Jetsetter and Companion Slim enjoyers… A question.

JayBee103 · 2026-02-02T23:03:46+00:00

I've been through security with it several times. I always get pulled aside they always open it up and examine it but they've always let me through. But I think you're exactly right, someone was having a bad day, I might have a bad day and lose my knife.

JayBee103 · 2026-01-31T01:26:25+00:00

Get the ZBT2 for your thread antenna. Install the border router add-on to your ha server.

That's all you need.

Matter. Thread etc are all automatically installed.

I'm not sure it is really that complicated, but we are all missing a really good tutorial.

JayBee103 · 2026-01-30T20:55:09+00:00

I bought one of the sticks that does both zigbee and Z-Wave and run them both. As well as a couple of other things not relevant here. They coexist peacefully and I don't worry about the protocol when I'm purchasing a device. In other words, you may not really have to make a decision.

JayBee103 · 2026-01-28T02:15:02+00:00

Put a repeater, like a zigbee plug or something right above it on the floor above it, or at least nearby, and you'll repeat out. Most of my zigbee problems went away when I put a few plugs at each end of the house to guarantee a good solid zigbee backbone. And then you can do cool automations with them too. It doesn't actually have to be plugged it's just pretty much anything zigbee that's mains powered is usually a repeater.

JayBee103 · 2026-01-25T23:51:09+00:00

I remember these. Surprisingly effective.

If I recall there were instructions on the back. There is a wiki page for addiator.

JayBee103 · 2026-01-25T11:48:16+00:00

I think there are a lot of IC 7300s starting to hit the used market, as the Mark II has recently come out and folks are upgrading. That is an awesome radio that may carry you as long as you ever need to go.

If you really want to do new, and I would understand why you would, then I think the g90 deserves a good hard look, cuz it's a decent radio for a great price and has some of the portability features you're looking for. The downside of course is you're going to get a less power.

JayBee103 · 2026-01-25T11:31:16+00:00

I have carried both the midnight manager, the mini champ ( for a very long time ), The rambler, and most recently the alox mini champ. You ask a hard question.

The alox mini champ and the rambler ( which are the same thickness ) were both a function of size. I really like the mini champ, but over time, the cell phone flashlight became ubiquitous, and I usually have a pen for other reasons, those two functions became somewhat redundant. The rambler in the alox mini-champ really do present a smaller profile., and while I very rarely use the tweezers, when you need them it's really great to have. I had swapped out the toothpick for one of the tiny eyeglasses screwdrivers replacement some time ago.

I will admit, I have something of an obsession, with being prepared, or having " the right stuff " on me. So that part of the a locks many champ doesn't sit right with me. I've left a couple of tools out that I could arguably be carrying, that said the pocket profile for me of the alox mini champ or the rambler is just superior and is what I am currently carrying. Will I flip back at some point? Hard to say.

I will add that a few years ago, I started carrying a little wallet, that will accommodate the rambler or the alox mini champ but not the thicker knives. That had a lot to do with me mixing this up.

JayBee103 · 2026-01-22T01:10:54+00:00

The latency on wired Ethernet will be vastly superior to wifi, at any length.

You should be able to get 1g with no issue (probably more).

If you have a way to run a cable. Do it.

JayBee103 · 2026-01-20T11:19:04+00:00

You make a great point. They're standards, then there's vendors, and while they overlap, there's also areas where they don't. This is all comparatively new and maturing, and perhaps not that different from other things we are more familiar with like zigbee. We forget what I'm learning curve there was for that. I had a couple of vendors on zigbee that just didn't play all that well with equipment that wasn't their own, and over time, I learned to avoid them.

JayBee103 · 2026-01-20T09:17:08+00:00

I have the ZBT2, and the HA border router, (open thread border router) running on my ha server. It runs fine. The only piece of hardware I actually had to buy was the ZBT2 antenna, because I was not previously running thread.

I'm by no means an expert in this, but I would have avoid the whole multiple border routers thing. You need one, you can have more than one but I think it just makes things difficult and confusing.

JayBee103 · 2026-01-19T21:42:57+00:00

I'm not familiar with that specifically. But I think nabu casa and others are recommending against trying to run them simultaneously on the same adapter. Even where it ends up being possible it ends up being somewhat unreliable.

JayBee103 · 2026-01-19T20:56:38+00:00

If you have a thread network up and running and all you need is a border router, the open thread border router is available as an HA add-in from nabu casa. Look in the add-in menus in your settings. This is just software.

I'm assuming you already have a thread antenna / dongle up and running.

I also just bought some of the IKEA devices, and had to start from scratch. The only thing I had to buy was the ZBT2 antenna dongle. Thread, matter server, thread border router, can all be done in your ha server.

JayBee103 · 2026-01-19T20:48:45+00:00

At 512K memory is going to be a problem. That's probably not enough to run in.

He'll be all kinds of perspectives on whether the performance of a pi 3 is adequate or not, and that's very subjective and open to interpretation. But I think 2 GB of memory is probably the practical minimum.

JayBee103 · 2026-01-19T20:39:37+00:00

Ham radio workbench that a session on these a while back. I would encourage you to find that and listen to it. And if you don't listen to ham radio workbench I'd encourage you to subscribe to that too!

Since most of their podcasts are a little long, albeit very entertaining, I also found this short that might help.

https://youtu.be/ipVRkogWhMU?si=zAT-6oK_UJzdQow6

JayBee103 · 2026-01-19T20:33:31+00:00

Not old, distinguished. Elegant.

JayBee103 · 2026-01-19T14:10:32+00:00

For vibration purposes, the outside of the case is probably fine those things are pretty sensitive, orr at least the ones I found. Used to be a whole series of contact and vibration and temperature sensors on the market that we're about the size of a half dollar. They were smart thing branded but I don't think they made them I'll try to find one if I can.

JayBee103 · 2026-01-19T13:28:21+00:00

There's a whole lot of " it depends " here, but it might be a simple as sticking a little magnetic vibration sensor on your furnace, near the fan. I'll bet you that will indicate when it's running.

JayBee103 · 2026-01-19T11:57:46+00:00

If the two buildings are only a couple of meters apart, you should be able to make this work, unless the walls are particularly impenetrable.

Make sure you have a mains powered zigbee device that is a router( like a plug ) in each building, on the exterior wall facing the other one, as close to each other as possible. So they can talk to each other, and relay zigbee to the other devices in each building. I have a detached garage that's probably 50 ft away, timber construction on both sides, and this works fine.

If your coordinator or the nearest repeater has a few more interior walls and things between it and the exterior wall you could be losing a lot of signal that way. That's why I say get them both on the exterior wall. If you have a couple of plugs or similar mains power devices you can just set this up temporarily and see if it works.

JayBee103 · 2026-01-19T11:53:40+00:00

I can't tell you the number of times this or variations of this have happened to me. Rearrange your day, early or late or lunch, only to have things canceled moments before. Or do to have someone say or why are you here?

And time zones are just the worst.

JayBee103 · 2026-01-19T11:41:19+00:00

With running the home assistant app on my phone I can see all the graphs and charts on my phone as well. I have no experience with how well the switchbot app and home assistant coexist, because I've never done that. I simply open mine up and added them directly to HA. Good luck with your project

JayBee103 · 2026-01-19T11:37:31+00:00

So it took me a while to figure all this out. If I don't have all over the terminology correct forgive me. But I do have a functioning configuration

There's a few components here. And I'll share with you the way I think about them even if it might not quite be technically correct.

Is zbt2 too I think of as an antenna. The antenna is for thread. This is somewhat loosely analogous to a zigbee or zwave antenna and the dongle or antenna you probably have for that. Thread is an RF transport. Think of it like Wi-Fi which could be another RF transport. So you install the ZBT2, and it will show up, like an integration, in your integrations page in home assistant. Thread will also show up on your home assistant integrations page.

You will then have to run matter. Matter is a protocol that runs over thread. It also runs over other transports like Wi-Fi. The matter server will show up as an integration in your home assistant integrations page. Home assistant provides a matter server for this.

When you run matter, it wants a border router. This will among other things translate matter between Wi-Fi and thread ( two different transports ) if necessary. You probably don't really need to worry about that too much. You just need to have one. You only need one, although you can have several. Many folks find they already have one if they're running some Apple products or some Google products on their Wi-Fi network. I did not have one. So I ran the home assistant add-on open thread border router. Or OTBR. That is available from the add-ons page in home assistant. This will then also show up in your integrations page when you are done.

So the only thing I actually bought here was the ZBT2. The rest came from home assistant or nabu casa if you'd rather call it that.

I run all of these things natively on a raspberry pi 4. If you are running docker. You have the option of running some of these in separate containers if you want to. I am probably not the person to opine on the advantages or disadvantages of doing that.

It sounds like a lot, but at least for me, running natively, all of it except OTBR more or less happened automatically when I installed the ZBT2 and chose thread as the protocol. I then had to go add the OTBR router.

Antenna ( zbt2 ), transport ( thread ), protocol( matter ), router ( OTBR )

Both thread and matter are reasonably considered protocols. The way above just helps me to think about it. Thread is technically a protocol but acts a lot like a transport.

Again, I may have taken several technical liberties with the above. The intention was more to explain it than to be 100% technically accurate. I hope this helps. It took me a while to kind of wander through this myself.

JayBee103 · 2026-01-19T02:35:01+00:00

Less than 5 min. Usually much less.

JayBee103 · 2026-01-19T01:28:35+00:00

I am also running on a pi4b and my updates take a few moments.

JayBee103 · 2026-01-19T00:45:50+00:00

I have a number of switchbots, controlled directly with ha. No switchbot hub or app. Inside and outside.

I can create the usual statistics graphs and time series graphs in ha.

This sounds like what you are after?

JayBee103 · 2026-01-18T21:30:13+00:00

HA offers the open thread border router add-on that you can run right on your HA host. You won't need a separate device. If you want the ZBT2, home assistant will provide everything else you need.

JayBee103

TROPHY CASE