thread-archived

[spice imp]

Zigbee tells you what the content of you packages needs to be, Thread is more like WIFi, sending packages that can have any data over the network

[sick swan]

I'd say its next to the lower layers Zigbee: It implements the mesh networking part of Zigbee. But instead of building their own networking logic like Zigbee did, Thread just implements "regular" IPv6.

@atomic garden its reference implementation is open source, so that IMHO makes it already better than Zigbee 😅 https://github.com/openthread/

[spice imp]

But you can’t use zigbees lower layer part alone. You kind of need to use their application layer protocol. In theory you could have a thread device just running MQTT.

[atomic garden]

Matter tells you what the content needs to be instead, yes?

Or...is that a layer up too

[spice imp]

Matter is not thread

Thread = Wi-Fi

[atomic garden]

Thread is the connection

Matter is the protocol

[spice imp]

Yes

[atomic garden]

Oh I see so network protocol vs automation protocol

[spice imp]

So you can compare the combination of thread and matter to zigbee

[atomic garden]

Thread uses IP for its network protocol and uses the same basic mesh as zigbee?

[spice imp]

But you can run matter in just Wi-Fi devices

[atomic garden]

Oh Matter doesn't rely on Thread

[atomic garden]

Thread for the network and MQTT for the automation

[spice imp]

Yes, the layer “below” ip is kind of the same for zigbee and thread

[spice imp]

Yes, there are no devices that do that right now, but you could do it. There is KNX over thread though

But it’s also in its starting stages

[atomic garden]

Having an ipv6 address...does that make the device internet facing?

Kinda seems so

[spice imp]

Not if you don’t have an public up address

Or have something “translating” IPv6 to ipv4

[atomic garden]

Okay nice so it's controllable

[spice imp]

Yes

[atomic garden]

Oh sweet

The same hardware that works for zigbee should be able to work with thread, just with different firmware/software?

Which I presume a zigbee radio is just a lower powered 2.4ghz radio

[sick swan]

Yeah essentially

[sick swan]

It is a different modulation, narrower bandwith. It typically is lower powered than WiFi because of the spectral density limits in the EU.

[atomic garden]

Got it

@sick swan @spice imp Thanks for the help in understanding this

[spice imp]

With thread yes, matter and thread likely no, since that requires more ram and flash than zigbee. So a lot of devices just don’t have that since it was not needed at the time

[atomic garden]

How much ram and flash do you expect it'd need at min?

[undone kelp]

Just wanted to note that I used the OTBR web GUI to join the homekit network using the network key exposed by the nanoleaf app. The operation seems to have worked and I can see the HA BR in Eve and Nanoleaf, and the OTBR web gui's topology menu shows the devices on the network. I don't know if I've just broken the mesh in some way, that will take days I think to get a feel for "is this still working".

I don't know that there's a way to make the homekit network the preferred network in the thread integration? It shows a sad empty homeassistant preferred network :p

Ah, I just noticed the "make preferred network" button. Okay.

One last thing. I'm using a Yellow with multiprotocol, and the channel is not the same now (15 for zigbee, 25 for thread). I tried using the hardware menu to change it, and seems to not have done anything (though it says it can take a few minutes -- it's been 10 since I did submitting the change). I don't use zigbee, but I understand that the channels must be the same.

[upbeat cairn]

It should happen in exactly five minutes. Do you have the ZHA integration installed?

[undone kelp]

I do

Ah! I just checked and it has switched now. I wonder if it got delayed somehow.

[half bluff]

I noticed it usually takes longer than 5 minutes.

Though after doing this my zigbee seems to be more unstable

So a little disappointed

Let me know if you notice any change to zigbee stability

[quiet stirrup]

Multiprotocol can be dodgy, i would personally invest in a 2nd sky connect or a USB (forgot the name of it), and run one protocol on each

[wispy anvil]

Hello, Im trying to add a Homekit Device that uses thread. But I think I need to have my AppleTV set as my preferred thread border router, right now I have my Nest Hub. Is there a way to change it to the AppleTV or does it even matter at all?

[serene prawn]

@wispy anvil I converted your message into a file since it's above 15 lines :+1:

[wispy anvil]

this is the error I get

[half bluff]

Unplug the nest hub till Apple TV becomes primary router?

[wispy anvil]

how do I set the apple TV as the primary?

it just shows as an "other network"

[half bluff]

In HA?

[wispy anvil]

yes

[half bluff]

I think you need the dataset credentials and have to add that to "Add Dataset" in top right corner with 3 dots

I got mine from nanoleaf app

For apple hub

[wispy anvil]

I dont have the nanoleaf app, how can I do that from regular homekit

[half bluff]

Not sure

sorry

If you can somehow get it though you add it in that button I said and then it will allow you to make apple the preferred network or something like that

Maybe download the nanoleaf app and see if you can still somehow get it from there even without the bulbs

[wispy anvil]

maybe

[half bluff]

Worth a try

[wispy anvil]

Cant get the nest border router to disapear

oh wait no I got it

its gone now

[half bluff]

DM me pics

[wispy anvil]

but I can't get the apple TV as the primary

Where in the nanoleaf was the dataset?

[half bluff]

Click "thread network"

Then click "my home ####"

and it should show the numbers there

[wispy anvil]

is it the PAN ID?

[half bluff]

It might be network key

Cant remember

[wispy anvil]

I only see expanded PAN ID

[half bluff]

Try adding the network key one

[wispy anvil]

I dont see that

[half bluff]

Hmm not sure. Are you on android or ios?

[wispy anvil]

IOS

[half bluff]

When I first did it I grabbed it from an android phone

[wispy anvil]

ok lemme get my phone

[half bluff]

But they might have updated it to show on iOS now not sure

[wispy anvil]

using roommates iPhone cuz Apple

so

[half bluff]

try android

[wispy anvil]

k loading

same thing

[half bluff]

Dam it might be that you need a bulb or something?

You can try that extended pan id and see if it works

[wispy anvil]

doesn't :(

[half bluff]

Oh wait one sec. Click the refresh button in the top right

and then click my home

does it change it?

[wispy anvil]

nope

just says "Expanded PAN ID"

[half bluff]

Does it show myhome on the android?

[wispy anvil]

yeah

[half bluff]

with apple border router

[wispy anvil]

MyHome87

yup

with Apple BorderRouter

[half bluff]

Im out of options

[wispy anvil]

rip

[half bluff]

You need that key though

to do it

Just for your information I believe its called "TLV Dataset" for Apple

[wispy anvil]

Yeah but I cant get it without an app that will give me it

and to do that I need to add a thread decice

[half bluff]

Yeah im not sure. Because I have the bulbs I think thats why it gave me it

[wispy anvil]

but anytime I try to use this thread device it gives me an error

[half bluff]

Which device?

[wispy anvil]

QingPing Temp & RH Monitor T

[half bluff]

Do you have skyconnect or HA Yellow?

[wispy anvil]

nah

I wish I did

[half bluff]

Should be able to connect to homekit and then unlink and have it pop on HA

[wispy anvil]

it does

but then it errors

when trying to connect

[half bluff]

You got the correct code

with the - dashes

[wispy anvil]

yeah it errors before the code

[wispy anvil]

This is the error

[half bluff]

Hmm unplug the nest and try it agian maybe

[wispy anvil]

shouldn't matter tbh since its connected to the appleTV thread

[half bluff]

I know but this thread stuff is wack sometimers

Might as well try unplug nest, reboot HA and try it again

[wispy anvil]

ok

same error

[half bluff]

Did you restart HA or reboot HA?

[wispy anvil]

reboot

[half bluff]

Dam bro im not sure. Im sorry, I tried

[wispy anvil]

thats fine Ill just use bluetooth

oh also should be noted, I can set it up via bluetooth

and then when I try to enable thread on it, it just becomes unavailable and never connects

[half bluff]

maybe @vapid shell needs to add it to homekit controller or something?

[wispy anvil]

idk ill probably just get a skyconnect

[half bluff]

Yeah its only like $20-30 bucks or something

worth it in my opinion

[wispy anvil]

just ordered it

[quiet stirrup]

Coolio, it’s a much better solution than going for a DIY

[half bluff]

@quiet stirrup I popped in my Sonoff for zigbee so ima see if its good

Got that dual setup :X

[wispy anvil]

How fast do they usually ship (per batch in the US)

[half bluff]

It said September so im assumming then

Just gotta be patient

[quiet stirrup]

Good work, if you have any complaints about multi protocol, @vapid shell loves to hear em 🤣

[wispy anvil]

Does it require HASS OS or can I use the docker?

[quiet stirrup]

HASS OS

[half bluff]

He stills owes my Eve Room some love. He forgot about that little device

[wispy anvil]

shit, is there an easy way to transfer from Docker to OS?

[half bluff]

Maybe backup HA and then transfer it? I have no idea about docker stuff. I run my HA on a virtual machine via proxmox

[wispy anvil]

ah ok, how stable is it btw?

[half bluff]

I think its alright. I have been having some issues with multiprotocol stability and matter devices since I added my skyconnect to the apple border mesh

Thats why im running my zigbee sonoff to combat that

But I live in an apartment complex so that could be another reason

[wispy anvil]

oof

hopefully I dont have the same issue

[half bluff]

Youll be alright

Mine was minor stuff that was just annoying and im neurotic

[wispy anvil]

ah

lol

[digital salmon]

As soon as you connect a Nanoleaf (Matter over Thread) bulb to the Nanoleaf app, you see the following data in the Nanoleaf app:

Thread Network Name
Channel
PAN ID
Extended PAN ID
Network Key
PSKc

Thanks for sharing your script. What do we need to do to execute the py script and generate the TLV with it?

Is it something like this?

1. Install python3 packages, if not already done
2. Download your script and copy real Thread network data (from the Nanoleaf app for example) to line 1-5 of your script
3. Type the following on the command line:

python3 thread_tlv.py

I have a Debian machine with python3 packages already installed, but I am not at home at the moment.

[vapid shell]

I think about it at least once a week!

[vapid shell]

If you have apple and SkyConnect on same thread network can you send me a diagnostics file from your thread integration

[cerulean zephyr]

Hi, anyone tried making your own thread device with esp zero code?
Also, can you bind devices like with zigbee?

[half bluff]

Its interesting. I think adding it to Apple is causing the Skyconnect to crash. The only way to fix it is by unplugging and replugging it back in.

[low dew]

My Thread devices stopped working yesterday all at once after working well for several months. I'm using a SkyConnect with the Silicon Labs Multiprotocol add-on, and this add-on doesn't seem to be able to start up anymore:

Error: Failed to probe running application type
s6-rc: warning: unable to start service universal-silabs-flasher: command exited 1

What are some things I could try ?

[vapid shell]

I think someone else reported similar recently, so read the scroll back

I think there was a firmware version mismatch

So make sure the auto flash option is enabled

[dense zenith]

Anyone have an eve light switch (thread) working with the HomeKit device integration? I got the integration to discover when removing it from HomeKit but after entering the pairing code it says that it is already paired to another controller. Factory reset it, paired back to HomeKit, removed from HomeKit and tried again but same error.

[quiet stirrup]

why not update it to matter, and use it in both natively?

its not a direct solution to what you are asking, but its a long term solution

[dense zenith]

Afaik the eve light switch doesn’t have an update to matter yet

[low dew]

Auto flash is enabled, and isn't that what is showing in my logs? Or is that something else

[vapid shell]

was on my phone so the log message got clipped, i just remembered someone else having a firmware problem in past ~48 hours. i vaguely remember they had to flash it outside of HAOS, but can't find the chat message now.

[vapid shell]

Some Eve firmware revisions have a bug where they don't unpair properly over thread, and apple don't retry they just forget the pairing so you can't try again

The only workaround i found was to turn all my border routers off (i blocked them from joining wifi in unifi control panel) and then wait for Eve app to switch to using bluetooth instead of thread (using the identify function to prove connection was working)

When it was connected over bluetooth, unpairing would work

This applied to at least 2 types of battery powered eve device, but not to the Eve Energy (mains powered) - dunno if thats a coincidence or not - and i've only seen it with Eve devices

[dense zenith]

Yep that’s exactly what I’m experiencing. I will try your workaround, thanks!

[quiet stirrup]

Ah, i misread it as eve energy, mb mb

.

@low dew

[low dew]

Thanks, missed that one! Will try

[ocean moth]

Did anyone manage to join the matter a19 bulbs to a thread network created by OTBR? I can see the network in nanoleaf essentials app (iOS) but it's greyed out. I'm running OTBR on an rPI4 with a nrf52840 dongle

[spice imp]

You Can run matter devices without a “controller” somewhere

And iOS cant use other than HomeKit thread networks for comissioning

[ocean moth]

I suppose you mean I can't ?

I was under the impression I require HA + it's matter server as well as a thread border router (all of which I have); but I think what fucks me is that the nanoleaf app (which should tell the lamp over bluetooth to join the thread network) is gated to only work for proprietary border routers

[spice imp]

Yes

[spice imp]

Its not the app that should tell Them anything. The comissioning is part of matter

And on iOS the ha app just cant set its own thread network yet

[ocean moth]

🤔 so this should work eventually (just scanning the matter QR code) with an app update? to clarify my setup looks like this https://snipboard.io/sH3qvu.jpg

[spice imp]

yes, but when i dont know

on android it kind of works

[ocean moth]

ok i'll try that, thank you 🙂

[ocean moth]

@spice imp i just found this https://github.com/home-assistant-libs/python-matter-server/tree/c49e074b08ed5e20ef60423970387e86fa290b83?tab=readme-ov-file#websocket-commands

(specifically set thread data set and commission with code) could I in theory send this to the matter server directly?

[tiny carbon]

My skyconnect is supposed to show up in the thread integration right?

It only shows up as zha one and even then my config has the

Config flow could not be loaded: {"message":"Invalid flow specified"}
Config flow could not be loaded: Unknown error

When creating a network

[spice imp]

Yes, But Bluetooth is not running with the addon

Or at least i Think so

So you need to run it in a docker container

[ocean moth]

im using the container though

[spice imp]

Outside of ha

Ahhh

Then you Can just use the command

[ocean moth]

amazing

is there any kind of auth steps i need to do before? what would be node_id ?

[spice imp]

Just an unique id

Also the container probably needs networking host

It actually Bluetooth might be available in the addon through the dbus service. Last i heard there where issues with it though.

[spice imp]

https://developers.home.google.com/matter/primer
I think this guide has good explanations for some basic matter things

[ocean moth]

ty

[upbeat cairn]

SkyConnect comes with Zigbee firmware by default. You can either run multi-protocol firmware (https://skyconnect.home-assistant.io/procedures/enable-multiprotocol/) or install the OpenThread addon, which will flash Thread-only firmware.

[quaint osprey]

Is it possible to export HomePod temperature sensor to HomeAssistant? It looks to be a Thread sensor on my Discovery app from my network

[tiny carbon]

The silicon labs multiprotocol add on seems to have disappeared which halts the configuration process (from hardware info)

Neither works

[upbeat cairn]

Disappeared from where? I'm able to see both in the addon store. Can you be more specific with what is failing?

[tiny carbon]

The errors from before were from zha, figured I'd start with that because thread wasnt showing the skyconnect in it. Only the hubs from before.

Now after trying random things I'm stuck on failed to install multiprotocol addon. Despite it previously being installed

I had the thread one installed too

[half bluff]

Unplug the skyconnect and replug it back in

[tiny carbon]

Tried, that seems to make the HASS restart but similar issues

Either unknown error or the ones I pasted

For a bit the entire store was down because of some 'hardware error'

But now it's back to this state where it won't configure

HASS OS btw

Currently in the middle of another attempt where it asks me if I want multiprotocol support. It's taking a while on that so I assume it's good.

But if not, how do I force it to choose thread instead of zigbee? Because the addon by itself doesn't seem to know it's there and checking the thread networks around me doesn't show it either

Failed to get info for silicon labs multiprotocol addon was another error

[upbeat cairn]

Having both installed is probably why things are breaking. Did you manually install the multi-protocol addon?

[cinder nova]

I'm looking for some help/troubleshooting steps to get HA and Thread working. I've been having nothing but difficulties with Thread and HA since first acquiring the SkyConnect dongle and two Thread devices. Basically, I cannot pair these devices to HA, they always timeout. The same devices can, for limited periods of time, pair with either Google Home Hub or Amazon Echo/Alexa. Neither of those ecosystems can successfully share the devices to HA. Eventually within 6 to 12 hours, the devices fall off of all Thread networks, and those devices must be reset and paired again. Evidently, my Nest/Amazon/Google/HA Thread network is part of the problem but I can't find the steps needed to straighten things out.

You can see the failure in action at this video I created yesterday, if you care to know more: https://youtu.be/GymqmIIj6qw

[cinder nova]

Or if you just want to see the direct-to-Home Assistant paring issue, I have this video: https://youtu.be/yXG7D8Nl3T4

[digital salmon]

@still quiver Maybe you can help @cinder nova to share the credentials between Google and HA?

[still quiver]

sure I'd be happy to share what I did, and that might help @cinder nova
first, my thread system is not perfect, it does the disconnects and connects, but it always comes back I never really had to reset and re-pair (once they were commissioned), so therefore this makes Nanoleaf products usable. I have 2 Essentials light strips, 3 bulbs. For border routers, I have 5 Nest hubs, SkyConnect and nanoleaf shapes wifi device (this acts as a thread border router)

Second, make a single thread network - the way I did this was make the Nest Pan network the preferred network and then added the SkyConnect to the preferred network. At this point, it asked me to change the channel to channel 15, which I did and that also also changed my ZHA network to channel 15. This was a big problem for my ZHA network, and ZHA network was very bad on channel 15 so what I did was change my ZHA network channel back to the original channel 20 and then not only was ZHA back to being very stable, my thread network (all google devices and SkyConnect), is now on channel 20. I later eventually bought another Nanoleaf product (the shapes lines), this is not a thread device but it is a thread border router. After updating it with app, it just showed up as an extra border router in HA, it added itself to the single thread network on its own. So now, I have 7 thread border routers on the same single thread network as the Google one. Also another note is that I’m in the Google Preview program so my Nest hubs get updates before the general release ones (you can join the preview club using the Home App).

Third – Adding the nanoleaf devices. The LED strips were very finnicky, it took many tries to add it. But what I found was have you Android phone very close to the device on adding and also, for good measure, keep a border router close while commissioning it. Update and reset the device, unplug it and plug it back in and add it to HA using the Android app. The bulb worked well, by commissioning it from the Nanoleaf app and then adding to another ecosystem (HA), to my surprise, that work immediately (unlike the LED strips).

At the moment, I have all 5 Nanoleaf thread devices in HA and in Nanoleaf app (for future FW updates).
I hope this helps, it not going to be perfect but it works.

[cinder nova]

I'll look into all these items, @still quiver , thanks. What I can say right now is that I have never successfully gotten HA to work in any capacity as a Thread border router. Just now, I removed and uninstalled all Thread devices and add-ons from HA, rebooted, setup the SkyConnect as Thread only, re-installed Thread, and still with that simplification I have 3 different networks: one from Google, one from Amazon, and one from HA. Deleting the HA network and joining the Google one did remove one network, but it still isn't possible to successfully join a Thread device to the network.

And as an FYI, for reasons I don't understand, Google will not allow any of my devices to join the Home beta program. I've asked multiple times but there is some sort of issue that they cannot resolve that won't allow me to join.

[still quiver]

I don't know about the Amazon one but are you able at least to combine your Sky connect with your Google hub? Once you make Google the preferred network the sky connect has the option of adding it to that network using the three dots

[tiny carbon]

Yup, prior to doing it. Then set it to the skyconnect and tried uninstalling it

I'll try remove everything and keep openthread addon

Unless I should reinstall that. The config doesn't seem to have a place to select devices

[tiny carbon]

What baudrate do I need for multipan?

I saw 115200 somewhere but it's set to 460800

[cursive creek]

115200 is an old setting

[tiny carbon]

Even for zigbee2mqtt?

I basically upgraded the firmware to the skyconnect and plugged it in and now I'm able to get further in setup. Only thing is now I don't know what I'm doing and guessing.

I just want the best baudrate for multiprotocol

It's still not showing up in my thread networks though

Only my other border routers :/

[cursive creek]

460800 in the Multiprotocol add-on. In Z2M it doesn't matter afaik, as it communicates via a socket connection with the add-on

[tiny carbon]

Thank you and to fix my zha manually, do I select migrate to new radio

or select reconfigure current radio?

I know its somewhat tangential but it's been a weird topic to fit into one specific channel 😅

[cursive creek]

ZHA? You have been talking about Z2M

[tiny carbon]

Crud it's showing as two devices, socket and the tty

No idea which to pick

[tiny carbon]

I'm trying to learn as much as I can for future reference 😅

But this current one is zha setup alongside thread

My apologies

[cursive creek]

tty for the Multiprotocol add-on, socket for the Zigbee integration

[tiny carbon]

Tysm!

Socket don't work for it unfortunately, unknown error.

Tried usb-tty option and that worked till the end. I supposed if I flashed new firmware then I should migrate to new radio... Hopefully that doesn't kill thread...

Was my only option to try manually after getting stuck in the automatic config instructions 😅

...picked hardware flow control and it seems to have killed the whole thing 🙈

[upbeat cairn]

If you're using multi-PAN you can't talk to the /dev/tty port any more, that's what the addon does. You have to use the socket:// address for the addon, since the radio no longer has firmware that ZHA can communicate with.

I would unplug the device, plug it back in, and wait for the multi-protocol addon to finish starting up. It can take 30s

Then you can re-configure ZHA to use the socket:// port. If you do it too early, the addon isn't running and ZHA can't communicate with it.

And make sure you don't have more than one addon installed that talks to the radio. So if you have the multiprotocol addon, you can't have the OpenThread addon.

[tiny carbon]

I see, tried that.
Making a last ditch effort to use the thread only firmware from the skyconnect web flashing site.

Ohh

facepalms

So the only addon in multipan is the silicon labs one?

No open-thread or zigbee one ever?

[upbeat cairn]

The Silicon Labs Multiprotocol addon allows ZHA to talk to the radio via the socket:// address, in addition to bundling an OpenThread border router

The OpenThread border router addon flashes Thread-only firmware, so you can't use the radio with Zigbee

But you have to make sure to remove ZHA and any other Zigbee integration if you want to do it Thread-only, as both will try talking to the hardware and neither will work

[tiny carbon]

I see, i completely misunderstood the purpose of the addons

[upbeat cairn]

So let's take a step back here: do you want to use Zigbee, Thread, or both?

[tiny carbon]

It was originally both, I ideally wanna stick with that

[upbeat cairn]

In that case, uninstall all of the related addons (e.g. multiprotocol and OpenThread, if you have them), and then click on "Configure" button for the SkyConnect in the Hardware tab. You can set up multiprotocol through that.

[tiny carbon]

Got the feeling that using the flasher will force me to set it all up manually now
I don't need to downgrade do i? 😅

Will do!

[upbeat cairn]

It will then auto-setup the Thread integration and either migrate ZHA to multi-protocol (if you have it enabled), or show ZHA in discovery

[tiny carbon]

Failed to get Silicon Labs Multiprotocol add-on info

Okay it says installing addon after checking the box, took a few tries but now I'm there

Failed to install the Silicon Labs Multiprotocol add-on.

That's the bit that made me do it manually

[tiny carbon]

I know I can be frustrating and confusing at times but I sincerely appreciate your patience with me

[upbeat cairn]

Hmm, that shouldn't happen

How are you running Home Assistant OS?

[tiny carbon]

Off an SD Card on pi 3b

Flashed it using rpi imager

It says docker container timeout and something about headers sometimes when I installed it manually

But if I've got the firmware, and I can get the addon manually... There must be a workaround here, right?

[upbeat cairn]

Can the addon start? What do the logs say?

You have to configure the addon to point to /dev/ttyAMA1

[tiny carbon]

The addon can start and... I'll try checking the homeassistant log

[upbeat cairn]

What about the addon log?

[tiny carbon]

I only have ttyusb1 and the ama0 one which is Wi-Fi/BT adapter

[upbeat cairn]

Are you using the Yellow or a SkyConnect?

[tiny carbon]

But it marks usb1 as the skyconnect so I guess it's that

Skyconnect

[upbeat cairn]

That would be the right one

[tiny carbon]

This looks like it might take me some time

What should I do after that?

Just in case you have to head off

Just setup the integrations?

[upbeat cairn]

Grab the add-on logs, to make sure it's running

Then set up ZHA with the socket:// address

[tiny carbon]

Done! And will do that now

[tiny carbon]

Sky connect Multiplan: Zigbee Home Automation

Config flow could not be loaded: Unknown error

Where would I find the logs for that?

It got to the menu where it asked if I wanted to set it up and I pressed the button but after a few min it failed with unknown error

[upbeat cairn]

Can you post the logs for the addon?

[tiny carbon]

Is there a way to save to file?

I've got it in text form here

It won't let me add attachment

[serene prawn]

Please use a code share site to share code or logs, for example:

• https://dpaste.org/ (select YAML for the language, and consider picking a longer expiry)
• http://pastie.org/ (select YAML for the language)
• https://paste.debian.net/ (you guessed it, select YAML as the language)

Please don't use Pastebin, since it can randomly add spaces to the main view. Please also don't share text as images since it makes it harder for people to help you. Remember that others may have colour blindness, impaired vision, etc.

[cursive creek]

Applies to logs als well

[tiny carbon]

https://paste.debian.net/hidden/d7f7bca1 did I do it right?

It was waaaay bigger than that but there seems to be a size limit

http://pastie.org/p/2TeyM9dhLVlzO63JXbnEtQ - Another one I tried to do

Seems to cut off

Property get single endpoint state and reply to open callback

Could not read endpoint state on secondary
System callbacks

Warning in function
Close cpc endpoint: no such file or directory

Zigbeed ended with exit code 1 (signal 0)

Is basically the gist

And I swear this is last one

otbr-agent[5736]: 50d.00:54:05.473 [C] Platform------: CPC endpoint open failed
otbr-agent[5736]: 50d.00:54:05.532 [C] Platform------: mCpcBusSpeed = 115200
otbr-agent[5736]: 50d.00:54:05.533 [C] Platform------: Init() at radio.cpp:121: Failure
close cpc endpoint: Success
[21:10:21:337265] WARNING : In function

[upbeat cairn]

Yeah, the radio isn't responsive. Are you 1000% positive that nothing is trying to communicate with it? ZHA? Z2M? OpenThread addon?

[tiny carbon]

ZHA was the one it was trying to setup and didn't have an existing one
Open-thread addon removed
Z2M, would that be an addon explicitly named after it?

[upbeat cairn]

If you didn't install Zigbee2MQTT, it wouldn't've been automatically installed. Are you positive you don't have ZHA configured as well?

[tiny carbon]

That's the one its failing on

It doesn't show up in integrations

I'ma go on an addon purge

[upbeat cairn]

So to confirm: you don't have the Zigbee Home Automation integration installed, nor do you have the OpenThread Border Router, or any of the flashing addons, correct? Just the multiprotocol addon?

[tiny carbon]

Just the multiprotocol addon out of that bunch

ESPHome? Would that do it?

I mean it's not set on that device

Emqx
knx
tasmo admin
Tellstick duo

[upbeat cairn]

Physically unplug the SkyConnect and plug it back in, then restart the addon. Can you post the multiprotocol addon's log file from the beginning (as in, restart the addon and refresh logs a few times until it fills up an entire screen)?

[tiny carbon]

bootloader recovery mode, does that mean bricked?

It seemed to end like that when I unplugged beforr

When flashing

Mqtt brokers wouldn't do this either right?

[upbeat cairn]

Nope. Can you post a link to the log itself?

[tiny carbon]

How would I do that?

[upbeat cairn]

Just the way you did above. "bootloader recovery mode" isn't something that's printed by the addon so I just want to see what exactly you're referring to.

[tiny carbon]

Oh that was the Web flasher

From a while ago

Just as I started

I took open-thread firmware and replaced it with the multipan one but it initially read the firmware as that

Matter server? Cause if not any of the addons I named then that rules out most of em

I did add thread integration on top of the openthread border router which was after I kept getting the error

I'm unplugging now

Okay I think I got it, refreshed till there were errors

https://dpaste.org/HnDqc how's that?

[upbeat cairn]

Looks like everything is working

Now try adding ZHA and connect to the socket:// URI

[tiny carbon]

Fingers crossed

The multipan device found managed to be configured!

And the thread router shows! 😄

It didn't even ask me about the serial socket

Tysm!

My matters even fixed and I didn't even do anything

You are a saint for real, I was about to throw in the towel and return it but nothing seems broken

[wide pelican]

having some issues getting nanoleaf essentials working - they're connected to the thread network and are controllable via the android app, but they aren't discovered by home assistant
i've done some digging and it appears the lights are publishing the _ltpdu endpoint but not the _hap one
is this a known issue? it would be really nice to finally use these bulbs

[wide pelican]

hrm okay, seems there's a distinction between nanoleaf essentials (matter) and nanoleaf essentials (homekit) which is not clearly indicated...
i'm fine with having the bulbs work over matter rather than hap but none of the matter pairing options are working :/

[spice imp]

how are you trying to pair them?

and to what? homeassistant?

[wide pelican]

yup want to pair to ha, tried to do it via nanoleaf app, via ha app, and via chip-tool
none worked :/
but then i tried doing it via the ha matter-server websocket, it worked!
now there's the small issue of the bulb flipping offline every few seconds...
the matter-server logs are full of messages like core-matter-server chip.DMG[127] ERROR Subscription Liveness timeout with SubscriptionID = 0x4101a180, Peer = 01:000000000000000B
the only search result is a github issue which talks about vlans and router configuration but i don't really have any of that

and now that problem has mysteriously stopped lmao

it took a solid week of work but it's exciting to finally control them via ha :)

[spice imp]

Did you try to turn your computer on and off? 🤪

[tiny carbon]

Yeah ngl that legit worked for me

[tiny carbon]

I have a question, thread commissioning app lets me scan my networks but asks for a thread admin password

How would I get that from my skyconnect?

[dense zenith]

Anyone have any luck with matter over thread nanoleaf essentials bulbs and trying to integrate via HomeKit Controller? I cannot get the bulb to show up as a discovered device. I have a couple other thread HomeKit devices working in HA via this integration but this is my first matter over thread device. I only have HomePod minis as my thread border routers

[vapid shell]

The light strip from that range works fine over thread. And I believe the original dev work was against that bulb.

Did you pair it with iOS, then unpair it?

Does it show up under _hap._udp with eg https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/discovery-dns-sd-browser/id305441017

Also you are saying homekit_controller and matter in the same sentence. That’s a sign that what you think is happening is not,

The HomeKit nanoleaf bulbs are not matter bulbs.

The matter nanoleaf bulbs are not homekit bulbs

[dense zenith]

yeah paired via iOS then unpaired. Same way I did some other thread devices that are working fine in HA

checking that app now

[vapid shell]

You can add both to the apple home app and both can use thread, but very different protocols

[dense zenith]

yes that it what I am trying to do. These are matter over thread bulbs. Want to pair via homekit to get it on my apple thread network then use in HA

[vapid shell]

So it’s not homekit_controller

That does not see them because they are matter bulbs, not homekit bulbs.

[dense zenith]

eek okay, I misunderstood. Makes sense as to why I don't see them via homekit controller

[vapid shell]

The Apple Home apps speaks Matter and “HomeKit Accessory Protocol”. But people use HomeKit to refer to the protocol, the app and the SDK used to build apps that target Apple Home accessories. So it gets confusing 🤪

[dense zenith]

totally. in that discovery app I see the bulb under _ltpdu._udp like the person a bit above

[dense zenith]

wooo! Works awesome with the matter server integration 👍. Thanks @vapid shell

[visual bane]

I have a question that isn't specific to homeassistant, just about thread in general.

My apple home thread network is using channel 25. I also have a aqara hub creating a zigbee network that happens to have also chosen channel 25.

Is this going to cause interference with both being on the same channel?

[quiet stirrup]

its possible, but just have to wait and see i guess

try to change the channel from the aquara hub if that’s a thing

[tiny carbon]

Is there any benefit from having border routers on same channel? I just dumped it on channel 24 to match the Google nest hub

Which is the oppisite of what I'm supposed to do but nothing broke yet

http://core-silabs-multiprotocol:8081

Isn't working for me and I still can't find the thread admin password for skyconnect 😦

[quiet stirrup]

thread admin password?

you mean the network key/tlv to allow the skyconnect to join the network?

[tiny carbon]

If I could take a screenshot

[still quiver]

Hi any of you with multiprotocol trying beta core now?

[digital salmon]

Yes, when they all use the same thread network, they are automatically using the same channel and all your Thread devices benefit from all your Thread Border Routers. If they are not using the same network credentials they may interfere each other on the same channel. Depending on how far apart the devices are.

[digital salmon]

I would definitely avoid using channel 25 for Thread and channel 25 for ZigBee at the same time. I was in a similar situation with a Philips Hue Bridge. I have the Philips Hue Bridge since 7 years on channel 25. Last year I started to build a Thread network with an AppleTV 4K as the Thread Border Router. All of sudden I had a lot of issues with my Hue ZigBee bulbs. So I tried to change the channel of my Philips HueBridge from channel 25 to channel 20 and all issues were gone.

Later I found out that Apple Thread Border Router is always configured to channel 25 statically.

Be aware that Wifi uses the 2.4GHz same frequency band, like ZigBee and Thread. When you only use Wifi 2.4GHz channel 1, 6 and 11, you can use the ZigBee/Thread channels 15, 20 and 25 with the lowest impact by your 2.4GHz Wifi. Look here, to better understand it:

https://www.metageek.com/training/resources/zigbee-wifi-coexistence/

However latest development suggests, that it works together, when you have a Multiprotocol enabled SkyConnect for example. But this will not work, when you have Aqara, PhilipsHue or whatever ZigBee Bridges in your network. At least not at the moment. 😉

By the way… If you do not have control over your and/or your neighbors 2.4GHz Wifi, Thread and/or ZigBee channels, it may be harder to get a stable/reliable environment. This can be a real problem, especially if you live in an apartment.

[tiny relic]

hi all, i have 2 HA instances, basically. a pi running HA (started off solely for easy lazy way to get zigbee2mqtt running which then connects to my "main" HA). my main HA instance runs in a VM on Hyper-V on host. with that said i now have a SkyConnect adapter which i have connected to the pi because of inability to pass through non-storage controllers to a VM on Hyper-V. so the HA in a VM sees the thread network on the pi - is there anyway to mark this as a preferred network?

or rather is there someway to allow myself to add it as a OTBR router on the "main" HA

[vapid shell]

So as long as they are on the same vlan the ipv6 part of this will just work

It will already route packets into the mesh for both had instances

(If they both run haos)

And to teach the other ha about the network key you need the TLV which is a big long hexadecimal string

I think you used to be able to get it from the HA Ui? But otherwise you need to use ssh and run shell command in the OTBR container

https://openthread.io/reference/cli/commands#dataset_active

[tiny relic]

yeah i see the thread router in the Thread view from my other HA (homeassistant2.local) so it shows up there

but when i am trying to add devices to that instance using that network they havent yet populated, so i wasnt sure if i was missing something such as somehow making that network the preferred network

[vapid shell]

Just to check, are you using android or iOS?

(The only thing the preferred network is used for in your use case is pushing them to your phone, but that’s only implemented for android)

If you have android then you can either do the thing I said with TLV or you can do the “sync thread credentials” step with the android app connected to the other Ha instance

[visual bane]

It can be done but unfortunately it isn't straightforward like with Hue. It appears I'm going to have to remove the aqara hub from my account and reset it to force it to choose a new channel. Then re-add all the devices connected to it...sigh

[tiny relic]

i use iOS

[tiny relic]

ahhh okay, i thought the purpose was for dictating what network to pair the device to. thank you for your help, it makes more sense now. im finally dipping my toes more into Thread since i have the SkyConnect adapter now, since Thread using the network formed by the Apple TVs/HomePods were god awful

so realistically i should be able to just see the devices available to configure in my other HA instance once they're discovered

[vapid shell]

You can’t use SkyConnect for matter with iOS yet

[tiny relic]

the devices im trying to pair specifically are Thread + HK

Nothing matter yet

[vapid shell]

Ah ok. That should be fine.

So you will need Bluetooth on the HA instance you want to add them to

[tiny relic]

ahhh okay so thats the key. that completely slipped my mind that bluetooth is used in that process.

[vapid shell]

How it works with homekit is you make a homekit over Bluetooth pairing then upgrade it to thread by writing the credentials for the preferred network. It’s one extra button after a normal pair.

[tiny relic]

ahhh

[vapid shell]

But we will need to sort of the preferred network as well.

[tiny relic]

welp looks like my lazy setup ive got because i didnt want to reinstall the host with like ESXi finally caught up lol

[vapid shell]

One option is to pair it with the pi with SkyConnect, press the provision thread button, then unpair and pair with the other

It should retain the thread creds from the first pairing

[tiny relic]

oh i see what you're saying, so similar to pairing a HK wifi device, removing, and then pairing to HA

[vapid shell]

Yep

That’s how we used to do it before the thread provision button

[tiny relic]

i assumed unpairing would've either resulted in a reset or breaking things lol

i actually have a nanoleaf light strip paired to the HA on the pi right now, ill have to try unpairing and then re-pairing with the other instance

[vapid shell]

It is a problem for battery powered eve devices

Those little nuggets won’t unpair over thread, only over Bluetooth

You can force iOS to use Bluetooth by turning all your border routers off and waiting a bit. Can’t do that with ha, though.

[tiny relic]

ahhh

ive had the nanoleaf lightstrip for awhile which i used on the back of my tv which ended up becoming super unstable and most of the time directly paired to HK, then when i eventually made the jump to moving everything into HA it was better but still pretty unstable, but now that SkyConnect came along and i finally have that little guy its been consistently stable

so clearly it was just the overall awful implementation of how Thread works when using HomePods/Apple TVs

[vapid shell]

With latest iOS the HomePod is probably the most stable thread router

Had a lot of problems with interference on some earlier ATVs

Linux had a lot of trouble with thread (and still does) but HAOS 10 patches most of them.

[tiny relic]

interesting

[vapid shell]

So the first 6 months of homekit_controller was pretty rough

One of the bugs was network manager doesn’t support multiple routers

And the way it added routes meant they would get stuck and never expire

[tiny relic]

ooof

[vapid shell]

So if your HomePod changed ip address thread fell over till you restarted haos

New network manager fixes that but only tracks the latest route

So if you have 3 BRs your route table changes once a minute

Unfortunately if you use desktop Linux… chrome reacts to that by resetting page loads and cancelling downloads

[tiny relic]

ahh yup lol

well that sucks i was thinking of actually thinking about ripping out my wifi plugs and replacing with Thread plugs, but it seems like the only guys i can find (at least on Amazon) are Matter over Thread

https://www.amazon.com/Compatible-Responsive-Control-Schedule-Grouping/dp/B0C143YZY6/ref=sr_1_28?crid=3G7WH3YLDGFF9&keywords=thread+homekit+plugs&qid=1693866184&sprefix=thread+homekit+plugs%2Caps%2C91&sr=8-28

[vapid shell]

It looks like the next HomePod update will add TREL which will be a massive leap forward - it lets the border router use your WiFi to add capacity to its thread mesh.

[tiny relic]

i mean, there is the belkin one that is HK Thread but ooof $22 for 1

[vapid shell]

So if a packet arrives at Br 1 and can’t directly get to light bulb 1, it might get forwarded to br 2 over TREL (WiFi) and then on to light bulb 1

[tiny relic]

oh thats interesting

[vapid shell]

Should be able to eliminate “split brain”

[autumn merlin]

Hi All, after a bit of advice: I have nearly all Hue lights, including 2 lightstrips - yes expensive, but they just work and dont cause WAF issues. When we re-did our kitchen we used 3 nanoleaf essential (thread) lightstrips. These are connected via a SkyConnect. They just continually have issues, not alot, but a few times a month where 1 would not turn on (https://dpaste.org/YJKSZ), or after a HA reboot, sometimes they would not work until I shutdown/boot HA. Im near the point of just replacing them with Hue lightstrips... any suggestions? E.g. "wait, its getting better" or "nar, chuck them out!" thank you.

[tiny carbon]

I mean selling would be better than chucking em out

I've heard nanoleaf stuff can be weird in general

I personally went with Eve & Wiz (Matter over WiFi & Thread)

[still quiver]

In my personal opinion I think nanoleaf is getting better. I suspect It's a combination of software/ firmare updates and the fact that my thread network is growing.

Just yesterday I was adding another a19 bulb from Nanoleaf. I couldn't get it to connect to home assistant as it was in my basement where I don't have many other thread devices or thread border routers. However I went upstairs to the top floor where I have many thread and many border routers and it connected immediately. So I think the more devices the stronger and easier things will get for these devices. Moving the a19 back to the basement and its working well ( doing the usual disconnect reconnect for a few seconds about 1 to 2 times per hour)

Moving forward I'm going to treat commissioning a thread device like adding a Z-Wave lock to your coordinator you have to be really close during the interview

[autumn merlin]

Interesting you said nanoleaf is better. I just dont have issues with Hue over zigbee, but have issues with nanoleaf over thread. I guess my question is, is this becuase of the rapid pace that thread is going thru on the HA platform, or is it the product itself.

[still quiver]

Well, I said nanoleaf is getting better. Philips Hue is rock solid for sure. Marcel posted a great article on thread and some of the problems its having...some of which were not technical

[half bluff]

Nanoleaf latest firmware has definitely made things more stable. However, were not at perfect yet. I am hoping that after this new matter spec they can finally fix many issues.

Things still disconnect sometimes, its just not as bad as it was before

[whole glade]

Hi! I've been using the SkyConnect with my HA OS install on Proxmox for some time now, but I've never been able to get Thread to work. I was using the multiprotocol addon before and now am using it for Thread only. I also have Apple TV 4Ks and HomePod minis around the house. I've tried flashing the stick multiple times but still get this error message. Do I have a defective unit?
https://imgur.com/a/WPrJwDd

[quiet stirrup]

How do you have it parsed into proxmox? just added the usb vendor/Device ID in proxmox?

[whole glade]

Yes, that's exactly how I added it.

[half bluff]

I am using proxmox and have bought a PCI USB card in my computer and just port the pcie device into my proxmox ha

[whole glade]

Is connecting the SkyConnect through the USB extension cord causing the mDNS error? Tried a couple of different USB extension cords but still had the same problem.

[spring bramble]

Your best bet at this time is to use the Apple Border routers as those will be much more stable.
Using SkyConnect (or Yellow) for Thread is still very experimental and sharing the same network with Apple is not working at all.

[quiet stirrup]

One of the ways at the moment to get in at the moment is through a Nanoleaf border router/matter device, and getting the TLV/Network key

[spring bramble]

Yeah, is that hack still working ? If so, we could perhaps document it.

[quiet stirrup]

Yep, Nanoleaf produce a thread network name, channel, panID (both short and extended), network key and a PSKc

Just gotta have a device in it, not sure if the matter decides do the same, but the border routers (shapes, lines etc) do.

Happy to provide images if you need

[vapid shell]

Has anyone actually tested the routing implications of that yet?

(Wpan0 has onlink routes so I’d imagine it would always be the preferred route over external routers)

(That’s fine unless the SkyConnect has a weak link etc)

[quiet stirrup]

Don’t think so, if you get a testing methodology going I would be more than happy to help, but I got a feeling that it’s just placement dependent of where everything is

[vapid shell]

Tcpdump on wpan0 and another on eth0 or whatever your LAN is called

With an ipv6 subnet filter for the /64 of your thread devices

You might see inbound traffic from the other BRs

But it if the kernel is preferring wpan0 outbound shouldn’t be visible on your LAN interface

Then maybe test using kill -9 against the OTBR to see what happens if OTBR does an abrupt shutdown

When an external router drops off your network icmp6 neighbour detection will notice fairly quickly and traffic will stop getting routed

Neighbour detection wouldn’t apply to an on link route

So only clean crashes (where OTBR is removing wpan0 and/or it’s routes) will allow the other routers to take over

[whole glade]

Thanks! Will the issue go away on its own with updates or am I doing something wrong/have a defective unit?

[spring bramble]

Well, at some point somewhere in the future it would be possible to add your HA SkyConnect to an existing thread network but for now I would not consider that a viable route. As you already have Apple border routers, I would really recommend using those as that will give you the most stable experience now. Another approach is to use the SkyConnect as standalone thread radio but that is not yet possible with the current state of things but will be in the near future.

[whole glade]

Got it, thank you very much for explaining. So in order to bring Thread devices to Home Assistant, I should first add and remove them through HomeKit (like the Nanoleaf bulbs) and then add through the Integrations page?

[still quiver]

Thanks Marcel. You mentioned that using skyconnect as standalone thread radio. Just curious i have a single thread network with Google/nanoleaf/SkyConnect... is the skyconnect just dead weight in this network? Thanks

[quiet stirrup]

Unless it’s intergrated/been added somehow, yes

[spring bramble]

Correct, for now use the SkyConnect for Zigbee or for experimenting with Thread a bit. It is not meant as your daily driver (yet) for Thread communication while there ar emuch better options available in form of Google and Apple border routers. If you do not have any apple or google border routers at all, then you could consider using the SkyConnect for Thread but it will have the same limitations as a single zigbee or zwave dongle in your HA server, a single point of failure and limited range.

Of course this will change at some point and everybody is working hard to provide you with more options but that is the current state

[still quiver]

Good question. It was all done via the UI. I simply added the Skyconnect to the preferred network.

[plucky moon]

Does anyone have issue connecting Aqara Door window sensor P2 with Thread into HA? I'm using SkyConnect dongle btw

[errant trellis]

anyone know of any matter over thread dimmers that work in 3+ way config?

[quiet stirrup]

Yep

Well; the UI for the pine open thread border router, which you gotta enable the web UI

[still quiver]

oh, ok I'm referring tothe thread integration UI.

[dim pine]

Anybody having an issue with their HAY where the Thread network keeps crapping itself, and you keep having to restart the Silicon Labs Multiprotocol add-on periodically?

• Silicon Labs Multiprotocol 2.3.2
• Home Assistant 2023.9.0
• Supervisor 2023.08.3
• Operating System 10.5
• Frontend 20230906.1 - latest

Logs: #yellow-archived message

[quiet stirrup]

You running multi protocol?

[dim pine]

Yep, using the HAY for a Thread-based smarthome setup, so multiproto is on

[quiet stirrup]

can you just run the thread add-on only and see what happens?

or do you need both?

[gentle mica]

Hi All, I have a Raspberry Pi 4 running HA and got a SkyConnect to use for Thread purposes only. I already have another dongle that does both z-wave and zigbee. I have 16 Eve shades and 1 Eve power switch connected via Thread via the "HomeKit Device" integration in HA. My problem is the SkyConnect dongle seems to become unavailable in HA. This might happen once per day or once in 5 days. When it happens I can reboot the host or pull and reseat the dongle and then devices will start to reconnect. Does anyone know why this frequent disconnecting of the SkyConnect is happening?

[quick bronze]

Are you using a powered USB hub?

The problem is most likely a lack of power

[gentle mica]

No. Direct into the Pi (with extension to avoid USB 3 interference).

[quick bronze]

A powered USB hub will most likely resolve this

[gentle mica]

Ok. Is this a known issue others are running into as well?

[quick bronze]

With the Pi, yes

[gentle mica]

Gotcha. Thanks.

[quick bronze]

Every week there's a post or two from people with power problems on the Pi

[gentle mica]

One other thing I'm looking at is using a gen 4 echo as the boarder router instead. I just picked one up and set the echo up, but I'm not seeing how to set it up as a thread border router in HA.

Am I missing something?

[quick bronze]

That I can't help with

[gentle mica]

Ok. Well, thank you very much for the info on the power need.

[vapid shell]

The Amazon ecosystem is probably the worst in terms of interop afaik (right now)

To make HA use the echo thread network, you’d need to get the TLV out of it. I don’t know if there is a method for the echo ecosystem yet.

Right now there isn’t a single unifying protocol for provisioning Brs onto networks created by other vendors gear. (https://www.theverge.com/23820078/matters-biggest-problem-apple-google-thread-border-router-interoperability )

So you can merge apple and sky connect because a third party vendor can show the secret key in their app. But you can’t make the apple br extend an existing sky connect network.

[gentle mica]

Ok.

[vapid shell]

And you can’t get nest brs to extend skyconnect unless unless your phone never sees a nest br until it’s first synced up with the sky connect (unless you reset play services and loose google pay in the process)

It’s all a bit of a mess

[gentle mica]

One last question: I see that there is now a firmware for SkyConnect to be Thread Only. But how do I switch it from MultiProtocol to this Thread only Firmware. I'm looking online and struggling to find answers.

[vapid shell]

If you remove the multi protocol add on and install the thread one it should reflash the firmware on the dongle automatically

[gentle mica]

Ah, I thought removing the multiprotocol would put it back to zigbee only.

[vapid shell]

And if should restore the same network settings by pulling them from the thread integration. But I haven’t personally done that so can’t promise anything on how well that works.

[vapid shell]

Even if it did, the thread only add on would install the thread only firmware

Definitely take backups or be ready to reset your devices 🙂

[gentle mica]

Ok. I'll give that a shot now. Will there be a link somewhere to click to convert to Thread only, or will you saying that will happen automatically?

[vapid shell]

Installing the thread (otbr) add on should convert it to thread automatically.

[gentle mica]

I have that installed already.

[vale field]

How do I turn on Thread for my SkyConnect dongle and turn off Zigbee?

[gentle mica]

So just remove mutiprotocal and you think it will rever to just thread?

[vapid shell]

Ni

No

There are several components with similar names

So we must be talking at cross purposes

The multi protocol add on contains an OTBR and the multi protocol firmware

[gentle mica]

Oh, you said "Add On" I was thinking "Integration"

Is that the disconnect?

[vapid shell]

There is another add on that is just OTBR, and it has the thread only firmware

[gentle mica]

So remove the multiprotocol add on and do OTBR add on instead?

[vapid shell]

Yes

[gentle mica]

Ok. I think I'm getting it now. Thanks a ton!

[gentle mica]

Sounds like you're asking about the same thing as me. Did you get what you're looking for?

[vapid shell]

What I’m not sure of is what will happen to the otbr integration; it might be left pointing at the now uninstalled instead of the replacement one. If the switch isn’t smooth that’s what we’ll look at next.

[vale field]

Honestly I'm completely confused after reading the documentation about Thread/Matter/OTBR. I just want to use Home Assistant in a Docker container with SkyConnect and I'm not even sure what components are required. So far I have Home Assistant & a Python Matter Server. Do I need a OTBR instance too?

[vapid shell]

Yes

[vale field]

I'm assuming I need to flash some different firmware to enable Thread and disable Zigbee on the SkyConnect too?

[vapid shell]

Yes

Strongly suggest running HAOS frankly

[vale field]

No can do, I'm all K8s

[vapid shell]

Yeah me too

I hope you like sysctls

Thread does not work well on stock Linux

System-networkd and network manager both interfere with it

[gentle mica]

Ok. I just removed the mutiprotocol and it said it was successful. I see the mutiprotocol add-on is gone now too. Found and installing the OTBR ADD-ON now.

[vapid shell]

I run my HA with Multus and macvlan so it can see my Brs

You need sysctls so that the kernel can see routes from the br

I might have had to enable unsafe sysctls on the kubelets to do it

And that’s still using apple brs so I don’t have to get the otbr working in cluster

[vale field]

Okay how do I flash the SkyConnect without HAOS?

I'm looking at this long ass thread that I don't want to really read

[vapid shell]

That is your fate

Doing what you want to do is not supported

It is not automated

It is not streamlined

It is “fun”

[vale field]

What do you use for the --radio-url?

/dev/ttyUSB0?

[vapid shell]

(I’ve only used haos to flash a sky connect sorry)

[vale field]

Not for the flashing, for the OpenThread Border Router server I mean

I'm going to use HAOS to flash it since it's the easiest

[vale field]

https://openthread.io/guides/border-router/docker/run#attach_the_rcp

[gentle mica]

So switching away from multiprotocol to the thread only seems to have worked great. Devices still all work. But after rebooting HA, now my ZHA integration is showing "Failed to set up". It is setup to work off of a different USB dongle (z-wave and zigbee).

Z-wave stuff is all still working okay though.

Ah, 1 min. I may need to rechoose the radio. need to figure out if zigbee is 1 or 2 on that dongle...

[gentle mica]

Haven't gotten ZHA to work yet, but rebooting the whole system now and will see if that helps.

Ok. Not sure what happened, but that seemed to fix it. I think I'm back in business. Thanks again!

[vale field]

This add-on is not compatible with the processor of your device or the operating system you have installed on your device.

Image homeassistant/armv7-addon-silabs-multiprotocol:2.3.2 does not exist for addon_core_silabs_multiprotocol

Sigh

[quiet stirrup]

You running a 32bit version?

[vale field]

ASUS Tinkerboard

[quiet stirrup]

what one?

the 1st gen one is a 32bit soc, so that makes sense why it dosent work

[quiet stirrup]

https://skyconnect.home-assistant.io/firmware-update/

could try this?

[spice imp]

the matter container is 64 bit only too

[quiet stirrup]

yup

the gen 2 tinkerboard supports 64bit

[main lily]

Does using matter require a bluetooth module?

[quiet stirrup]

no

it uses your phone for the initial bluetooth pairing

[main lily]

Got it and it works with only Ethernet as well right? No need for Wi-Fi?

[quiet stirrup]

your HA instance would prefeably need some sort of ethernet connection, matter basically just uses mdns

[main lily]

Awesome, thank you

[quiet stirrup]

if you run into any issues, just ask in #matter-archived

[verbal gale]

Poshy, did you ever end up documenting this? I've got two Nanoleaf Shapes with about 25 Essentials Bulbs so adding a preferred thread network would help connectivity (I imagine?)

[quiet stirrup]

Nope, dont work for nabu casa nor know the real way to update the documentation so i can only suggest things for them to do, but im more than happy to walk you through it here

[dim pine]

Pretty sure you have to have both, because the HAY uses a Zigbee radio. If that was change in an update, I can try to run it in thread-only

[tiny carbon]

Just found out I could merge thread networks 😮
(adding skyconnect border router to another preferred network)

[half bluff]

Let me know if it is stable for you. My Skyconnect poops out after a while.

At least in the thread integration page

[still quiver]

Assuming you have the latest version of the addon?

Might want to check this out

https://github.com/home-assistant/addons/issues/3189

I've personally never experienced this, but I'm not always loading the thread integration page.

[half bluff]

https://github.com/home-assistant/addons/issues/3192

I am posting on this sub but it seems similar issue

[tiny carbon]

Seems stable enough, not noticed an issue with my stuff

[abstract cloud]

Iphones have Thread now?!?

I don’t really see the point

but whatever extra adoption never hurts

[verbal gale]

Do you just mean iOS communicating with Thread devices? Or is there some news I missed?

[abstract cloud]

I meant that the latest iPhone can connect directly to thread devices

with the thread protocol

[vapid shell]

Weird

Would be cool if they were planning to E.g. power down wifi and cell when you are home and use your thread network for push notifications. (BRs already support 6to4 in theory, so why not).

[spice imp]

In thinking more it could be used for thread(matter) locks.

[spice imp]

Hasn’t that been depreciated?

[vapid shell]

NAT64 even

[tiny carbon]

I mean if phones supported thread then it would reduce the need for Hubs

Unless for like backup

My whole smart home setup runs purely off of matter & thread

[spice imp]

I Can tell you that Apple is not planning on this

Also using your iPhone is probably less reliable than a hub

[thin wind]

Is there a list anywhere of SkyConnect-compatible thread BRs? Wanting to add another BR in order to get some Aqara P2s across the house to stop constantly dropping their signal. 🙃

[quiet stirrup]

Lmao, this could be a recipe for disaster depending on how Apple implement it

[gleaming crystal]

https://www.macrumors.com/2023/09/12/iphone-15-pro-thread-support/

[quiet stirrup]

It’s just “directly”, I hope it just acts as some endpoint, and can’t force a rebuild when it leaves/joins the network

[novel furnace]

iPhone with Thread and devices with Matter support would mean that the devices can be paired to a hub and to 1 or more phones.
Speculating: it might also make it easier for someone to grant permission to a phone without needing a whole "Home" setup. For example, access to garage door and sprinklers.

More speculating: wireless CarPlay could get a speed boost

[quiet stirrup]

doubt, this would happen, dont think thread has the bandwidth to support it

[dim pine]

I don't really see a way to disable the Zigbee side of things, and there is no "Thread" only add-on available as an option, from what I can see

[spice imp]

Your sprinkler probably runs on some kind of schedule. Would make more sense to control it from a hub. Otherwise it will not turn on when your phone is not close.

[quiet stirrup]

it would no doubt only work with homekit for a while, and only act as an endpoint

make no sense for it to be a router, like that could just go so badly

[crude willow]

probably only as an end device, and most definitely not as a hub indeed.

[quiet stirrup]

Yep

[ionic plaza]

Silly question: Can I mesh an Open TBR (skyconnect) with Apple HomePod 2's? My HP2 went offline from time to time for unknown reason so I assume a second lead would help

I found this on HA's doc: "It is possible to align credentials for TBRs from different vendors and have them form a single network together. This allows you to freely move devices between rooms without losing connectivity. To do this, you need to make sure that all TBRs use the same credentials. Currently, this works differently for each TBR vendor."

[vivid notch]

Hi everyone, what dongle should I buy? I have access to eBay, AliExpress and Amazon. Thanks!

[quiet stirrup]

Yes, but atm you need a network key or tlv, which you can only get by having a Nanoleaf device within the apple network.

But the disconnects could be multiple different things

[ionic plaza]

Thx! I did have some! Is there any guide I can follow?

[quiet stirrup]

skyconnect will work best with HA, or if you want to go the more DIY route, this might be an option https://smlight.tech/product/slzb-06m/

actually, that isnt as simple to get thread on

[quiet stirrup]

Not really, can you see your apple thread network in the thread tab of the nanoleaf app?

[ionic plaza]

yes but nanoleaf's devices are under known network

[quiet stirrup]

should be a little arrow on the other side of the network name?

[ionic plaza]

there is no, but I can tap it and enter an detailed infor page with name and extended PAN ID fileds

[quiet stirrup]

yeah, coolio thats what i mean, see the network key there?

just take a note of that, and the channel (prolly 25)

[ionic plaza]

ok

[quiet stirrup]

you got the OpenThread Border Router add-on im assuming?

[ionic plaza]

yes with skyconnect

[quiet stirrup]

coolio, enable the webUI (at the bottem of config area), just use port 8080 and 8081 which i think is default anyways

[vapid shell]

Should add that the community hasn't fully tested this combination, so proceed on the basis that you might make things worse. It definitely works for some people, but there is a possibility that the SkyConnect essentially becomes the only (fully) functional BR on your mesh. If this happens to work, you might not notice the problem at first. This is for boring linux networking reasons - the linux kernel will see skyconnect as an "on link" route, but your HomePod's as "via" routes. A "on link" route is like when you have 2 computers connected together by a switch. A "via" route is when it goes through one or more routers. A "via" link has more "hops", so might be ignored in favour of the "on link" connection. Think of it like this, if you had a switch and plugged into it were 2 computers and a router that went to the internet. The 2 computers have "on link" routes for each other - the traffic goes A -> switch -> B, not A -> switch -> router -> switch -> B.

[ionic plaza]

you mean the Silicon Labs Multiprotocol add on? Cause I did not find a config page for OpenThread Border Router

[novel furnace]

My sprinkler keeps the schedule internally. Having at least rudimentary scheduling onboard is common. If it's disconnected, it still runs. That means sporadic connection would be sufficient. Also if it's Thread + Matter, giving someone access to a few devices without the whole home isn't at all mutually exclusive with having a full time hub as well.

[quiet stirrup]

do you need zigbee?

[ionic plaza]

yes I do

[quiet stirrup]

right

uhh

i have honestly never done it with multi protcol, so not sure how to enable it

[ionic plaza]

This is more like an experimental attempt. If I have to shut down zigbee I could get another Zigbee dongle

[vapid shell]

so first of all, there is a script you can use to make a TLV string which you can put in the HA web interface

https://gist.github.com/Jc2k/b29c63e374382d749546df498b678fd0 is my version but there are a few around

[quiet stirrup]

To do so, click on "Show disabled ports" and enter a port (e.g. 8080) in the OpenThread Web UI and 8081 in the OpenThread REST API port field).

[vapid shell]

second, you need to make sure the channel is the same for zigbee

[quiet stirrup]

but yeah, the tlv is prolly eaiser

[vapid shell]

if your channels don't match, you'll need to rebuild your zigbee network on the same channel as the apple br

[quiet stirrup]

which would be 25 no doubt

[ionic plaza]

thanks guys, I am catching

[ionic plaza]

I am in the web UI now

[quiet stirrup]

coolio, so go to the join tab

then click join on one of the BR that is on 25, you should have 1 assuming you dont have any google nest or amazon products

[ionic plaza]

there are four on 25 ch with the same PAN ID and different hardware address

[quiet stirrup]

you got one homepod/apple tv with a eth port?

oh wait

nvn

click on any, forgot nanoleaf devices show

any on 25, then select network key on the drop down

[ionic plaza]

on it

[quiet stirrup]

obv input your network key from the nanoleaf app, then leave the prefix as it is and click join

give it a few mins, then you should see a topology form, and also if you refresh the nanoleaf app, the homeassistant should show as well

[ionic plaza]

wait, I lost you from here. Nanoleaf only shows Name and Extended PAN ID in the network details page

[quiet stirrup]

oh shit, hmm

your nanoleaf device, what is it?

[ionic plaza]

should I try to repair one nanoleaf gadget?

[ionic plaza]

two essensial bubls older version

[quiet stirrup]

are they thread?

[ionic plaza]

yea, but not matter

[quiet stirrup]

shoudlnt need to be matter, maybe it can only be done with border routers?

im getting some of the new bulbs soon, might need to work if thats the case

[ionic plaza]

I see, any other steps worth a try?

[quiet stirrup]

can you update the bulb to matter? or is that not possible?

[ionic plaza]

I think not, they have yet to announce such plan and released new matter-enabled version instead

[quiet stirrup]

Yeah not a shocker, not too sure at the moment, but it appears that infomation I was on about only seems to be shown if your device is a border router (shapes, lines etc). I’ll do a bit more research and get back to ya tommrow

[ionic plaza]

I only have a 4D which is built on Wi-Fi, cant help to test this for you

[quiet stirrup]

Nah it’s alright, I’ll just test out the new bulbs which should arrive tommrow on a isolated network and see what shows, and if there is any way to capture the info needed

[ionic plaza]

thx

[vapid shell]

Are the nanoleaf bulbs paired to homekit controller or do you control them through iOS right now?

[ionic plaza]

I actually have two, now one for HA via homekit controller tne other via ios

I also tried to pair it via Android APP (it automatically connected to homepod's TBR) as well as Google Home but no master key founded in the Nanoleaf App

[spice imp]

Does someone know how my Apple TV ended up having a thread network named home assistant?

[quiet stirrup]

lmao thats weird

you dont anything strange?

[spice imp]

I set the Home assistant otbr to the same dataset as the Apple TV

But afterwards i have reset the Apple TV

And created a new Home

[snow estuary]

Has anyone else noticed the iPhone 15 Pro has Thread Networking listed in the specs?

[quiet stirrup]

Yes

[plucky moon]

I saw that. But not sure how’s that gonna work

[quiet stirrup]

But how it will act, is still to be seen, it should be a end node, but knowing Apple they will make it a router

But I doubt you can directly commission devices from it, you would still need some hub

[ionic plaza]

some sources told me Google is adding it too

[quiet stirrup]

would make sense, saves always going to a hub to get the latest status on devices

[native tree]

iPhone with thread, could it be possible that this feature allows the secure sharing of the thread TLV credentials by storing it in the iPhone secure element and then allowing apps such as HomeAssistant to access it ?

[vapid shell]

No

Secure element typically holds a public/private key. iOS can ask the secure element to use the private key on iOSs behalf, so iOS never sees the key only the plain text and the cipher text. The key the thread dataset contains is more like a WiFi password. Every device has a copy of the same thread key.

They could use the secure element to store it at rest by encrypting the encryption key with a secure element. But they’d have to decrypt it to send it to the device.

(Unless I’ve misunderstood your idea?)

[quiet stirrup]

It’s worded weirdly, but in all ways I could think you mean, the answer would be no

It would be some Apple exclusive thing, and it wouldn’t reveal anything about the thread Network

[ionic plaza]

On the user side, I assume it would be more efficient as phones can talk directly to thread devices? And if your phone is the only TBR, you can also leave your home secured working offline once you detach your phone from the thread network? But I am not sure if this would really work as expected. I would give it a try when I get my new iPhone

[spice imp]

No, i dont think a phone is a good replacement for a hub, it wont have a stable connection. And its Apple, they are pushing for that their hub does everything in your Home.

[vapid shell]

Even if it did have a stable connection, it still won’t be as fast as having a single server (be it a “home hub” or home assistant) acting as a “concentrator” (is it more efficient for your phone to poll every device in your house when you start the app, or do you want a home hub/Ha instance listening to matter events and maintaining a single endpoint where you app get get the latest state in one request).

We already know that it’s easy to overload a zigbee network with traffic caused HA groups, thread probably not magically immune to that.

If you have no BRs and no automations that run when you are out I can see it as a way of dipping your toes into matter

[quiet stirrup]

No shot it will act as a hub, I get an iPad having that functionally maybe? But by no means a phone

Guess we just gotta wait for someone to get their hands on it, that already has a skyconnect within the Apple network so we can check it out and how its implemented

[ionic plaza]

That’s possibly a big comeback then. Apple has disabled iPads as a hub since the last major release of iPadOS

[ionic plaza]

Yes I see your point

[quiet stirrup]

Must be planning to introduce the thread chip within iPads next major device release

Would make sense after all

[verbal gale]

Alright I have a thread bulb that is showing up twice on the _hap._udp channel of my wifi

It also happens to be the only bulb that is unavailable in HA

[serene prawn]

@verbal gale I converted your message into a file since it's above 15 lines :+1:

[verbal gale]

Oddly enough, it seems that this happens when I provide the preferred credentials. Before that I can pair to the bulb and it is usable.

[vapid shell]

That’s not entirely unexpected (so doesn’t give much clue as to why the bulb isn’t working).

When I was testing preferred credentials I’d frequently end up with 10 or even 20 records for the same device.

They have the same “Id” and resolve to the same ip so I don’t think it should matter.

Id expect one to time out and go away after a while.

[verbal gale]

Okay good to know. Yeah I’m not sure why it keeps going unavailable. It seems like adding these last three bulbs has become a whac-a-mole. As if there’s a limited number of slots remaining, and they’re competing for it

[spice imp]

isnt the reason for that that the srp server is caching the entries and they haven't expired yet?

[vapid shell]

Pretty much

[digital salmon]

How many bulbs do you have already paired?

[verbal gale]

~26?

here's the error I'm getting: Logger: homeassistant.config_entries
Source: config_entries.py:1248
First occurred: 10:16:36 AM (18 occurrences)
Last logged: 3:30:45 PM

Config entry 'Nanoleaf A19 0AH2' for homekit_controller integration not ready yet: failed to connect; Retrying in background

[digital salmon]

Ok, that’s a lot. When Nanoleaf gets their Matter bulbs stable, I plan to buy 35 bulbs (mix of E27 and GU10). But at the moment their Matter bulbs are still not ready for prime time. I already have 35 EVE devices (22 Matter over Thread and 13 HomeKit over Thread devices) and 2 Nanoleaf Matter E27 Essentials paired. All Matter devices are also paired to HA. The EVE devices are absolutely stable. The Nanoleafs are also relatively stable. But they disconnect and connect every now and then. I have 4 more Nanoleafs lying around, but I don’t want to install them before the firmware is stable. Furthermore I pre-ordered 3 Matter Nanoleaf GU10 bulbs.

[verbal gale]

Hmmmm, these are pre-matter Nanoleaf. They're the HomeKit models that have been phased out

[peak ocean]

Damn, the nanoleaf downlights still aren't released yet

[quiet stirrup]

Huh, thought they would be

[ionic plaza]

lol thread keys showed up for a while and disappeared again, Nanoleaf thinks their devices are in an Unknown network. Anyway I have successfully added skyconnect as a router to Apple’s network. All my devices went offline. I just got them back.

They worked well when I unplugged my HomePod, but the topology from the open thread webUI did not display all devices

[vapid shell]

The web Ui is broken

It’s a development prototype that upstream might remove at any moment

[ionic plaza]

Interesting way to such integrations anyway thanks 🙏 I will keep researching on this and see if they can work for a long term

Oh I see

[vapid shell]

That’s why it’s disabled by default in haos

[ionic plaza]

Btw what do you guys want to know most if I have a chance to interview CSA

Want to hear more from the community

[vapid shell]

It can straight up crash your OTBR when your mesh gets larger fwiw

[ionic plaza]

[spice imp]

well its also not thought of as a production tool

[half bluff]

When is new matter spec coming

[spice imp]

they will figure that out this week

[ionic plaza]

That’s not a secret actually

[spice imp]

i think it would be interesting to know where they see zigbee in the future in relation to matter

are they just planning on keeping the two projects running in parallel forever?

[ionic plaza]

Good point, hubs are in an akward situation

[half bluff]

Lol I cannot believe I had my Proxmox HA setup on the wrong type of Hard disk. I just switched it to the proper VirtIO with SSD and its so much faster

[spice imp]

Was it on a HDD before?

[half bluff]

It was on scsi0 or something like that. I changed it to virtIO.

[spice imp]

Ahhh, good to know. I hope in not doing the same

[peak ocean]

my disappointment is immeasurable

[tiny carbon]

Late reply but, are you sure? The rumours seem quite strong and I think they even put it in specs

If phones become full border routers then thread would instantly become solidified as the next big standard over zigbee and z-wave

Also nanoleaf isn't detecting my eve plug

Everything else in my network is detected

It's meant to be a full thread device

[spice imp]

My point is that their idea is not to replace a homepod with an iphone.

An addition yes, but not a replacement

[tiny carbon]

True and I guess a phone doesn't meet the always on mains power requirement anyways

[spice imp]

Yeah exactly. How would you otherwise turn up your heating before you come home?

[spice imp]

but does the plug work?

[tiny carbon]

I pair it with matter to Google home

It said its a full thread device

My nanoleaf mesh extender appears as a child device sometimes so I figured this would too

A thread analysis app would be so cool

[spice imp]

A big selling point of thread is the "self" healing. So if there are better routes around your nanoleaf mesh extender then this should not be a problem

or if it can skip the mesh extender since the connection is currently good enough

So if the plug responds to google home just be happy 😄

[tiny carbon]

Also if Google Hub goes down, isn't home assistant meant to take over with the self-healing?

They're both in the same network

[spice imp]

Depends what you mean with homeassistant

do you have an thread border router running in home assistant? If yes, then yes since its "part" of your thread network

[vapid shell]

I made my thread network massively more reliable…. I moved all my devices back to Bluetooth with a bunch of esp proxies.

[spice imp]

I massively reduced the charging time of my electric car by putting a gasoline engine in it

[vapid shell]

I finally had time to look at the hap reconnect bug. Twice. But the first time I thought it had shown up for me it was that one of my BRs had hopped onto a different WiFi network by itself. Outbound traffic was going out the other BRs, but the return traffic was going to the wrong vlan. Fair enough, not the hap bug, factory reset later and everything working again.

Then I unplugged a HomePod to take on holiday. 2 other brs online. Can see the icmp6 RAs. Can see the routing is all set up. But every single thread device is down. None in service browser. No packets.

I have high hopes for thread in the future but it’s a PITA right now

[quiet stirrup]

Geez

[tiny carbon]

PITA?

[stoic whale]

pain in the...

[tiny carbon]

Pain in the aneurysm

Got it

[vapid shell]

pain in the asparagus

[tiny carbon]

Ouf

Asparagus, is that the purple one that looks like a

[stoic whale]

Yeah, my thread setup with the skyconnect consists of 15 Smartwings shades and one smart plug to act as a range extender and the experience has been... unreliable.

[tiny carbon]

Anyways I've tried the PSKc as a thread admin password for the official group commissioning app and it doesn't work for HAS (Skyconnect)

Mine is just slow

[spice imp]

Ahh, so going back to bluetooth just "reset" your thread network?

[vapid shell]

No I have given up on it

[spice imp]

Ahh

[vapid shell]

At least for my prod network

Will need the radiators to be reliably controllable now we are heading into winter 😅

[spice imp]

Right now i have 3 apple TV's right next to each other. 2 of them in one network ( where i comissioned all my devices) one in another network. At some point one of the apple TV's was in the same network as my home assistant border router. Now over the weekend i left them all on the same subnet and they all joined the same thread network(a different one than the home assistant one) even though they are in different homes.

And it also seemes like they have updated the thread network of all of my matter thread devices

[spice imp]

or not..

But my point is that apple devices do a lot of stuff in the background

[novel furnace]

No connection = no live control, obviously. It does provide a UI that can talk to thread devices and do things like set up a schedule for that heating. Consider also a house that has no other device with both Thread and an Internet connection, either because wifi device doesn't support it or perhaps the user relies on phone data and doesn't even have wifi. The phone then becomes conduit for e..g firmware updates. Basically, if there's a stable border gateway it's not bringing much, but if there isn't then it's handy to have.

[merry bison]

Hello, is it possible to use the NabuCasa SkyConnect Dongle as a thread controller ONLY?
I have a ZigBee controller with which I am happy.

[novel furnace]

Reduce the problem from thread + bt + wifi + phone to just thread + bt + phone.

[novel furnace]

Have they released the thread firmware at all yet? https://www.home-assistant.io/skyconnect/

[merry bison]

I believe they released A firmware update, but it was buggy in that it disabled ZigBee support. I don't believe that was intentional.

Although it is what I want in this case, I'm not clear if they support it in software. Ie, do the ZigBee components need to be active in haos, even though they don't work?

I know I can have only one ZigBee controller active at once.

[vapid shell]

You use the multiprotocol addon in haos and you get firmware that does thread and zigbee. You install the OTBR addon instead and get the thread only firmware. So yes.

[inner torrent]

According to this PR yes (https://github.com/NabuCasa/sl-web-tools/pull/7)

I'm assuming it's made it into the addon as well

[winged sapphire]

i'm a bit confused by this too. am i supposed to set up the zigbee integration in home assistant just to get thread working on the skyconnect?

[inner torrent]

No you can use the web tool to flash whichever firmware you want before putting it into service I believe

[quiet stirrup]

Or just use HAOS and it does it itself when you install the right add-on

[dense adder]

Cross-posting here because I think it's actually a thread add-on issue: My HA instance is completely unresponsive and I'm not sure how to debug, any ideas? My only hints are that I just installed the thread/matter add-ons and now, when I restart my rpi manually, it's only responsive until it says "please wait for zha" (or similar), at which point it hangs and I can do nothing. I can ping the IP address of my server, but it's just an infinite spinner when loading in a browser in incognito. I waited a solid 5 minutes after restart, restarted again, and nothing is changing.

[dense adder]

filed a bug here: https://github.com/home-assistant/core/issues/100580

[dense adder]

Got everything working after some settings tinkering (not sure whether that was necessary); now I want to actually, ya know, use thread.

Ideally, I'd like everything on one fabric. It seems like there's a preference for the "home-assistant" network, but nothing is actually on that; my Nest devices are on their own network, and OpenThread has its own.

How do I unify these?

[inner torrent]

Presumably you're using a sky connect as a BR hence the separate network? You can add the skyconnect to the nest network, but not the other way around.

If you don't have any devices in your home assistant network yet it's pretty straightforward; make your nest network preferred, then click on the three dots for your sky connect and select add to preferred network

[dense adder]

Interesting, is there no way to set the nest devices up from scratch and have them join the skyconnect network?

[inner torrent]

I don't think there's any way to force your existing routers into your home assistant network, no. Same goes with most BR manufacturers that I'm familiar with.

I'm not sure what you'd gain by doing that even if you could. By having your skyconnect on your nest network, the sky connect takes the "leader" role which allows you to change the channel number.

[dense adder]

Got it, thanks!

[ionic plaza]

wried things happened, there are seconds of delay when I change status of a thread device, and the second attempt would be fast. Leaving it for a while, the delay would come back. I am rolling back and see if this issue would disappear.

I even suspected it tried to communicate via bluetooth after failures through thread but no clue from the logs founded

I asked CSA leaders about the issue of meshing networks/devices immigration among fabrics from different brands. And it would not be a compelling thing as part of Matter specs and is up to firms to decide on the compatibility

[spice imp]

Are you running HomeKit or matter thread devices?

[ionic plaza]

HK over thread

[spice imp]

Ahh, i have also had some that just went back to Bluetooth, even though there was a “full thread device” next to them

And they where behaving similar to what you are explaining

[ionic plaza]

interesting

[spice imp]

You mean the sharing of thread credentials?

[ionic plaza]

kind of what you mean, but also about Zigbee

[spice imp]

But what was the answer for Zigbee?

[ionic plaza]

same thing

these quotes are not ready to be published, please keep them here just for discussion. I will share the full article once it's live

[spice imp]

That it just will keep on running parallel?

[ionic plaza]

you mean for the long term? Yes zigbee will go on as many firms have invested 10 years on it. I asked that too

[spice imp]

Could have imagined that 😄

But its probably a bit strange to have two basically competing projects within one alliance

[ionic plaza]

Zigbee solution is more budget-friendly I think easing the competition

Just like how Xiaomi and Aqara parted away

[spice imp]

but doesn't that kind of contradictory? One of the goals of Matter is to unify smart home protocols. At the same time CSA is activly developing ZigBee. For now it still makes sense, since Zigbee just works and is "widely" adopted, but in the future this might change.

Im not saying that Zigbee should be dropped, but its more an conflict of interest

[ionic plaza]

yes, but to be clear, that answer is just for the media, so if there is any plan to replace zigbee with thread, I assume they won't say it on record

Let's hope they mean it, and I won't really worry much if zigbee would be dropped in the next decade.

[spice imp]

Yeah i totally agree on that.

Companies would chop their heads 😂

[spice imp]

I think competition is healthy. Its just not that “competetive” if its within the same organisation

[tiny carbon]

Can a matter over thread device be controlled by two networks?

Let's say a smartthings hub and a Google one?

[spice imp]

its gonna be over the same network

[tiny carbon]

WiFi network?

[spice imp]

Yes

And same thread network

That is bridged to it

[tiny carbon]

How to I bridge border routers from two companies? 🤔

[still quiver]

nanoleaf fW update. Will try it tonight:
3.5.41
September 18, 2023

What's Changed:

Further connection and stability improvements when communicating with the Nanoleaf mobile & desktop app
Fixed rapid button press responsiveness on Lightstrip
Improved colour calibration for Scenes and Screen Mirror

also, they updated their OTBR on their wifi devices:
9.2.3 (2023-09-18)

• Improved Thread Border Router performance for Matter and HomeKit Thread devices
• Minor bug fixes and improvements

[quiet stirrup]

still cant use the shapes as a matter device, its still locked into apple/homekit

[still quiver]

don't worry, you're not missing much. things have not changed with the new updates 🙂

[spring bramble]

Did they even announce that ? I believe they have no plans to actually update them to Matter right ? Just use them as Border Router...

[still quiver]

correct its a thread border router only. If you have shapes device, is it not showing up in on your thread panel?

[winged sapphire]

ok, i got my skyconnect stick because it sounded like the way to go for adding thread/matter devices, but i'm stuck. i'm running haos in proxmox, so i plugged the stick into the server and forwarded the whole port to the ha vm. i don't see any indication that haos recognizes a new device. nothing showed up in dmesg, and lsusb looks pretty empty. do you have to do something special to get home assistant to connect to a usb device? i'm using default_config, so i should get the functionality that detects when new devices are connected, right?
i also installed the OpenThread Border Router add-on, but i don't know which "device" to specify. currently it lists /dev/ttyS0 thru S3 (i'm guessing that figuring this out will depend on the above issue)

[spring bramble]

Using the SkyConnect stick or HA Yellow is not yet the recommended "way to go" route for thread based devices in HA. See our documentation and at this point use existing Apple or Google border routers only as that is a stable route. In the meanwhile we're working on stabilizing the SkyConnect/Yellow route but its not yet there, and running it virtualized adds another layer of difficulty. Note that for WiFi based Matter devices (or bridges, like Aqara and switchbot), you do not need a Thread radio at all, that will work out of the box.

If you're willing to take the additional technical step and use the SkyConnect for Thread:

• Only HAOS is supported, so not the container install.
• make sure to correctly pass the full usb device from proxmox to HAOS (if you're running HAOS virtualized)
• use the stick either for zigbee only or for thread only, multiprotocol is still very unstable.
• you can only utilize the HA Thread network from a recent Android phone running the HA Companion app, iOS is not yet supported to commission devices to the SkyConnect

[winged sapphire]

maybe i'll try the non-thread questions (like usb detection) on other channels then. i didn't see any options in the OpenThread Border Router add-on to specify the thread-only firmware, does this happen automatically once you choose the right device?

[vapid shell]

There are 2 addons that provide OTBR instances. That one ships with the thread only firmware. The “multiprotocol” addon also provides an OTBR and the combined thread and zigbee firmware

[tiny carbon]

I assume so, or you could flash it yourself but I don't think that's supported here. I might be wrong

[near python]

I'm curious, is there a way to join HA to an Alexa's existing Thread network? HA asks for a network key, and I don't know how to get that. The Alexa app wants either a QR code or a numeric code (11 or 21 digits).

It's mostly out of curiosity, I don't even know what that would actually accomplish if it were possible.

[inner torrent]

Do you mean to add HA to an existing network as a border router?

[near python]

I actually don't yet have any Thread/Matter switches or lights, I was just wondering how to do this (in the OTBR GUI), and what that would even do for me (assuming I got some Matter devices).
ARGH, can't paste a screenshot, but it's the "join" tab of the OTBR GUI.

[near python]

As far as I can tell, the Alexa app doesn't give that key anywhere. The only way to pair a Matter device to Echo is by scanning a QR code for the device, or telling the Alexa app some 11 or 21 digit number for the device.

[inner torrent]

You need to have the "Border Router" part of the OTBR to be able to connect to your existing thread network.

See here https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/thread/

You can otherwise still control thread/matter devices without the OTBR via the relevant integration (homekit, Alexa, etc)

[near python]

"Currently, this works differently for each TBR vendor." -- I don't see anywhere to get that info for Alexa. Perhaps there's no way.

It's all a moot point when I don't actually have any Matter devices though. Maybe it can sync automatically once I have a matter device.

[inner torrent]

Okay I think I understand better, you just want to use HA to communicate with the existing BRs. I don't have personal experience with Amazons BRs but found this

"When I added a thread matter device, I was given a network key that I use then to connect the device in SmartThings. After adding the thread device in Alexa, go to settings. then select “other assistants and apps”. This will give you the thread network key needed to connect to SmartThings or other thread compatible hub. "

From this reddit thread

https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonecho/comments/13mci34/comment/jkwmxh6/

So it seems Alexa might not generate a network key until you add at least one device

[near python]

Ah, that explains it. Maybe I'll get a device just to play with.

[tiny carbon]

It should show up on list of border routers as "add to preferred network"

Altho I think only apple and Google ones work

I'm going to test aeotec tomorrow

[quaint osprey]

Hey guys, any news about Thread on Apple devices?

Such HomePod or Apple TV

[quiet stirrup]

Only that they have added _tlv which helps in certain situations

[spring bramble]

What about that ? An Apple-created Thread network works very reliable nowadays and can be used with HA, as long as you use an iOS device to commision to HA.

[quiet stirrup]

I think the question was more orientated towards what was new in the latest major iteration of apples software

[spring bramble]

ah... don't know.. did not yet discover something but others maybe have ?

[vapid shell]

There were suggestions TREL was coming which would be amazing if true

Only have one HomePod to hand and it does not have TREL in iOS 17 so far

Still hoping it will be there when the other HomePod is back online

[twin saffron]

TREL shows up for me in the discovery app for my ATV and all HomePods after updating to iOS 17. Haven’t really seen an improvement in my nanoleaf bulbs randomly becoming unavailable until I reboot HA as I had hoped though.

[spice imp]

isn't treal only useful for communication between thread devices?

[vapid shell]

Do you have other non TREL Brs? SkyConnect, nanoleaf etc

[digital salmon]

I also have only one AppleTV 4K latest Gen 3 2022. I see the following service trel udp service with an mDNS browser.

[digital salmon]

What needs to be configured to get trel working with home assistant?

[vapid shell]

If Apple have shipped it, it will just work between their devices without you doing anything.

[vapid shell]

My understanding is that it would help connect a non mesh device with a mesh device. See eg https://github.com/openthread/openthread/discussions/8722 where a sleepy end device is on the mesh connected to a mqtt/ha combo off the mesh. This fixed mesh split oscillation for this user with 2 Brs

[vapid shell]

(Basically if you put a SkyConnect on there with Apple brs and it’s the preferred router (eg because it has an on link route) then the outbound packets will never go to a TREL enabled router, so you won’t see any benefit ever)

[solar depot]

I've installed OTBR in a docker container, but can't seem to get the integration to connect https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/otbr

[spice imp]

Yeah okay, i can see how it improves the network in these cases.

You have probably explained it already, but if i have 2 border routers on the same partition, will the packages intended for a device that has the best route to br 2 always be send to br 2?

[vapid shell]

My understanding is that for routing purposes a TREL link is like a thread radio link but with a higher priority and more bandwidth

So in theory it would pick br -> br -> sed over br -> ftd -> sed?

[spice imp]

Yeah, thats also how i understand it. But my thought as if there already is some mechanism to talk to the right border router directly when communicating from the outside

[vapid shell]

I have ideas on how to do that but they are all hacks

[spice imp]

Yeah okay, in that case trel should actually increase the reliability a lot in reality

[vapid shell]

Yeah

[spice imp]

They should make a thread spec for idiots so i can actually understand whats written in it 😂

[vapid shell]

The cleanest thing I can think of without trel would be a tap device that was configured for the whole thread /64, and something that worked like openvpn but instead of encapsulating packets in a tunnel just rewrote the outbound MAC address and fired them out of eth0. And then monitor inbound packets to track a map of device ip to border router Mac. So last br to transmit a response on behalf of a device is probably closer to it.

Crap explanation because phone and I need to go but hopefully enough to get the idea?

[spice imp]

Yeah i get the idea

[twin saffron]

Nope, I do have a skyconnect but switched that over to the Zigbee only firmware and put all of the nanoleaf bulbs back on the Apple network and then removed them from HomeKit and added to HA. Everything works great until randomly 1 or a few bulbs becomes unavailable. Right now I’m working around it by using an automation to reboot my HA if it becomes unavailable for a few minutes. Obviously not great that I have it rebooting on me a few times a day but it’s the best I can do until I get rid of these damn nanoleaf bulbs. If there was just a way of getting them available again in HA without having to reboot, that would be awesome. Using the reload service doesn’t seem to do the trick unless I’m doing something wrong with that.

and when I say reboot HA I mean the quick restart, not rebooting the whole host. I used to have to do that a while back and that was much worse but now the quick restart works for bringing them back online.

[vapid shell]

Rebooting the whole host was needed for some of the os level bugs we found ages ago (fixed by haos 10) where stale routes would get lodged in the kernel permanently

I suspect homekit_controller has a bug where it can’t reconnect after certain mesh events but it never happens for me when I have time to debug

Last time I had a problem my BR had just decided to switch wifi networks by itself

[twin saffron]

Is there some secret command I can run or something when it does become unavailable that I can try to see if I can force it to reconnect? 🙂

[vapid shell]

And after I unplugged a BR and neither of the spares took over I sort of gave up and moved most of my gear back to Bluetooth

[twin saffron]

yeah i'm tempted to just switch out a few light fixtures to solve most of my problems. The bulbs that have the biggest issues are the ones that have 3 bulbs very close to each other in 1 light fixture.

[vapid shell]

Reload should do it. There is nothing stronger we’ve kept to ourselves.

[twin saffron]

Is the reload supposed to be performed on the light entity or something else?

and sorry just to be clear, is it "HomeKit Bridge: Reset accessory"?

wait, that's for homekit bridge, how do you do a reload on a homekit controller entity?

sorry, dumb question, I know how to do it via the UI but it doesn't work there and is there no way to make a service call to do the reload?

[worn plinth]

is there any sort of semi-updated list of thread/matter devices released? some kind community-updated list? it seems like there was an initial handful of devices and then not much - or i missed them. i'm mostly waiting for some reasonably affordable temperature sensors 🙂

[inner torrent]

Someone posted this earlier and it seems to be fairly comprehensive

https://www.matterdatabase.com/

[hollow basin]

Hello everyone I try to set up my thread network and want to look at the web ui of my Open Thread Boarder Router, but the option to set the port of the web ui is missing.
What do I need to do to set this port?

[vapid shell]

The “web ui” is not supported by the open thread border router team, is not meant for home users, might be removed at any time, might crash the entire border router on large networks and the topology view is highly unstable (usually missing data). Are you sure you want to continue?

[covert gazelle]

if anyone else in the future runs into this problem, you can burn a different USB product ID to either device (I did the zooz) with this method, moderate pain in the ass if you don't want to do hacky things with USB passthrough https://community.silabs.com/s/article/cp210x-device-customization-with-simplicity-studio-v4

[hollow basin]

Yesterday I managed to join the sillicon.otbr to my apple home thread network. I just want to know If i can control the thread devices on my apple network with home assisistant, especially the devices that dont support matter

[vapid shell]

You could have done that before

But the web ui won’t help you see or do that either

Non matter devices (HomeKit?) you pair them to iOS, make sure they are on thread, unpair them, then pair them to home assistant. Ideally use the eve app to make sure iOS sees them as on thread first, and don’t factory reset. Some battery powered devices from eve are buggy at the unpair step. You have to do it over Bluetooth. It’s annoying and takes a few goes but it’s how I got 7 eve thermos’s connected to Ha via a HomePod

[hollow basin]

I know that way but I lose some of the features that the HomKit Bridge doesn't support (yet)

[vapid shell]

I am talking about HomeKit device not bridge

And if you don’t want to use that method and they don’t support matter I don’t know what protocol you are planning to use?

Right now the only 2 thread capable integrations in HA are HomeKit device and matter

[hollow basin]

Maybe I can explain you my situation with an example a bit better. I have a Nanoleaf essantial light strip (Thread / Not Matter version) and I connected it with the way you suggested to Home Assistant and it works like a charm - also paired it to Apple Home with HA-Integration. But my wife doesn't use home Assistant only HomeKit and so she can't use the feature (adaptive lighting / circadian lighting) wish she loves. I thought there could be a way (by merging the apple home thread network with Home Assistant Thread network)that she can use the native adaptive lighting function in apple home, but I can still use this device in Home Assistant. Do you understand what I mean and sorry I'am no native speaker

[vapid shell]

That’s not possible I’m afraid

There can only be one controller in charge of a HomeKit accessory

Either iOS can control the Nanoleaf or home assistant can

The only workaround would be for either your wife to use android (it could control the light through the native Nanoleaf protocol instead of HomeKit) or to make a new integration

[hollow basin]

Do you know if there are plans to support the adaptive lighting feature with the HomeKit-Bridge? I have a philips hue lightstrip (zigbee) and managed to get this to work with homebridge and a plugin. Do see that in Home Assistant too would be perfect

[vapid shell]

No, I’m one of the maintainers and I don’t have time to work on new features right now. I have a back log as long as my arm for when I do find time.

Most changes landing in HomeKit in Ha right now are stability and performance improvements from the other maintainer

[hollow basin]

Okay thank you. But back to the original topic. Is there any advantage that the homeassisant.sillicon otbr and the apple border routers share the same network?

[quiet stirrup]

depends if you got enought info to make a TLV or not

https://gist.github.com/Jc2k/b29c63e374382d749546df498b678fd0

[hollow basin]

I created a TLV datset with this script yesterday and imported it looks like all border routers are on the preferred network

[vapid shell]

IMO, not right now, the OTBR stuff is frequently called experimental by devs working on matter stuff. And HomePods are frequently called out as one of the more stable thread implementations.

So you are adding instability into what the devs think is the most stable BR platform

[hollow basin]

So do you recommend to undo it? How can I do that?

[vapid shell]

It works fine for some people. It’s unstable for some people. You will probably be nullifying the gains from TREL in iOS 17.

Turn it off

[hollow basin]

I removed the HA OTBR but the Apple Network ist now still the "prefered Network" - is this what you mean?

[vapid shell]

That’s ok

But if you re-add the otbr it’ll probably rejoin the apple network now

[inner torrent]

I'm not sure if you're aware, but there is an adaptive lighting integration via HACS that works with any lights you can control in HA that works pretty well. Its not the "native" homekit adaptive lighting, but I use it with my nanoleaf matter bulbs and it works fine

[hollow basin]

Thanks, I know that, but my wife is HomeKit-only 😅

[quiet stirrup]

Doesn’t Phillips hue now support matter? Give that a crack, but honestly not too sure about adaptive lighting

[vapid shell]

Lol

#matter-archived message

[vapid shell]

I found this: https://community.home-assistant.io/t/adaptive-lighting-support-for-homekit-ios-14/227225/9 - doesn’t seem like it progressed any further.

How it works is the controller builds a schedule for the next 24 hours and uploads it to a characteristic. The device then follows the schedule to adjust your lights.

So for that to work HA needs to build the schedule and upload it to the device (if you want to use the native device support)

It would be kind of weird to rely on iOS to upload the schedule to HA to execute

[still quiver]

In those brief few hours where I was running my Hue Lights with matter it actually worked pretty well

[vapid shell]

If you bypass iOS then you just end up with the adaptive lighting integration

Unless there are devices from multiple vendors implementing something like HomeKits adaptive lighting we won’t be able to standardise it so it won’t be in core

It’s not something we can just map to a switch or a button or a number entity so hard to deal with in core without going through architecture review

[winged sapphire]

another dumb question about the skyconnect openthread border router. does it need to be plugged into home assistant to keep working? or can it work when powered elsewhere? like is it the border between the thread network and home assistant's wired connection when plugged in? or can it be the border between the thread network and wlan?

[vapid shell]

The SkyConnect is only part of the border router. The “openthread border router” is a piece of software running the show - typically as a home assistant addon.