As mentioned in the What do I need at Ikea? topic, I’m going whole hog on Matter over Thread using inexpensive IKEA devices. Long story short, I found them to be unreliable at first, but after adding many GRILLPLATS smart plugs and updating the firmware (e.g., MYGGSPRAY from 1.07 to 1.1.4), they are working quite well.
Phase I of the deployment I was using Apple TV (2022 Ethernet model) as my Thread Border Router. Even in tvOS 26.6 beta, the Thread version was still 1.3, so I was unable to share a mesh with my eero environment. That means that my Thread mesh was dependent on both a single Apple TV unit as well as the eero network (since Hubitat needs connectivity to the Apple TV due to the lack of a working Thread radio).
It made sense to me to reduce the number of points of failure by leveraging the Thread mesh offered by my eero nodes scattered throughout the house. This would mean I was no longer dependent on the single Apple TV unit. I had redundancy with the eero as a plus.
All of my eeros are Pro 6E. I think all but the earliest (perhaps pre-Amazon) eeros have Thread and can serve as Thread Border Routers. I enabled Thread on the eero system ..
and used the Discovery app to see the now four Thread Border Routers and verified that the three eero devices were all advertising the same Extended PAN ID, Network Name, Partition ID, and Thread Version. All good.
I then realized that the eero app has no UI other than shown above related to Thread. Devices have to be commissioned in the Alexa app. My attempt to add an IKEA MYGGSPRAY was unsuccessful. Same for the IKEA GRILLPLATS. At one point, I unplugged the Apple TV as it seemed to be seizing the new devices, but I might have been imagining that. Still no joy with either IKEA device.
I had an Onvis Matter over Thread smart plug which I next attempted. It added easily in the Alexa app and I was then able to share it from the Alexa app to Hubitat. Both Hubitat and Alexa could control the device, although current on/off information didn’t seem to be shared. Even better, it worked anywhere in the house I put it, so it was almost certainly using the closest eero to connect to.
I pulled out a IKEA KLIPPBOK leak sensor and it was here where I really hit a roadblock.
It is reasonable to assume that the eero Thread mesh could handle the device just fine, but Alexa is the weak link here. If Alexa doesn’t support it, then it won’t let you add it to the eero Thread mesh.
So that was the end of my grand experiment. Everything is on the Apple TV Thread mesh for now.
However, tvOS 27 does have Thread version 1.4, and I do have early access to that. In theory, that would allow me to share the existing network (eero had been tv 1.4 for months). In fact, they might converge into a single network without my doing anything. But exploring that will wait for another day.