Hi, I have been running home assistant for a few months, but as yet I don't have any Zigbee, Z-Wave, or Thread devices. I want to buy some Smartwings blinds and add them to home assistant and I just want some advice on which protocol to pick. I would like to go with Thread because it makes sense to me to start my home on the newer protocol that is meant to have improvements over the older ones. However, the Smartwings website says that the Matter/Thread motor is not compatible with home assistant, which made me think twice about ordering them. Are they really not compatible, or do they just say that because Thread is still in Beta?
I also read in the docs and HA blog that the recommended setup uses an Apple or Google Thread device as a border router. I don't have these, so I was planning to buy a home assistant Skyconnect. I do have an android phone though.
I run home assistant in a docker container, which the documentation says is not supported with Thread.
So it seems like my setup is not ideal for Thread, but I am assuming that in the future Thread will be more supported and more easily compatible. But I still like the idea of starting my network with Thread as much as possible to be on the newest technology and for future proofing. So, my question is:
Even if it's not recommended and is more difficult to setup, is it possible to get Thread Smartwings blinds connected to Home assistant using the Skyconnect and home assistant in a docker container? I just don't want to order the blinds and find out they won't work at all.
#Will I be able to connect Thread-based Smartwings blinds to HA in Docker with a Skyconnect?
topaz plaza
tired hinge
If you are running in docker, you're out of luck, sorry. You may get it running on your own if you manually apply the kernel patches and such or with some help of the community but its entirely unsupported. My advise: just spin up a VM with HAOS (or run it on a spare pi or whatever) - that will work great out of the box
hollow parcel
to be clear though, I don't know why smartwings says that it does NOT work with HA. I installed several smartwings matter over thread blinds using HA Yellow's border router.
lost jolt
fwiw, i don't see anywhere on the smartwings site where they explicitly say that home assistant isn't supported for the matter motor; but also they don't call it out as one of the example supported platforms either.
(hilariously, in their 'how to choose smart motors' page, they put the 'works via zigbee with home assistant' logo on the z-wave motor)
hmm, i guess the matter motor's compatibility with HA is marked with a "/" in their compatibility chart at the bottom of the page.
faint halo
both smartwings and yoolax use tuya boards the FW is just more custom. I pulled the fw from one of the zigbee controllers, and looking at the hex there are tuya references.
yoolax had to send me a replacement shade motor, and the replacement didn't even have their fw, it's straight up tuya branded fw.
topaz plaza
If you are running in docker, you're out of luck, sorry. You may get it running ...
Ok that's helpful, thanks. I'll probably buy the thread blinds and give it a go in docker, but if it's too hard I'll spin up HAOS and start migrating across. At least I know there's a path forward to make it work if I buy the thread blinds. And I can start going down the thread road instead of Zigbee (for now, at least).
topaz plaza
hmm, i guess the matter motor's compatibility with HA is marked with a "/" in th...
Yeah, that's exactly what I'm basing it on.
hollow parcel
I will say however that the blinds I successfully added to HA work as expected but recently I cannot add any matter over thread devices ( <#1300936294104567839 message> other than to first add them to homekit and then share them with HA. 🤷♂️