Every ecosystem has issues with the IKEA products
Just look on reddit or search youtube. The complaints are endless
I went to return a G95 and E14 last week and the sales assistant on the returns desk said they’d received hundreds of returns for the new products over the past couple of months
I would agree, no platform is free from issues
My problem is not just with Ikea. Homey is just terrible at all Thread.
Ive tried all sorts, turned off Alexa devices, removed all thread routers except my primary, added extra thread plugs to improve mesh, changed wifi channels and zigbee channels and moved my hubs to try reduce cross talk. Nothing.
Currently I use SmartThings as my main hub and bridge it all with HA and its rock solid and fast.
Im holding out for Homey to fix things but with it working so well now i do question the point now.
I share both the problems and frustrations expressed here. Matter is a mess, and the mess belongs both to CSA and the people who sell devices that enable it. It’s a camel designed by a committee of the self-interested. I don’t think it will always be a mess… in time, things will improve, but it is absolutely unacceptable to me for Athom to wash its hands of the problem. If they can’t fix these issues they owe it to the people who paid them money trusting Athom’s assurance that their products worked with matter and thread to explain why they are incapable of helping. And they need to do that as often as is required until the problem is resolved, or we are all convinced. Personally I believe that there is an actual Homey Matter-controller/session/discovery problem, not a basic Thread mesh problem. Comparing Apple Home and Homey it seems that Apple home is better at reestablishing expired CASE sessions, though what it is about Homey I don’t know—stale sessions that are not properly renegotiated, or a failure within Homey to recognize when a CASE has technically expired, or ???
I have about 165 devices in my smart home, of which more than 100 are thread. The mesh is well balanced with more than enough routers. Apple Home tends to be significantly more robust at handing mesh failure issues than Homey. My solution to Homey’s persistent thread problems (and sometimes matter-over-WiFi too) is to restart my Homey Pro. Once a day tends to do it. That causes total recovery of all thread devices, though not the WiFi ones, of course, and my thread devices will self-heal during the day, if necessary.
I like Homey a lot. At its core, it’s a really good product. They, and everyone else, are having problems with Matter. But ignoring the possibility that they have a part in creating the solution isn’t acceptable, unless they can convince the rest of us that they have a perfect implementation of the Matter spec they purport to implement, and I for one, have my doubts.
I have started restarting my homey shs daily as well. Since I have done that I have had not device unavailable errors for three whole days!!!
I had similar issues and only restarts would fix the problem (but not always, smart lock was stubborn). I used Homey support (AI bot) to troubleshoot and it suggested to connect every Thread / Matter device to Homey and then to Apple Home (or better yet: use the matter app to bridge everything to apple home).
I didn’t try it yet because I need a whole day without kids and my wife around to migrate and troubleshoot so that everything works when they get home. Might be worth a shot though.
Also, the second suggestion of the support AI alleviated all my problems: connect your homey pro via ethernet to your network, not WiFi. Worked for all my thread issues (so far). Don’t ask me why, the AI / support bot gave an explanation but I don’t remember. However, for me, connecting ethernet was enough to get it working and Apple Home is still my primary Matter & Thread controller.
TLDR; Homey has (more) problems with Thread / Matter when you both use Homey over WiFi and use Apple Home as second controller, but especially when Apple home is the primary controller. Try to avoid this (ethernet!) and you might be able to eliminate most, if not all, of your problems.
The biggest single issue with Thread is IPv6
People need to stop tinkering with all these pointless hack fixes on a day to day basis
If your networking stack is the issue, then nothing else you do (ethernet/more powered devices) will have lasting improvements
Nothing Athom does will fix IPv6 on your ISP router
Then how to set it up corectly? What to pay attention at?
I had some Onvis Matter over a thread plugs that I was not using. I got them into Apple Home and plugged them near areas where I thought I may have problems with the signal not being strong. It immensely helped my network. I have solid brick interior walls with plaster and lathe over that, so sometimes things get blocked.
I cannot get it to work. I have a Google Nest Hub v2 as a Thread Border Router, on my Android phone, it says credentials are synced to my phone, but when I try to add Ikea lamps or motion detectors (only matter devices I have) all goes well until it tries to add them to Homey. Then it says the Thread Network cannot be found and no suggestions how to fix it. According to this guide by athom, I should be good to go. The Google part of the Matter set-up goes well, the final step is in Homey and fails.
I have no issues adding matter devices to Google Home, but for the life of me, I cannot get them to connect to Homey.
Are you trying to add devices using the same QR code/pairing code or have you generated a new pairing code from within Google Home?
IMHO I would add devices to Homey first and then bridge them into Google Home
You probably have two separate Thread networks?
I have one thread network (created by my Nest Hub I guess). I have no thread options in Homey SHS. I’ve tried adding devices to Homey via the Ikea app, the generic Matter integration and via generating a passcode from a working device in Google Home that has been successfully added to Google Home.
First I get a message from the Google UI saying device connected, then it switches to the Homey UI and says ‘Unable to connect. Could not reach the (Thread) network. Please restart your (Thread) router.’
I use onvis plugs too. They have made my Threas network solid on SmartThings never had a device drop off. Just a shame they keep dropping off Homey every single time. .
I have no other thread network active so there is no clash and ipv6 is fine also. Its a homey issue
Yes mine have been pretty solid since I added them
For me, I have to be almost on top of my HomePod mini(my thread router) for the device to pair with homey. After that I can move it away, but it still needs to be near a thread device
What is your ‘Preferred Thread Network’ on the Homey app, on your phone?
Do you have mDNS enabled on the container which has Homey SHS installed?
Do you have IPv6 turned on, on your ISP router?
Do you have a firewall on your ISP router?
There are quite a few things you need to check before pointing the finger at Homey.
I don’t use Homey SHS with Thread right now, so I can’t diagnose your exact problem, but I have 70 Thread devices all working absolutely fine with Homey Pro 2023.
I use a GLiNet Flint 2 as my ISP router in PPPoE mode as it has a very strong 2.4ghz range.
Hi JMDPC
I had the problem that every morning at 2:00 all matter over threads failed. Some have become active again after booting the Homey itself, others only boot after the 2nd time and others after starting all associated apps.
A message to the Athom support then showed that Emin error should be fixed with a still coming version. I installed the version Homey 13.2.0-rc.2 via the Homey Developer Tools and my mistake was history.
If it is not so tragic for you to install a not yet official Homey version then I would try it.
Greeting
The Frank from Frankfurt
Everyone has a firewall on their router I hope (it’s enabled by default on almost any router nowadays at least), if you don’t, anyone from the internet (WAN) can access internal (LAN) devices.
The Thread option in the Homey app doens’t work when you have Homey SHS. There are more leftovers from the physical homey UI that don’t work in SHS (like LED ring).
mDNS is enabled, ipv6 is enabled on my router, but my ISP doesn’t do ipv6 if you have your own hardware. IPv6 seems to work, I can ping devices my NAS on it’s ipv6 address.
I have made some changes this morning, but I don’t know if it’s progress or a step in the wrong direction. I also use adguard and ipv6 DNS was still pointing to my router, breaking access to my containers. So now, I have adguard also listening on ipv6, which works for my containers, but Homey is doing something different now.
When I now share a device in the Google Home app with a code and enter the code in Homey for a new matter device, Google says: device connected, Homey starts searching for the device and finally says: unable to connect to the Matter device. The Thread Router message is either gone, or it doens’t get as far as before.
Snippet uit mijn docker logs:
Homey [log][ManagerApiLocal] IO homey:manager:drivers:emitPairingHeartbeat
Homey [log][ManagerApiLocal] IO homey:manager:drivers:emitPairingHeartbeat → Success 204
Homey [log][ManagerApiLocal] IO homey:manager:drivers:emitPairingHeartbeat
Homey [log][ManagerApiLocal] IO homey:manager:drivers:emitPairingHeartbeat → Success 204
Homey [log][ManagerApiLocal] IO homey:manager:drivers:emitPairingHeartbeat
Homey [log][ManagerApiLocal] IO homey:manager:drivers:emitPairingHeartbeat → Success 204
Homey [log][ManagerApiLocal] IO homey:manager:drivers:emitPairingHeartbeat
Homey [log][ManagerApiLocal] IO homey:manager:drivers:emitPairingHeartbeat → Success 204
Homey [log][ManagerApiLocal] IO homey:manager:energy:getLiveReport
Homey [log][ManagerApiLocal] IO homey:manager:energy:getLiveReport → Success 200
Homey [log][ManagerApiLocal] IO homey:manager:drivers:emitPairingEvent
Homey [log][ManagerMatterLocal] [Pairing:0x3c8103b4] Start
Homey [log][ManagerMatterLocal] [Pairing:0x3c8103b4] Got status update: SEARCHING (-0x01, Unknown)
Homey [log][ManagerMatterLocal] Updating PAA certs
Homey [log][ManagerMatterLocal] DCLs: ``https://on.dcl.csa-iot.org``. Git: false
Homey [log][ManagerApiLocal] IO homey:manager:drivers:emitPairingEvent → Success 204
Homey [log][ManagerMatterLocal] [Pairing:0x3c8103b4] Starting pairing with ip
Homey [log][ManagerMatterLocal] [Pairing:0x3c8103b4] Pairing to device…
Homey [log][ManagerApiLocal] IO homey:manager:drivers:emitPairingHeartbeat
Homey [log][ManagerApiLocal] IO homey:manager:drivers:emitPairingHeartbeat → Success 204
zigbee:controller:node:27675 source route update [ 14523 ]
Homey [err][ManagerMatterLocal] [Pairing:0x3c8103b4] Finished with error: Could not pair node (Matter code: TIMEOUT (0x0032))
Homey [err][ManagerMatterLocal] [Pairing:0x3c8103b4] Could not stop pairing: Could not stop pairing (Matter code: INVALID_DEVICE_DESCRIPTOR (0x0033))
Homey [err][ManagerMatterLocal] [Pairing:0x3c8103b4] Failed: Could not pair node (Matter code: TIMEOUT (0x0032)) (at stage: unknown)
Just tap on the bot icon again, and you can view the Q&A of you and Mr. Bot
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So Homey bot “says” Do not use Homey wifi?
Pretty cool.
Obviously it says that to sell more Ethernet Adapters
