One of my SmartThings Station hubs has updated to Firmware 58.10 so now I have the option to unify my Thread networks.
At home I currently have 2 Thread Networks. One created by a ST Station and 1 created by an Alexa Echo Gen. 4 speaker.
My question is how do I combine them?
In the ST mobile app I go to the Station > Settings > Manage Thread Networks. It only shows the network created by the Station. If I click the “Unify Thread network” I get and option to “Share this hubs Thread network and allow other Border Routers to join it”. When I hit next I get a “Start Sharing” button. When I press the button I get a 9 digit code or I can generate a QR code. It says to use in in the “other service app.
This is where I get stuck. What do I do with this code? I don’t see a way to add it in the Alexa App.
Thread 1.4 credential sharing must be implemented only by SmartThings at the moment.
The only way to unify networks would be the old Thread 1.3 way which implies using the preferred network in Android/iPhone and factory reset one of the hubs so it hopefully joins it.
Check if SmartThings is the preferred Thread network in Android settings (or the equivalent in iPhone) and then factory reset the Echo so hopefully will join SmartThings. Or viceversa, but I guess you don’t want to factory reset ST hehe (maybe just removing Thread devices will do though and reset is not needed)
Anyway, are you sure you want to include a WiFi based Thread border router in the mix? Well, the Station is too so never mind.
So my Echo gen. 4 is the preferred thread network. I only have 2 Nanoleaf bulbs connected to it so I could easily reset it. The should make my Station the preferred network. Then I can try re-adding the Echo Gen. 4.
I don’t think it works that way, back in the day SmartThings didn’t store the credentials so they’re probably not there.
Do you have many Thread devices in SmartThings? You could try removing them and in the Unify button select Join network, ST should be able to read the Echo credentials and join it.
There’s a third option which is what I used but that involves a Home Assistant virtual machine.
I don’t think you need to reset the Station, but for the Unify - Join it says there cannot be devices connected (I assume Thread?).
Since you have Home Assistant you can make the ST network your preferred one even if ST didn’t write it. And then you could try the Echo reset. But maybe try first removing the one Thread device from ST and see if the Join option enables or not.
If I go to the ST app and look at “Manage Thread network” for my Station, the only network I see is the one from the Station and the only option I have to Unify is to “Share this hub’s Thread network…”.
A little research with our friend chatGPT leads me to believe 1) there is no way to unify my Thread networks because they are all not at Thread 1.4; and 2) there is no way for the non-ST TBRs to be TBRs in ST.
So, am I stuck with 4 Thread networks and 4 disparate sets of TBRs until the other ecosystems catch up to ST?
When I was trying this I chose my google thread network but it ignored that and I ended up with my ST V3 primary and Aeotec Hub secondary unified with the same ST thread network.
Both my Eero router and Tuya bridge show as 1.4 on Discovery (iPhone) and on Matter Utilities. The result when I try to unify from my V3 is the same as yours……
Would seem to be the case, borne out by @Andrew_Bartlett post where both are ST/Aeotec.
I take it that is still in the context of unifying networks? ST can, of course, use Thread networks formed by other TBRs and other TBRs can join the ST hub formed network. How much heavy lifting can is doing in that sentence (twice) is another matter.
I think of the terms primary and secondary as referring to hubs in ST hub groups and if so then they should have been in the same thread network to start with. All the hubs end up in the thread network that the original primary was in. They stay that way even when you remove them from the hub group.
Since at the moment nobody but SmartThings is supporting the one time passcodes of Thread 1.4 credential sharing you have to use the old methods relying on the Android/iOS credential storage to make others join SmartThings network or allow SmartThings to join them.
It’s how my DIRIGERA joined my SmartThings Thread network before the recent Thread 1.4 credential sharing updates. I had to previously set ST network as the preferred one in my Android phone with the help of Home Assistant since the preferred one was Google Home and I didn’t really want to join that.
I was able to combine my ST Station thread network with my Apple Home one after removing any Thread devices connected to it. I don’t know exactly how or why it worked, but the utility in the SmartThings app worked first try. I do run Home Assistant as my primary smart home platform, so maybe something there helped.
How did you do that? There are no Thread devices attached to my Eero, my ST Family Hub, or my Echo Show Thread networks and yet none of those show up in the “Manage Thread Network” in the mobile app for my ST Station. And, as far as I can tell, there is no provision for Eero devices to do anything other than have their own Thread network. I also can’t find anything that says how you can make an Echo device join another Thread network.
That’s interesting. When I first messed around with hub groups I am sure that is how it worked for me, and it was the reason I stuck with hub groups for far longer than I wanted to (I didn’t want the hub group, but I did want all the hubs on the same thread network). Then when the last firmware update came along I removed the hubs from the group and found they had kept the same thread network.
I should note that all my secondary hubs would have spent some time acting as the primary hub in the intervening period.
