Numerous restarts of HA, restarts of the Google TV’s – nothing. There’s no longer a thread option there at all in HA. It’s just gone.

Restarted the matter add-on - no change.

WTH?

Everyone is talking about how 3rd party stuff is not consistent and not working, this really seems like an HA issue to me. At least this aspect of it.