Pairing Nanoleaf Essentials | Home Assistant | Page 1

blazing owl Sep 19, 2025, 1:46 PM

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I can't for the life of me seem to pair my new Nanoleaf Essentials downlights with HA.

Setup
HA running in docker
Google Home as thread border router
Nanoleaf shapes as thread border router
Openthread router as thread border router

All of the above routers tried \ restarted \ selected to no change

Installed matter server in docker and added to HA
Thread also added to HA

Devices pair successfully to nanoleaf app, then reset and try to pair to HA, no go

Opening devices -> matter -> add in HA and scanning the QR code of one of them goes
Discovering -> connecting -> Credentials -> Then says "looking to see if connected to <wifissid here> which makes no sense since these Essentials are only bluetooth \ thread.

Anyone got this setup working ?

fickle shell Sep 19, 2025, 4:05 PM

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Try using Nanoleaf app to get it hook on Thread then enable Matter pairing mode in the App

blazing owl Sep 19, 2025, 4:46 PM

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Where do you find said "matter pairing mode" ? I can only see thread network under device settings

whole pendant Sep 19, 2025, 6:54 PM

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The reason your phone will say "looking to see if connected to <wifissid here>" is because once the bulbs are connected to thread, the phone needs to talk to them via the thread border router. So it's "phone -> wifi -> thread border router -> bulb"

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if there is a communication issue where your phone can't talk to the thread border router, the process can fail at that step.

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The nanoleaf app is actually pretty good for diagnosing thread issues. If you go into "More > My Devices", the devices should show a little orange T icon if they're connected via thread. It'll show a Bluetooth icon if the thread connection is not set up. If you go into "More > Thread Network" it should show your thread network and thread-connected devices.

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From the My Devices page, If you open the device settings from the dotsvertical menu, there should be a "Connect to Matter" button which you can try to use to add the device to HA.

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Also, make sure you use the Nanoleaf app to update to the latest firmware before pairing with HA. New devices probably won't have any updates available, but if they've been sitting around in a warehouse for a while they might have an old buggy firmware.

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If the nanoleaf app knows about your thread network (It should show the "Home Assistant OpenThread Border Router" on the Thread Networks page), then it should automatically connect devices to thread when it pairs with them. For devices that aren't on thread, there should be a "Connect to thread" option somewhere on the device settings page.

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(Note that I'm referencing the android app - some of the behaviour and controls might be different on the nanoleaf ios app)

blazing owl Sep 20, 2025, 6:39 PM

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I'll grab the screenshot of the essential when I'm in range

blazing owl Sep 20, 2025, 8:28 PM

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whole pendant Sep 21, 2025, 1:44 AM

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interesting. so you have two thread networks (you should probably fix that, it's better to have one), and the bulb is connected to the nest thread network. however, your phone is unable to talk to the bulb over thread via the nest thread border router - and therefore it's falling back to using the BLE connection.

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you have several nanoleaf thread border router devices which are in the nest thread network, which i guess is probably why the nanoleaf app is preferring to use that one

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(i should note that I'm also using an esp32 devkit as my thread border router, and I've had no issues using it with nanoleaf devices)

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well, there were issues with older versions of the esp thread border router firmware - the number of supported mdns services was too small, which meant that after 3 or 4 devices, new ones wouldn't be able to pair via matter. They've corrected this in an updated default configuration.

blazing owl Sep 21, 2025, 7:15 AM

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Yes, i have tried to use the openthread border router instead, but the nanoleaf app does not want to use it, I also tried adding the openthread to the nest network, but everything behaved exactly the same.

I'm also using the esp board for my openthread.

I have 9 essential bulbs, currently one connected to the nanoleaf app.

My home assistant does not have bluetooth, is that why I can't pair matter devices? I thought it would do all that Bluetooth / thread communication via the thread border router?

little canopy Sep 21, 2025, 11:09 AM

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So as it stands:

Your Nanoleaf App seems to use the Nest PAN as preferred network
Your Home Assistant is explicitly set to use the Openthread router PAN as preferred network

[Your Home Assistant doesn't have to have bluetooth because you commission your devices into the thread network with your mobile which does have bluetooth. After that being done your devices can be controlled via thread.]

What would I do?

Set the preferred network in HA to the Nest PAN. If you are then able to re-commission your devices and then start to see them in your matter controller, you could decide to let your OTBR join the Nest PAN.

blazing owl Sep 21, 2025, 1:17 PM

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I'll retry that then, but even with nest as the preferred network I could not Commission them before

blazing owl Sep 22, 2025, 9:34 AM

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blazing owl Sep 22, 2025, 10:22 AM

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Still no go it seems

little canopy Sep 22, 2025, 4:12 PM

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what happens when you turn all BRs but the nest Hub off? are you able to reset and commission a device to HA?

blazing owl Sep 22, 2025, 4:17 PM

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Let me give that a go

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Not very impressed by matter so far, but I'm suspecting this is more of a poor error message / log issue, I see thousands of those a year in IT anyway

little canopy Sep 23, 2025, 11:46 AM

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what do the logs show actually?

blazing owl Sep 23, 2025, 1:10 PM

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which logs ? Matter server container, ha server container, nanoleaf ?

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Matter server does not appear to log anything at all during the attempts

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Doesn't look like anything fun in home assistant logs either

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little canopy Sep 23, 2025, 4:25 PM

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Hmm, that's not something I have seen before (in the matter server logs). All I know is that the "Dummy-2" thread is usually taking care of mDNS resolution stuff, and that seems to be failing here. Something fundamentally seems to be missing. Are you somehow blocking mDNS traffic (on a network level or maybe between your containers)? Does it show you anything when you open the "/config/zeroconf" path on your Home Assistant web UI?

blazing owl Sep 23, 2025, 5:51 PM

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No blocking happens, all containers are running in host mode, no host firewalls, all devices on a flat layer 2 network

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little canopy Sep 23, 2025, 8:12 PM

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Have to admit, I have no further idea...

blazing owl Sep 23, 2025, 8:36 PM

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Me neither, which is why I'm puzzled

blazing owl Sep 24, 2025, 5:36 AM

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At this point I was considering spinning up a HAOS instance on a pi4 just to see how that behaves, but I'm too appaled by the idea

fickle shell Sep 24, 2025, 11:34 AM

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Only bare HAOS installation is recommended for Matter

blazing owl Sep 24, 2025, 11:55 AM

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Recommended yes, but I see no reason why it shouldn't work in a pretty straightforward fully open container environment

fickle shell Sep 24, 2025, 1:34 PM

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HAOS has patched network components in the OS to get Matter work properly

blazing owl Sep 24, 2025, 3:28 PM

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I'll spin up an instance just for the lulz then, if it works there I'll have to tweak it or merge the instances with a haos just for matter until I can figure out this nonsense

ivory patio Sep 24, 2025, 4:42 PM

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I had these bulbs for a while, for full transparency i have replace them. I use HAOS, with ORBR addon.

For me how i got it to pair was these steps.

Pair to Nanoleaf app
Update frimware.
Factory Reset
Pair to HA

what i could never get working is

Nanoleaf app and HA coexist
Pairing without update and factory reset

I would like to go back to thread/zigbee/zwave light bulb. However i can't find reasonably priced option and works out of the box, Currenly i have WiFi Bulbs 🙁

blazing owl Sep 24, 2025, 4:46 PM

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Yeah, I have updated the firmware of all of them, but no pairing to HA will work so far

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I have 9 btw

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Reason I went with these was the width to replace old ones, also the height, if I didn't have a height issue I would easily do Hue instead

ivory patio Sep 24, 2025, 4:49 PM

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i feel your pain, i got up to 20 before replacing them. they simple too painful to pier and get working. i also had all sorts of issues keeping stable after pairing.
Hue pricing kills me every time seem them 🙁 maybe i just cheapskate when comes to light bulbs.

blazing owl Sep 24, 2025, 4:50 PM

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I used to have 90+ smart bulbs in my old house, new house is a lot of downlights, so I was hoping these nanoleafs would be easy peasy since the wifi panels are great

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because I still have 35 or so downlights to replace

ivory patio Sep 24, 2025, 4:51 PM

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me too, i heared great things about there panels. i really wounder if more thread more then anything else

blazing owl Sep 24, 2025, 5:02 PM

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See some users are doing macvlan for the matter container, might try that as it doesn't seem to pickup the correct interface on boot (eno1 instead of bond0)

ivory patio Sep 25, 2025, 5:39 AM

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I never understood the difference between macvlan and bridge network in docker, but if that works great to know

blazing owl Sep 25, 2025, 7:24 AM

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a bridge means that it shares the interface with another interface, i.e to get to the other side, pass through here, as such the interface will be obscured behind another interface
macvlan actually gives the container its own mac address so that an IP address can be provided and its traffic can be isolated like a layer2 device
then there is ipvlan which has both l2 and l3 modes, where the former will act similar to macvlan and respond to arp requests, wheras the l3 one will behave like a routed interface

blazing owl Oct 5, 2025, 3:18 PM

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I have now spun up a pi4 with haos and matter server

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Same error, not working

fickle shell Oct 8, 2025, 9:41 AM

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blazing owl

that's odd, there should be the button to let you add to Matter once you get it attached to a Thread network

blazing owl Oct 8, 2025, 10:41 AM

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Really wish there was

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And since I have two nanoleaf panels and google Home hubs I'd assume those would make this a breeze

blazing owl Oct 8, 2025, 11:56 AM

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Update, I started playing around with my APs, (Aruba 635 \ 615) and suspected something was blocking ICMP or mDNS based on google hits, and yes indeed, they are blocking something but I cannot find a setting for it.

Turning off the radio on those and connecting an old AP (deco bridged AP) both lets me add the devices to google home fine and also "connect to matter" appears in the Nanoleaf app

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Connecting to HA does not work still though it gives me

`ASESession timed out while waiting for a response from the peer. Expected message type was 33``

fickle shell Oct 9, 2025, 12:49 PM

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If it works with Google now, HA seems to be the one with connectivity issues

Do you have a proper device to run HAOS in VM or bare installation? it would be a good comparison test, network manager could be the troublemaker

Like I mentioned before, only HAOS is the officially recommended installation for Matter integration

blazing owl Oct 9, 2025, 5:21 PM

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I spun up HAOS last week just to test, and zha stole my Zigbee coordinator and made me repair my entire Zigbee network

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So, no, but I'll be trying out with macvlan again now that I got it working with a dumb access point

#Pairing Nanoleaf Essentials