Thread network devices not responding after OS 27 upgrade

Haven't used this site a lot yet so getting used to the quote thing.

MrHoffman wrote: More than a little IoT being not much more intelligent than your average rock.

This gave me a chuckle and I absolutely agree. I've been doing HA as a hobby for long time ... X10, HAL, and mostly Insteon with various hubs and apps. When I retired from IT 10 years ago, I got rid of all my Microsoft based platform and moved to Apple just because typically because the stuff seems to work better together and I was fed up with vendors all pointing finger at each other when there was an issue. I then decided to move my home automation away from Insteon to HomeKit seeing that as heading where I wanted to go. I did that shortly after Matter was introduced and went through learning curve of HomeKit moving to Apple Home, Matter over WiFi, Matter over Thread, etc. Yes I gave up all the programability that was available to Insteon ... there wasn't much of anything you couldn't do if you had Polisy as a hub. I'm hoping when Apple releases Home Pad that it has much better scripting in it. Anyway, I did use Home Assistant as a bridge for devices I had not moved to Matter yet ... and it did help. But I realized too many vendors had visions of building their own proprietary home systems and it seemed that for the devices I was using Home Assistant, I was always chasing HA interface upgrades ... myQ being one of the worst. So I abandoned HA and got Matter over Thread devices and Matter over WiFi for everything. Just to fill in another blank ... I'm using a Netgear Orbi Mesh system with a dedicated 2.4GHz IoT network. All of the WiFi devices are connecting.

I did start checking firmware and vendor websites. Some updates can be done via vendor app. I did that with my Level Lock Pro door locks and app works fine via Bluetooth, but still are not connecting to Thread. The app provides part of that interface by selecting it in the app and then it gives you code to paste into add device in Apple Home app ... so I removed device from Apple Home and tried to add it, but it said it could not connect. This is second device I've removed from Apple Home app and when adding it back to app got the could not connect message. So that makes me think the Thread Border Router is not working on my Apple TV 4K hub.

Instead of cycling my Home power, I decided that would not be any different than cycling power on one device so I did that to a couple smart plugs and also light bulbs but they still did not connect. I'm going to try relocating hub, but I don't know if that will help. There are already three devices within about five feet of the hub and expanding circle out to 20 feet puts another nine devices. Did call Apple support, but first thing they wanted me to do is unplug it from ethernet and bring it up on WiFi. It's been working great on ethernet for several months so didn't expect it to change anything ... and it didn't. If relocating hub doesn't change anything, I'm going to call back apple support ... but after last conversation, my expectations are a little low. I got passed around and cut off several times. Perhaps it was a coincidence, but the two times I was cut off was when I mentioned Thread.

My last ditch effort is to either reset the Apple TV and rebuild Apple Home or wait a couple weeks until Apple is rumored to release Home Pad. It's always been my plan to purchase it as soon as it is offered.

Matter is a scheme used for low-powered internet-of-things (IoT) and related device communications.

Matter can operate over Thread wireless networks (using IPv6 over LR-WPAN), or can operate using IPv6 over Wi-Fi, and IPv6 over Ethernet.

Matter and Thread is underneath Apple HomeKit, among other uses and other implementations. A few Apple devices can operate as Thread Border Routers too, including HomePod and HomePod mini.

Issues with Matter and Thread gear are also less than easy to troubleshoot and debug. I’ve hit cases where either power-cycling something, or power-cycling everything, or resetting, reconfiguring, and power-cycling everything, are needed.

I’m not aware of widely-available Matter and Thread troubleshooting tools, too. Or not cheap and ubiquitous tools, that is.

Ubiquiti is only just starting to integrate Matter and Thread support, via their SuperLink Gateway HA box.

I don’t know how far along other networking-hardware vendors are in this regard, either.

Another option that might be useful here is Home Assistant.

Video overview of Matter networking, including Thread: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGPRIkqWh3g

As for the Matter and Thread gear, check with the vendor(s) for available firmware updates, and — if not already tested — expect to restart everything as one potential way to get things Matter and Thread working again.

It appears Mr. Hoffman already provided an excellent explanation of Thread. Basically, it's a home automation network where each device becomes a repeater on the web network ... hence, the more Matter over Thread devices you have the more reliable the network becomes. There are also products are Matter over WiFi, and the WiFi typically is easier to troubleshoot, but it is not as responsive and is not designed for self-healing the way Thread is ... so when a device looses connectivity it doesn't always reconnect without rebooting the device. About half of my devices are WiFi and every few days I find myself rebooting at least one device. Apple is due to release new Home devices so I'm waiting for those to come out before I make any new purchases.

Regarding contacting vendors, I have several different products from at least five vendors. I've experimented with different vendors to find what features I like, which are gee wiz, and what I don't like. I've yet to find a light switch that has everything I want ... but there is another vendor I'm going to order from next. The bottom line is based on the variety of vendor products I have that all failed at exactly same time ... I don't believe this is a 3rd party vendor issue. I firmly believe this is an issue with OS 27.

You make a good point regarding firmware upgrades ... particularly considering Home Pod was supposedly delayed just for OS 27. It's possible some firmware updates may be required.

The best way to restart everything is to schedule a power outage for my house ... perhaps before I go to bed so everything has a chance to stabilize before with no changes occurring on the network as it tries to recover. Thanks for the input.

I realized after posting that you were referring to HomeKit devices. I have a number of them but to my knowledge none of them go by that name (Thread). It leads me to conclude whatever is wrong is probably limited to that manufacturer, in which case it's up to them to fix it.

You mentioned something else that initially confused me: "the Apple TV 4K gen 3 ethernet hub". That is the same device I use for a Home hub, and it is connected with Ethernet (not WiFi) whereas all other HomeKit devices are wireless. Whatever tvOS it's running is the latest, and even I am rather astonished everything works as well as it does.

As for those other HomeKit devices I am uncertain if they use "Matter" or not but I'll check. They simply work, despite what I think is a fairly extensive network of mixed devices. If I ever had to reboot something it would quickly become intolerable.

I've yet to find a light switch that has everything I want ...

Understandable. There are other devices I wish existed by they don't. I may have to build them myself... a Raspberry Pi project for the winter.

Now I remember. I ruled out Thread devices a while ago in favor of Matter, but I no longer recall the reason. It may have been an assumption that I would need to invest in additional networking support equipment, which may not have been correct.

All my HomeKit devices use Matter.

JKLines-70 wrote:

The best way to restart everything is to schedule a power outage for my house ...

That would be an awful (and intolerable) workaround.

(to no one in particular) isn't HomeKit dependent on the Apple TV's OS, and independent of any other devices? I'm wondering if the "Thread Border Router" idea is a factor. Matter doesn't do that.

JKLines-70 wrote:

…the more Matter over Thread devices you have the more reliable the network becomes…

That’s certainly the theory, but I’d expect more than a few Thread-capable Matter devices are only ever end devices and not mesh extenders, all things being cheapest and simplest.

There are also products are Matter over WiFi, and the WiFi typically is easier to troubleshoot, but it is not as responsive and is not designed for self-healing the way Thread is ... so when a device looses connectivity it doesn't always reconnect without rebooting the device.

More than a little IoT being not much more intelligent than your average rock.

About half of my devices are WiFi and every few days I find myself rebooting at least one device.

Matter via Wi-Fi is fond of 2.4 Ghz, etc.

The network gear in common use at various local sites has a function that optimizes Wi-Fi for Matter.

Regarding contacting vendors, I have several different products from at least five vendors. I've experimented with different vendors to find what features I like, which are gee wiz, and what I don't like.

Check for firmware updates, etc.

…I don't believe this is a 3rd party vendor issue. I firmly believe this is an issue with OS 27.

It may well be iOS 27 causing trouble, but most any major new version gets testing first, before production updates.

I’m also largely using IoT gear not Matter and Thread. This given I’m still having adventures with the Matter and Thread gear in use on iOS 18 and iOS 26. The non-Matter and non-Thread gear just works.

Apropos of nothing, I’d also have a look at Home Assistant.

John Galt wrote:

I realized after posting that you were referring to HomeKit devices. I have a number of them but to my knowledge none of them go by that name (Thread). It leads me to conclude whatever is wrong is probably limited to that manufacturer, in which case it's up to them to fix it.

Most go by Matter, not Thread. Thread is a communications option for Matter. About the only Thread I see widely discussed is the Thread Border Router discussions, which can itself make finding other discussions of Thread and Thread mesh details more difficult.

As for those other HomeKit devices I am uncertain if they use "Matter" or not but I'll check…

Matter is what to look for when assessing HomeKit compatibility. The older pre-Matter Apple gear has been less reliable than Matter and Thread.

John Galt wrote:

JKLines-70 wrote:

The best way to restart everything is to schedule a power outage for my house ...

That would be an awful (and intolerable) workaround.

Yep. Part of why I haven’t embedded Matter gear where I can’t reasonably get at it, too.

What IoT gear is harder to access locally is not Matter.

That, and this whole IoT gear area has been a little too volatile to embed deeply or more “permanently”.

(to no one in particular) isn't HomeKit dependent on the Apple TV's OS, and independent of any other devices? I'm wondering if the "Thread Border Router" idea is a factor. Matter doesn't do that.

For HomeKit, Apple TV 4K, HomePod, and HomePod mini can all act as home hubs, and as Thread Border Routers, yes. Matter devices then communicate with each other as needed, and with the hub and border router.

If a Matter device needs to check for a vendor firmware update for instance, I’d expect it’ll involve the hub and the border router.

I've been taking a slow approach to implantation.

The critical and weakest part of my installations is the WAN-facing router, of which the AppleTV home hub is a client. Don't know what to do about that yet... or even if I want to. Fewer things to attack.

John Galt wrote:

I've been taking a slow approach to implantation.

Same here.

The critical and weakest part of my installations is the WAN-facing router, of which the AppleTV home hub is a client. Don't know what to do about that yet... or even if I want to. Fewer things to attack.

The gateway router isn’t particularly relevant to Matter and Thread, so long as it passes internet traffic for the thread border router.

The US import ban is complicating router-related things though, for those located in the US.

Early on (several years ago) when I was Beta testing Orbi, there were a few issues during the beta ... but Netgear fixed everything I reported. I was already using the Orbi IoT network prior to migrating away from Insteon to Matter over Thread using Apple framework. Up until TVOS27, I never had any real issues with the Thread devices ... only the WiFi devices dropping and not reconnecting.

macOS Golden Gate is a public release.

What is a Thread network? Did you consider contacting the developer of those devices: Contact a third-party vendor - Apple Support?

Is it possibly the Orbi Mesh? Most of what I deal with lately is Ubiquiti UniFi, and the UniFi gear has settings specifically recommended for IoT gear, too. Orbi might have similar recommendations.