Buildung a matter network

[humble citrus]

Hi,
my HA server is in my basement and I am planning to buy a few sensors now which are communicating via Matter.
I already have a few Shelly Smartplugs S Gen3 which are able to communicate via Matter and Wifi.
In my HA I have integrated them via Matter. Will they repeat the Matter signal to extend the range for my sensors?

Asking because in the Matter integration it says "Network Type: Wifi" for the smartplugs

[sonic vapor]

you are using matter-over-wifi

matter-over-wifi just uses a regular wifi network (with ipv6 support) it is not a seperate signal.

matter-over-thread is however a seperate network type.

[humble citrus]

Ahh ok, thank you for clarification. Almost expected that this wont work. Damn it😄

Are there any other useful options to expand the range of thread besides smart plugs?
Since I am using only Shelly smartplugs I don't want to start buying other smartplugs now. Would like to keep it consistent

[sonic vapor]

what are you using as your thread border router?

[humble citrus]

The HA ZBT2

[sonic vapor]

cool, thats be a decent base range but to build the thread mesh out you need devices that work as thread routers/repeaters. generally this is stuff that is mains powered (not battery) and yeah smart plugs tend to be a decent option for this as they are plugged in and generally easy to put around the place.

you have to be careful when buying "matter" devices because you specifically need "matter-over-thread"

matter is a bit confusing and marketing from some companies is shitty about explaining it.

saying a device is "matter" is like saying the fuel an engine needs is "liquid". its technically correct but doesn't really help.

[humble citrus]

All right, thank you very much for the explanation. That has been very helpful. I already had the Shelly sockets and was hoping that I could use them directly for this purpose.
Now I have to see whether I buy two or three thread sockets or find something else that can transmit the signal.

A light switch or shutter switch should work too correct?

[dim citrus]

light switches are normally inside electrical boxes, so they often don't have very good signal. They will act as repeaters on most switches which have a neutral wire, but often aren't the best option.

[sonic vapor]

"most" devices that are hardwired are routers/repeaters. its not 100% true but most of the time is. although getting 1 of a device to make sure before buying a bunch is not a terible idea unless you can find exact specs or details from someone elese.

[dim citrus]

smart bulbs and smart sockets are usually the best choices of device to expand a thread (or zigbee, for that matter) mesh network.

also, the zbt-2 was made to have a design that's hopefully appealing enough that you could have it out in the open rather than hidden in a basement :)

[sonic vapor]

smart plugs tend to be decent but yeah if its something inside a metal box is gunna be limited by that.

[humble citrus]

Unfortunately, my server rack is in the basement, where it is coolest and the fan noise is least disruptive.
Therefore, I had no other choice 🙁

But then I'll probably buy another 2-3 sockets, which will then serve as repeaters.

Thanks a lot guys

[dim citrus]

hmm, yeah, and the zbt-2 doesn't do network connections. You could consider relocating it by connecting the zbt-2 to a small fanless computer and running the otbr on that computer.

(HAOS on a raspberry pi works to do that, for example)

[humble citrus]

So would the entire HA instance run on the Raspberry Pi? Would it also be possible to position a Raspberry Pi with the ZBT-2, which functions purely as a router, while the HA instance itself remains in the VM? I no longer trust SD cards completely and like to have my backup processes for all critical services.

[dim citrus]

no, you wouldn't run the entire HA on the PI. You'd only run the OTBR add-on there, and then run everything else on your existing VM.

I only recommend using HAOS as a base os (rather than some other linux distro) because it has a bunch of networking config done for you to make sure that matter/thread works correctly.

[humble citrus]

Yep already switched from docker to HAOS in my VM.
It's much more relaxed now and doesn't require as much maintenance.😅

[humble citrus]

Alright, guess I am gonna buy a new Raspberry Pi now and will try that.
When setting up HAOS, is there anything specific I need to bear in mind to ensure that it does not function as a second separate server? How does this work?
I can no longer remember the installation process in detail.

[sonic vapor]

personally i would not run haos on a rpi to act as just a thread border router. i would run a stand alone OTBR container on a standard distro

[dim citrus]

It would be running as a separate HA server; you'd be using HA just as a management web interface. Just make sure it has a unique hostname, and don't add any integrations that aren't needed.

[sonic vapor]

i am sure this would work but i really dont like the idea of using haos for this. having 2 HA servers is bound to causes issues at some point.

[dim citrus]

not really? I guess they'd both show up as options to connect to in the companion app which might be a bit odd, but there shouldn't be any actual problems as long as they have different names/hostnames.

otbr in docker on another distro does work, and there's also interesting things you can do with esp32 boards to build a thread border router, but that would be harder to do initial setup and more work for ongoing maintenance.

[sonic vapor]

there is no benifit to over just running the container with its webui on a standard distro

[dim citrus]

but… one-click updates in the HA web ui for ZBT-2 firmware and OTBR add-on sure are nice :)

up to your philosophy of managing stuff which option is best for you.

[sonic vapor]

"if you set it up correctly it causes only a couple of strange things with no real problems" vs "it works but you have to occasionally do updates manually"

[dim citrus]

fwiw, my thread border router is in a state of "occasionally i fire up esp-idf and see if a new git revision of esp-thread-br code builds and works, and if it doesn't i manually roll it back"

but I have a backup with the otbr add-on in haos so i have something that i don't have to worry about as much ;)

[humble citrus]

I'll just think about how to implement it until the Raspberry Pi arrives.

@sonic vapor Do you know if there are already complete docker compose files out there? Couldn't really find anything besides the installation guide from openthread.io which isn't a docker compose

[sonic vapor]

here is a tool for you to love: https://www.composerize.com/

converting a docker run command to compose made easy 😛

[humble citrus]

Oh my gosh. That's absolutly insane. How the hell did I not know this.
That would have saved me so much time and stress if I had known that beforehand.😂

Thanks a lot

[sonic vapor]

lol, it's one of those tools that you wish existed until you find out that it does exist.

[humble citrus]

@sonic vapor Hi, I've got the new Raspberry Pi which is going to be the OTBR in combination with the ZBT 2.
Composerize gave me this yml file

services:
border-router:
container_name: otbr
network_mode: host
cap_add:
- NET_ADMIN
devices:
- /dev/ttyACM0
- /dev/net/tun
volumes:
- /var/lib/otbr:/data
env_file:
- otbr-env.list
restart: always
image: openthread/border-router

I've already changed "/dev/ttyACM0" to "/dev/serial/by-id/usb-Nabu_Casa_ZBT-2_1CDBD45E5730-if00", which is my ZBT2.
Do I have to change anything else?
And which baud rate does the ZBT2 use for communication?

[dim citrus]

it'll be 460800, that's pretty standard for thread RCP devices.

[humble citrus]

Hmm strange
Do I have to do anything else to get the ZBT-2 running? My HA can't find the OTBR via the Ip address of the Raspberry on port 8081

[dim citrus]

when configuring the otbr integration in ha, you need to provide the otbr api port, not the otbr web ui port.

[humble citrus]

Yeah I know
But 8081 should be the default API port of OTBR and I didn't change anything

With curl http://localhost:8081/node it works. Am I missing anything?

[dim citrus]

well, it needs to work from a different machine, not just localhost