Home Assistant Connect ZBT-1 xPreviously known as Home Assistant SkyConnect

A future firmware update will bring Thread support; allowing SkyConnect to be used for Matter-over-Thread devices

Concurrent Zigbee and Thread on a single chip

Out of the box the Home Assistant SkyConnect will support only Zigbee. We’re working on a firmware update that makes it possible to run both Zigbee and Thread at the same time. Thread is the mesh networking protocol that powers Matter, the new standard for smart home devices.

Once available, Home Assistant SkyConnect will run part of the software that normally runs inside Zigbee and Thread chips inside Home Assistant add-ons. These add-ons will be installed and updated automatically without requiring user interaction.

We will make this multi-protocol set-up first available for Home Assistant OS installations. We will be looking into making this available for Home Assistant Supervised and Home Assistant Container installations afterward.

Why include a USB extension cable ?
USB 3.0 ports (the ones with blue on the inside) are known to cause significant noise and radio interference to any 2.4 GHz wireless device. This includes Zigbee and Thread. If you do not use the extension cable, it may not work at all, and if it does, it could be flaky at best with intermittent problems (issues with pairing, device dropouts, unreachable devices, timeout errors, etc).

What’s in the box
1 x Home Assistant Connect ZBT-1 xPreviously known as Home Assistant SkyConnect USB Device
1 x USB Extension cable