I’ve created a small smart home setup for my girlfriend’s apartment. The central is Aqara M100 with some sensors and Alexa (Echo Pop). The problem is with pairing third-party matter devices. First, I’ve tried to pair some generic matter WiFi switch from AliExpress with M100. It failed, but I was able to pair it via matter with Alexa - it worked (so I assume the device is ok and the network setup is also ok - ipv6 etc). Then I’ve tried the same with the new IKEA bulb KAJPLATS. Same situation, it failed with M100, with Alexa it asked me for thread credentials (echo pop is matter controller, but without thread). But as far as I know, I can’t export those credentials from M100 so I gave up.
Later that day I took this bulb to my apartment and was able to pair it via matter with no issue with my M3 hub.
I’m wondering what might be wrong with the M100 failing to pair any third-party matter device (regardless it’s wifi or thread). It always fails at “registering device” step - the process never ends.
it won’t work with android app, it’s bugged somehow. You can pair them with iOS app only.
Such a scenario is definitely problematic, as the Thread credentials are stored on the smartphone when the Thread network is created (in the encrypted iCloud Keychain on iOS / in Google Play Services on Android). At least if we assume Thread version 1.3. This will change in the future with Thread 1.4 and Matter 1.4.
But let’s assume that you created your Thread network with your smartphone and can therefore add devices to it. The first question that arises is which smartphone/account was used to create the Thread network at your girlfriend’s house. Since the Thread credentials are requested during pairing, I would assume that the network was not created with your smartphone/account. Or the Thread Border Router has been reset in the meantime.
To rule out such problems, I would suggest that you use your smartphone for your smart home in your apartment and, conversely, your girlfriend’s smartphone in her smart home.
Since it works for you, I would recommend that you don’t change anything in your own home. At your girlfriend’s home, you might want to consider performing a factory reset of the hub (border router) and then recreating the Thread network (important), so that the Hub generates fresh credentials and passes them to the smartphone as the new default.
As far as IKEA devices and Android are concerned, there seem to be other problems. But maybe try the following trick:
But as Sugar already wrote, it probably won’t work with the M100, and you’ll have to do something different with the light bulbs, of course. But I would give it a try.
Just because Matter works over Wi-Fi does not automatically mean that Matter also works over Thread. With IPv6 in particular, your devices may have created their own link-local addresses. However, packets with these addresses are discarded on their way to the Thread network, whereas this does not happen in the Wi-Fi network. Be sure to check which addresses are used by the devices in your network. For more information, see the chapter “Link-Local vs. GUA vs. ULA” in the tutorial: Matter & Thread: A Guide Through the Jungle