#SMLight SLZB-06 (M) specifically for thread?

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young cliff
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Finally getting more into smart home and decided to go all in on thread / matter.
Do you think the SMLight SLZB-06 are a good choice specifically as thread routers?

I already watched several reviews & blog posts but all of them seem to focus on zigbee.
Would you get the normal or M version? (texas instruments which seems to be older vs silicon labs chip)

Also how does HA handle multiple of them?, i am planing to place a few of them across the house to have redundancy

From what i have seen so far they really look nice, poe powered, small, fully local webui, but are there better options? (Have also looked at one from GLINet but not really sure)

grand gorge
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Read this post from balloob on Reddit:

Founder of Home Assistant here.

Do not run Thread Border Routers using Ethernet/Wifi using Serial over IP. It is not stable and will result in bad Thread networks. We recently added this warning also to the documentation to spread this information: https://github.com/home-assistant/addons/blob/master/openthread_border_router/DOCS.md#configuration

We have also reached out to SMLight to stop promoting this as a feature of their products to avoid more people running into issues.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/MatterProtocol/s/e3qnI6EEZ9

Reddit
balloob's comment on "Home Assistant Setup: Can I Unplug the SMLigh...

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GitHub
addons/openthread_border_router/DOCS.md at master · home-assistant/...

:heavy_plus_sign: Docker add-ons for Home Assistant - home-assistant/addons

haughty current
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As regular "thread radios" using the USB connection, the SMLight SLZB-06 are fine. Just dont use them through wifi or ethernet. They shouldnt even promote that.

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BTW: They are not border routers. They are just zigbee/thread radios

young cliff
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ok thanks i will read through that,
now i am more confused :p

young cliff
haughty current
young cliff
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ok thanks,
yeah i just read the posts from above, the thing is i am running everything including ha as a vm on my cluster which is in metal racks so directly attaching usb radios ususally isnt the best.

But i can have multiple open thread boarder routers right?
So i could technically get a bunch of raspberries or sth with poe hats and attach usb thread dongles to them and then add them all HA

haughty current
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I have done a lot of testing lately and a pi 3 or 4 running HAOS with only/just the OTBR, ethernet connected is the best choice for BRs. It seems maybe a bit overkill to run a full HAOS stack but in the end that is what makes it easy as you get the OTBR add-on which is supported by us and auto updates through the HAOS ecosystem. I tried running it on a pi zero 2w but that has just not enough memory to startup. A pi 3/4 with 2gb would probbaly be best. 1gb could be enough if you manage to disable all memory hungry integrations fast enough before the system gets killed by OOM.

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So, yeah, your idea with the raspberries and poe hats is going to work great!

young cliff
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ok thanks a lot

haughty current
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One other option to maybe consider is a border router from GL-Inet such as the S200 or the Aqara M3 Hub

young cliff
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oh wait so the glinet is a full boarder router not only a radio like the smlight?

haughty current
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That makes a HUGE difference. They run the OTBR + radio on the same device

young cliff
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and i could add multiple of them to one HA instance over the network

haughty current
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I'm not so sure about the S20 from them btw as those are ESP32 based - that needs some real world testing - It could potentially work but I'm careful until I have some real life data from them

young cliff
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ok thanks, yeah i will just get one and test it

nova wyvern
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fwiw, I did end up ordering a SLZB-06M and I'm gonna try to build espressif's sample border router code to run on esp32 chip. If I get that working I'll share what I learn :) (But note that wile the example border router code does work, but it's far from a user-friently "product" like some of the other recommendations)

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(I am currently using the ESP32 TBR devkit and have found it to be ok)

young cliff
# nova wyvern fwiw, I did end up ordering a SLZB-06M and I'm gonna try to build espressif's sa...

after looking more and more into thread and discovering https://openthread.io/guides/border-router/espressif-esp32
i was wondering the same thing, if you cant just put the full otbr image on the esp32 inside the smlight.
Also having only "dedicated boarder routers" would mean i only need the integration for thread and not the open boarder router addon on my homeassistant, correct?

OpenThread
ESP Thread Border Router  |  OpenThread
haughty current
nova wyvern
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dang, looks like my SLZB-06M got lost in shipping. guess I'll go bug the sender about it…

olive lodge
haughty current
grand gorge
olive lodge
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Hmm interesting might do that with a pi3b and a sky connect. Would be a bit cheaper than the aqara hub

haughty current
olive lodge
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And there's no issues with having 2 HA instances on the same network correct?

haughty current
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nope, you can just give the other one a dedicated name.

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in the networ settings you can set the hostname

olive lodge
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Great thanks for the info. I've been reading about the tests you've done with having dedicated wired border routers for a stable thread network. One thing I was wondering is let's say you have a dedicated wired border router per floor, adding wireless border routers shouldn't add instability to the thread network right? I have a few nest hub maxes which I use a lot and don't really want to get rid of them to only have wired border routers

haughty current
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Just try it out is my advice. If you run into troubles then simplify it. Or the other way around. Start simple and extend from there

grand gorge