u/BoggleRatty

Some experience to share:

For legacy reasons, I have a more complex automation setup than I'd prefer. The main automation hub is a Homey, using a Google Nest Wifi mesh backbone, Hue lights, an Aqara M3 and a few other bits and bobs.

I decided to consolidate a lot of devices on Matter a few months ago and gradually bought a load of IKEA devices (amongst a few from other brands). They all worked OK but I had been having Thread network issues for a while (lost packets, dropped devices etc), ranging from minor annoyance to the odd major collapse. At one point I thought I had narrowed it down to a faulty Grillplats (posted elsewhere), but was still having issues.

I eventually did narrow the ongoing issues down to the Grillplats (8 of), and did some experiments:

* With all 8 Grillplats, unstable and with loads of discarded packets

* Removed all the Grillplats, network stabilised completely

* Replaced 4 of the Grillplats with Onvis plugs (slightly higher on the budget ladder), network even more stable as they took over some routing.

* Added back just 1 Grillplats, the GrillPlats immediately started discarding huge numbers of packets and took out some local devices.

* Removed that Grillplats, repowered lost devices, network now healthy again, with low packet lost

My other IKEA devices are fine. I'm pretty sure the Grillplats were OK when I had a smaller Thread network. My theory is that Grillplats just can't cope with a network this busy, where the Onvis can. Other theories are most welcome, but maybe we need to avoid Grillplats on larger Thread networks.

Just sharing this in case it helps anyone else who is either struggling with an unreliable Thread network or cannot upgrade their Matter IKEA firmware using Homey.

Some time ago, I had added some IKEA Matter devices which were dropping off the network. Despite reading all about the firmware issues (many of which were probably real), I had eventually traced the problems to my network infrastructure (clashing radios etc, story for another day). All been absolutely fine since, until ...

A few days ago, my son plugged in something dodgy (this involved smoke) and tripped our RCD (electricity protection device, not sure if that's a global thing). Everything powered back on and was apparently fine.

As it happened, I had just added a few more IKEA Matter devices, noticed they had firmware updates. However, I could not get the updates through to 100%, even with the recommended "keep prodding them to stay awake" technique.

Then I noticed that my previously stable Thread network started dropping devices again.

To cut a different long story short, after 2 days tracking thread network logs and other nerdy stuff, it turned out most of my 9 Grillplats plugs were spamming Thread with millions of dropped packets. They usually responded to on/off, but were bringing the network down. Just **one** of them had gone bad and I replaced it, solving all the problems.

All sorted now, and the firmware updates are now doable again.

So, if your firmware updates are impossible or you keep losing devices, perhaps it's a bad device. Try removing devices and see if you can clear it up. It seems like IKEA devices are more prone to going wild, and maybe failing, although I still like the value and they've been generally fine.

PS I used the invaluable Thread Tools app, plus Gemini to do the heavy analysis lifting. Also, found the bad device with a "binary search" - unplugged 50%, then 50% of the remaining ones etc until I found the culprit. I have a **lot** of devices.