Thank you for the detailed explanation. That clears a few things up for me I think. So if I’ve understood correctly, if I’ve got a bunch of TBRs already (I have several HomePod Minis) then I can just ignore the Homey Thread network entirely and just add Matter over Thread devices to Homey using the “Connect via Android/ios” option and the devices should then be controllable by Homey via my existing Apple Thread network?
(And, to link this back to the topic, an SHS could potentially control Matter over Thread devices without the Bridge having Thread support, as long as the user already has a Thread network with TBR(s) and adds devices to Homey using that option).
Indeed, that will add it to the Apple Thread network and the Homey Matter controller/server. If you also want to expose the device to e.g. Apple Home, you can use the multi-admin feature to generate a QR code so that the device can also be added to Apple Home.
It also works the other way around, if you originally connected a device to e.g. the Apple Matter controller, you can get a QR code to link it to Homey.
This is the same way you can use e.g. Home Assistant Green without any dongles, just use an existing TBR. A lot of people have one of these Google/Apple devices.
In principle it’s a really nice system, both Thread and Matter are kind of agnostic to the communication protocol and the network protocol respectively. E.g. over Thread you can do: Matter, ESPhome, or HomeKit as the communication protocol. And with Matter you can use WiFi and Thread as the network protocol. But it is so easy to misconfigure. I have had the following issues so far:
Initially I had a total mess. My idea was to have a separate Thread network for HA, ignoring the existing Apple and Homey networks. Device onboarding worked terribly - turned out that my iCloud Keychain had collected many credentials over the years and for probably the same reason added devices to the wrong network sometimes. In addition to that, HA and Apple had separate networks but ended up on the same channel (I learned that Apple always(?) uses channel 25). Which explains the onboarding flakiness + why devices dropped out all the time, etc.
Then I cleared all my Thread credentials from iCloud Keychain, nuked the HA network, started over the HA Thread network on a different channel. This worked ok until somehow I or my iPhone managed to merge the Apple TBR into the HA Thread network. This also led to devices losing connection all the time, most likely due to the TBRs being part of the same network but having different channels.
Finally, I started over once more and nuked everything and put the HA TBR on the same channel as the Apple TV again and put them on the same Thread network. So far, it has been stable.
I am not sure how a non-technical person would clean up this mess. Zigbee is so much simpler in that respect.
Annoyances I encountered along the way:
You can disable the TBR on the Google TV Streamer (possibly other Google devices as well), but you cannot on Apple TV/HomePod. Even removing them from the Home app doesn’t disable the TBR itself. So only having a Homey or HA Thread network is just a dream. My advice is - if you have an Apple device with a TBR, just use that, or add it to the same network if you have an additional TBR like HA + dongle.
You cannot disable the Zigbee/Thread radio on Homey Pro. This clutters a channel and it’s generally annoying to see it pop up in various places.
AFAIK you cannot change the Homey Zigbee channel, except by resetting the Zigbee network on the developer site and cross your fingers that it picks a better channel this time.
Completely at the beginning, I used Homey as a TBR, but it was not very stable. Probably because I already use a bunch of Zigbee devices and it’s a single radio.
I’m running into many of the same issues at this moment right now. I have an SMHUB with Thread radio and OTBR, but that has never worked properly. I’ve also use a Docker container for hass-otbr that uses said radio over the network, which somewhat worked, in that I as able to successfully pair an ESP32-H2 with it.
However, pairing my Nuki lock keeps on failing. I’ve paired it with my HomePod before, so it should work, but not with my preferred network.
I’ll try and see if I can set it up the same way that you have.
connecting devices, yes.. but becoming a member of an already existing thread network no
Due to this shared hardware, Homey Pro currently can’t join an existing Thread network (such as one created by Apple Home or Google Home), as it may conflict with Homey Pro’s Zigbee network.
Is there also a way to install it on the Pi via Docker, or is the SD image the only option? I’d like to run it on my Pi 4 which already runs some other stuff like a few NodeJS scripts
My question (linked to the discussion above): the SHS page says Thread is not supported by Homey SHS. But can I still add a Matter over Thread device to Homey SHS by using the “Connect via Android/iOS” option in the Homey mobile app and using existing Thread Border Routers (HomePod Minis in my case)?
This is the same way you can use e.g. Home Assistant Green without any dongles, just use an existing TBR. A lot of people have one of these Google/Apple devices.
