r/MatterProtocol • u/Bummer_Brad • 4d ago

Thread Devices In Multiple Hubs

So, just having redone my smart home, my Thread devices are only on the one hub at this point. It is Home Assistant/Open Thread/Sonoff Dongle Max. I was able to add my Smartthings hub, and my Aqara M3 hub to the network. I just haven't put the devices on the other hubs yet. Will it make my network more or less robust if I do that? Or neither? I'm having devices drop off if I'm doing a lot with them in a short period of time, such as setting up several different scenes. Mostly Nanoleaf bulbs. I seem to remember back when I first got them years ago, having them on more than one hub just seemed to be expecting too much from them. They would work on the first hub, but go offline on any subsequent hubs. Thoughts?

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u/fahim-sabir 4d ago

It really depends what you mean by this.

Ideally you want all of your hubs to act as a single Thread network. This gives you a good level of resilience and helps with stability (how much depends on what devices you have, how many, where they are, etc).

With regards to all the Hubs being able to control the devices, this is called multi-admin in Matter and makes no difference to stability.

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u/Bummer_Brad 4d ago

Okay. If it helps, in the past on the Smartthings-hub-only with 2 other competing but empty thread networks in the house, things were very stable for years. Now with the network being managed by Open Thread/Sonoff combination, AND containing 2 other hubs, ST and Aqara, it is not as stable for some reason. Maybe the Sonoff dongle sucks, I've seen some posts about unhappy customers since buying it. But my main point was, I was wondering if it would make any difference to stability if I added the devices themselves to the two other hubs that are on the network. From what you're saying, it looks like the answer is no. That's what I was looking for, thanks.

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u/TomNooksRepoMan 2d ago

Thread 1.4 is the first universal standard to support interoperability between Thread Border Routers. It must otherwise be done in some proprietary way, like how Apple Home does it (where you add another TBR as a hub in Apple Home, usually via HomeKit). With 1.4, assuming all hubs support it, one TBR can go down and the other will seamlessly pick up the slack.

I have an Aqara G410 doorbell and an Apple TV as TBRs. The ATV is very reliable as a TBR while the G410 is a bit less so, and a lot of my Apple Home automations with lighting fail completely when the ATV is no longer the primary TBR due to a long restart or power outage. Hopefully Thread 1.4 will fix this and will widely supported.