Node-red-matter-controller & Tado X thermostat

General
1

Sitting on my WiFi network I now have a Tado X Thermostat Starter Kit, which incorporates a thread border router, connecting to its remote thermostat via matter-over-thread. Rather than depending on the cloud and the Tado App for accessing and controlling the thermostat it is now all done locally via a raspberry pi Zero 2w thanks to Node-Red and the @sammachin/node-red-matter-controller. Achieving this setup was not straight forward as there were a number of hurdles to overcome and I hope my experience will help others.

Firstly my WiFi router (Plusnet Hub Two), as provided by my ISP, does not routinely support IPv6. Consequently an error was produced when trying to commission the Device (thermostat) in the Device Management Node of the Node-red-matter-controller.

The solution was to create a manual route to the Thermostat from the WiFi to the Thread network via the Tado X Thread Border Router using IPv6 addresses. The IPv6 address of the Tado X was easily obtained using the WiFi router’s Manager web interface showing the device’s Local link IPv6 address (fe80::xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx), while that of the Thermostat available over the Thread network required the installation of ndisc6 on the rpi and running the rdisc6 tool to manually scan for any hidden IPv6 router advertisements on the WiFi network.

sudo apt update && sudo apt install ndisc6 –y
sudo rdisc6 wlan0

The output for me contained three IPv6 addresses, one for an Echo Dot and one for the Tado X (as confirmed from the WiFi router’s Manager), as well as the unknown address(fd9a:xxxx:xxxx:1:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx) relating to the Thermostat. Only the first 64 bits of this 128-bit IPv6 address which represent the network prefix are required, while the last 64 bits identify the individual host. So, if I had another device on the mesh network the network prefix would be the same.

On the rpi

#  Add route via the Tado° Border Router
sudo ip -6 route add fd9a:xxxx:xxxx:1::/64 via fe80::xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx dev wlan0

Now any traffic for a device starting with the prefix fd9a:xxxx:xxxx:1 must go through the Tado X Thread Border Router thereby allowing a successful commissioning of the Thermostat on the Node-red-matter-controller's Device Management node.

1 Like
2

It should support it on the LAN. What makes you think that it does not?

3

Great to hear, out of interest were you able to add the Tado thermostat to the Matter Controller just using the pairing code on the device or did you need to add it to Apple/Google/Amazon first and then share it?

Trying to figure out if the Thermostat was already pre-linked to their Thread network and therefore from a Matter perspective it was an On-Net commisioning.

4

The device was initially set up using the Tado App, the pairing code was then obtained from the App's Matter Device Linking setting, or more easily from the copying from Alexa's Other Assistant and Apps setting. The latter was easier since it included dashes in the 11 consisted of 4-3-4 so easier to read.

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5

During commissioning the pairing code failed.

commissionDevice 33763639461  therm
3 Jan 15:03:22 - [error] [mattermanager:Control] Error: send ENETUNREACH fd9a:63a3:c8fb:1:a714:c407:874f:371d:5540

after specifying the routing

3 Jan 15:37:14 - [info] Started flows
commissionDevice 06204828675  therm
3 Jan 15:37:40 - [info] [mattermanager:Control] Commissioned therm as nodeId 13941070910949404922
6

Did you search for how to enable IPv6?

7

I couldn't find any option within the Router's Manager to enable local IPv6, and I am aware that IPv6 is currently in a "trial phase" for Plusnet customers and is not yet a standard, fully rolled-out feature for everyone.

8

Oh, you are correct, I assumed that this was just on the WAN but apparently they disabled it on the LAN too. That is ridiculous. I haven't got one with original firmware to check, I have burnt all mine with OpenWRT so it isn't an issue.

9

Oh, no I haven't, they are hub one. The two was a backward step I think.
Sorry for the irrelevant noise here.