u/davek79

So I'm an engineer with a couple degrees. I'm very experienced with wireless networking, RF, etc. I'm having a heck of a time with these blinds.

I got the matter over thread, hardwired version of the roller shades. Got 6 blackout shades with tracks. They're nice and dark. Wish they were quieter. And wish there was better fine tuning of stop points, because they bunch at the bottom.

Matter over thread is a MESS. I have other matter devices on my network which are quite stable. I've got multiple border routers. Pairing was unreliable. I needed multiple attempts to pair each blind. They constantly drop off the network. It's brutal. Also, they don't seem to support groups, so there is significant delays between shades. Also, they're sleep end devices (SED), so there can be significant lag in them responding (when they actually work)

I've reached out to technical support and they aren't responding. Given the option I'd downgrade to ZigBee or something. The remote is reliable, and we've fallen back to using that. I'm not sure what to do next....

Has anyone had any luck with this? I'm using the Xiao c6 connected over UART (not usb UART) to a raspberry Pi. I've got OTBR running in a docker and taking to the ot_rcp firmware. I can sort of see other routers and sort of join the mesh, but there are huge stability issues.

I've tried these boards out as FTD and MTD using esphome and they work just fine. Relaying traffic and acting as reliable end devices.

I've tried prebuilt images, tried building my own at various labels and branches in the esp-idf tree. But it just seems totally flakey. I've played with baud rates etc. I've patched the code appropriately to set internal and external antennas. I've tried devices directly beside it in case of RF or power issues. I've tried slowing the serial port down to 115,200 in case its some timing thing on the C6 - no effect.

No obvious failures when turning up "ot-ctl log level 5" just a lack of Acks from neighbors. I'm reasonably confident this is firmware level at the RCP/802.15.4 level, not up at the OTBR or network layer.

Any suggestions would be appreciated! A known good label from the tree? Someone who's used UART vs USB UART?