What gateway for OH+Thread (Matter)

[magx2 (Martin Garland)]

Hey,

I want to buy new smart devices from IKEA that supports Matter (with Thread). From what I investigated Thread protocol requires some additional gateway that will connect Thread devices with HTTP.

I’m stuck at finding proper gateway device, because there are so many of them with different functions. What I’m looking for is a device that will support this scenarios:

1. All rules will be done by OH (Matter, Zigbee, Supla etc. devices)
2. Gateway will only pass the commands from/to Thread devices
3. OH will have Matter binding installed

I found some advanced (expensive) gateways, like Aquara, but from what I read they are doing similar job as OH (execute rules, register devices, etc.) and this is not what I want.

I found some simpler gateway GL-S20 Thread Border Router. Will it work as a proper Matter gateway for OH? How should I then configure Matter plugin in OH? As a bridge or client?

[clark (carlos kantt)]

You can read this thread.

Matter Binding

Thanks a lot for sharing this setup! By following your instructions, I managed to pair Aqara U200 lite to OH. I have to admit, process was not that easy and I’ve spent 3 evening to figure out all the bits and pieces. There were 2 major things that were not mentioned which were causing me a lot of problems: Missing mention of mDNS setup requirement - I have OpenWRT router and maybe it is a standard on consumer hardware - in any case, due to that, I had a lot problems 11 digit code contains onl…

I think this is the least expensive way to get a thread border router

Matter OTBR ESP32‑S3 Web Flasher

I have started to read about thread but I have not actually used it yet, so I cannot help with my actual experience

[magx2 (Martin Garland)]

Hmm, creating own router with ESP looks promising. Thanks!

[Max_G]

Hmmm, I thought all that is required for a Matter device to function is:

1. a Matter device
2. a WiFi AP, with IPv6 enabled
3. the OH Matter binding

… that’s it?!

[clark (carlos kantt)]

That is what you need for matter over wifi usually used for mains powered devices, for matter over thread, usually used for battery powered devices you need a thread radio or in technical terms a thread border router.

[OMR (Ole Morten Rønning)]

IKEA launches Matter devices 2026 - will we need a hub?

With the great help from @gd35 and AI I finally succeeded in pairing an Ikea Bilresa Dual Switch on the OTBR and also pair it to the Matter Binding in OH: Only HW needed was a re-flashed Conbee II/III USB Dongle … Only SW used was OTBR CLI tools + OH. No phone App. [image] The next one will go a lot faster … It was quite a journey …

Paired Ikea Matter over Thread Bilrea using just a Conbee dongle and the OTBR SW.

[Lolodomo]

For thread border router, I shared my first experience with the Aqara M200 hub. I will add more Thread devices in the next weeks and share how it works.

Not a very cheap solution but not an expensive solution also.

Aqara Hub M200 as Thread Border Router for Matter

Here is my first experiments using the M200 Aqara hub as my Thread Border Router for Matter. It was first a big challenge to start the Aqara Home app on my Android phone because creating an account is failing for certain email addresses, at least in France. I was forced to use my gmail.com email to be able to receive a verification code by email ! I received nothing when using a mail in domain free.fr Adding the Aqara hub in the app was not as easy as I would imagine, it required several tries…

[Larsen (Locke)]

The ConBee stick is definitely one of the interesting alternatives for anyone who wants to avoid an additional TBR-device (and hasn’t got the skills or time for the esp32-path).

I’d like to second the kind request for a detailed description of your next pairing process . Any hints regarding the firmware? ot-rcp-cb2_0x01010700.GCF seems to be the latest?

And: Has anyone tried the ZBT-1 or ZBT-2? They’re from the HA-world but should work with openhab too (as it’s just matter).

[pacive (Anders Alfredsson)]

I’ve been looking at the Sonoff MG21 dongle, it offers a multi-PAN firmware to have both ZigBee and Thread simultaneously on a single USB device.
But it appears that at least for HA, a special add-on is needed to communicate with the stick, but it’s a bit unclear to me from reading what the add-on actually does and how that would translate to OH. It’s not that expensive, so I might just buy one and experiment a bit.

[esdeboer (Eric de Boer)]

Good luck with the MG21, it took me forever to get the plus version to work with just Thread, the documentation how to setup this outside of HA is very scattered.

For multiplan I followed Building Otbr Locally | Multiprotocol Solution on Linux | OpenThread | v2.7.2 | Silicon Labs

For multipan you need the cpc daemon to connect to the dongle GitHub - SiliconLabs/cpc-daemon: Co-Processor Communication - Daemon for Linux

For multipan I was trying with the following settings OTBR_AGENT_OPTS=“-I wpan0 -B eth0 spinel+hdlc+uart:///dev/ttyUSB0?uart-baudrate=115200 trel://eth0”

It did connect with the dongle but I couldn’t get matter to pair, I read somewhere that was an issue with the multipan, so I tried with only the open Thread implementation, which worked after many tries (so it might have something else that was misconfigured)

Thread only works for me with these settings OTBR_AGENT_OPTS=“-I wpan0 -B eth0 spinel+hdlc+uart:///dev/ttyUSB0?uart-baudrate=460800 trel://eth0”

I still couldn’t get the openHAB matter binding to get pair my Tado X radiator valves, so I did that manually with chip-tool Working with the CHIP Tool — Matter documentation

[OMR (Ole Morten Rønning)]

Writeup finfished:

Pairing Matter over Thread devices (Ikea et al). Only HW needed; Conbee II or III

Note: when the otbr restarts, the paired child is lost! I will return when I have figured out why. So for now this is just for playing with one or a few devices. Also note: I needed a 1/2 meter USB extension on the otbr Conbee stick to separate it from the Zigbee stick. Without it, the Thread network was unstable. As mentioned here: IKEA launches Matter devices 2026 - will we need a hub? - #38 by OMR, I successfully paired a New Ikea Matter Dual Switch with the openHAB Matter addon. The only a…

[pacive (Anders Alfredsson)]

@esdeboer

For multipan you need the cpc daemon to connect to the dongle GitHub - SiliconLabs/cpc-daemon: Co-Processor Communication - Daemon for Linux

Yes, I noticed that’s what the HA add-on provided.

Thanks for the hints, I expect it will be a hassle to set up, as with all things that’s not really mature, your experience will certainly be of use!

[Chad_Hadsell]

@Max_G Matter can be over WiFi, but it can also be over Thread. Thread is a slight variation on Zigbee, and requires its own hub/router if you don’t have one.

[Lolodomo]

A very important paragraph to consider from Matter binding documentation:

Thread devices require a Thread Border Router and a bluetooth enabled device to facilitate the thread joining process (typically a mobile device). Until there is a supported thread border router integration in openHAB and the openHAB mobile apps, it’s strongly recommended to pair the device to a commercial router with thread support first (Apple TV 4k, Google Nest Hub 2, Amazon Gen 4 Echo, etc… ), then generate a matter pairing code using that ecosystem and add the device normally. This will still allow openHAB to have direct access to the device using only the embedded thread border router and does not interact with the underlying providers home automation stack.

[esdeboer (Eric de Boer)]

I would say that recommendation is mostly there to indicate that you should pair with an external border router first. The manual pairing with OpenThread Border router would do exactly the same as the commercial devices (quite some of those commercial devices even run OpenThread)

While I would not recommend compiling it yourself as I did, using the docker setup of the OpenThread border router and following the write up of @OMR it should work fine if you already know how to use docker and have some experience with other dongles