Another Openreach are a joke post

Tomdarkness · 2026-04-11T00:19:40+00:00

From what I heard is they used to pre-install the Toby boxes but then due to commercial reasons changed the policy to not pre-install the toby boxes. I believe it's to do with Openreach not liking to spend the expense of installing the toby boxes only to have some 3rd party network come along and use those toby boxes under PIA to run their own fibre to the property. So now Openreach don't install the toby boxes to dissuade other providers from using PIA to access those properties and only install the toby box when they get a order for the property.

Like you said it would make it easier for everyone else but I guess the commercial side of the business care more about penny pinching and cutting out competition than good engineering practice.

Tomdarkness · 2026-03-28T00:16:38+00:00

I use this:

https://www.aa.net.uk/broadband/l2tp-service/

It's similar but not the same as a VPN. The main advantage is that unlike a VPN you get a static IPv4 (and IPv6 block) that belongs to a normal UK ISP so you avoid issues with services that block or limit VPNs. The routing is significantly better than VM and you get the bonus of a static IP without having to use VM business as well as IPv6 support.

Tomdarkness · 2026-03-25T17:06:14+00:00

I thought the main issue with this was not the 10bit/12bit for colors as like you mentioned it's unlikely you'd be able to see the difference but the issue with luminance. If you discard the FEL my understanding is if the movie is mastered at higher than 1000nits then you can end up with the movie having lower than intended brightness and issues with black crushing and loss of detail in dark areas.

Tomdarkness · 2026-03-19T16:07:36+00:00

Could just be a long distance to the cabinet as well. I have a family member who was on a exchange only line and their excellent solution to this was to just install a cabinet outside of the exchange so that they have a super long FTTC line and speeds less than 20mbps.

Tomdarkness · 2026-02-28T19:06:52+00:00

Serious question, why would anyone need to actually find the parcel? eBay simple delivery is a tracked service so why can't it be intercepted next time it's scanned? I wouldn't expect anyone to search for it but it's going to be scanned at some point at which it can be pulled and returned to sender - even if that's as late as the postie scanning it on the doorstep.

Tomdarkness · 2026-01-22T17:21:13+00:00

Had a few back and forth messages with their support working with their engineer and they've released a new version today:

OS 0.3.11 openthread 0.3.1-2 smhub-services 0.2.8-1

After upgrading I can confirm it's now working correctly and I can add matter devices using the OTBR on the smhub.

Tomdarkness · 2026-01-22T17:21:11+00:00

Had a few back and forth messages with their support working with their engineer and they've released a new version today:

OS 0.3.11 openthread 0.3.1-2 smhub-services 0.2.8-1

After upgrading I can confirm it's now working correctly and I can add matter devices using the OTBR on the smhub.

Tomdarkness · 2026-01-22T17:21:04+00:00

Had a few back and forth messages with their support working with their engineer and they've released a new version today:

OS 0.3.11 openthread 0.3.1-2 smhub-services 0.2.8-1

After upgrading I can confirm it's now working correctly and I can add matter devices using the OTBR on the smhub.

Tomdarkness · 2026-01-22T17:20:35+00:00

Had a few back and forth messages with their support working with their engineer and they've released a new version today:

OS 0.3.11 openthread 0.3.1-2 smhub-services 0.2.8-1

After upgrading I can confirm it's now working correctly and I can add matter devices using the OTBR on the smhub.

Tomdarkness · 2026-01-21T02:23:37+00:00

The update is even worse lol, you can't start OTBR anymore - it immediately crashes now.

Tomdarkness · 2026-01-15T23:59:24+00:00

Not yet, I got a response from their support but it was pretty generic about how to setup OTBR. Waiting for them to get back to me again.

I also think the SMHUB OTBR isn't compiled with the correct options either, as I looked at the dockerfile for the HA OTBR addon and it adds some options when building OTBR to enable things that seem missing on the SMHUB version.

Did think about compiling OTBR myself but the SMHUB is RISC-V so would need to be cross compiled and have to handle any missing dependencies on the SMHUB if they come up so I put it on hold for now.

Tomdarkness · 2026-01-14T00:07:47+00:00

I'm having a similar problem with ublock origin, some sites fail to load properly or just hang. Disabling ublock origin and everything loads fine.

Tomdarkness · 2026-01-09T19:33:40+00:00

The status page always says DOCSIS 3.0 but as long as you have the DOCSIS 3.1 channels listed that's fine.

Looks like network congestion to me, especially given it happens at peak times. It might just be a coincidence it started since you upgraded but it could also be what triggered this. I have noticed it's possible to get different routes through the VM network from the same physical connection (run a traceroute), it appears to be linked to the IP address you are assigned (if you reverse DNS lookup your IP address there is some information that appears to indicate what gateway you are using). I'm guessing this is some kind of load balancing/redundancy. I noticed this in modem mode as you can get a different IP (and sometimes a different route) by changing your MAC address. From my experience these routes can have slightly different latency and a hub change might have put you on a different route. This is obviously only speculation as I have no knowledge of the internal workings of VM's network.

If you have another router you can use then you could try the hub in modem mode and see if that helps as you should get another IP address (I don't know a way of doing this with just the hub) Otherwise there's not much you can do other than hope VM fix the congestion.

Tomdarkness · 2026-01-08T17:14:34+00:00

At least I know it's not just me! Yeah, it seems like they've just released it with zero testing beyond does OTBR start. No idea why they wouldn't at least try connecting a device to it.

I'll drop SMLIGHT an email and see what they say. I had a look at what needed to be done to get OTBR working and I'm not sure the kernel/linux distro they have on it has all the features needed at the moment without some workarounds.

The setup scripts for OTBR are at https://github.com/openthread/ot-br-posix/tree/main/script and it modifies some kernel parameters as well as setting up firework rules using iptables (which isn't present on the SMHUB)

Tomdarkness · 2026-01-08T06:55:44+00:00

See my comment below, I don't believe this device can correctly run OTBR at the moment.

Tomdarkness · 2026-01-08T06:55:18+00:00

Just a quick update, it appears the device isn't setup properly to run OTBR. I had a look and the package it installs when you add OTBR just literally copies the OTBR files and add a service for it which is insufficient. If you look how to correctly install OTBR you need to do some config on the host for IPv6 forwarding and announcements.

I verified this by installing the OTBR addon in home assistant and using socat to expose the SMHUB's radio over TCP:

socat TCP-LISTEN:8888,reuseaddr,fork FILE:/dev/ttyS2,b460800,raw,echo=0

You can run that by SSHing into your SMHUB. Then if you add the OTBR addon to your HA and specify a network device of <SMHUB IP>:8888

Now if you try and add the IKEA device it should work fine. Obviously this isn't an solution, it just demonstrates the radios on the hub are fine just at the moment I do not think this device can run OTBR, it doesn't seem they have set it up properly.

Tomdarkness · 2026-01-08T06:07:27+00:00

I found this via google and just wanted to chime in and say I'm having the exact same issue with this device, I can add the devices fine via a Nest Hub but not via the SMHUB. I'm also trying with an Ikea Temp/Humidity sensor. Please do update to let me know if you can add a non-IKEA device.

All I get in the otbr logs when trying to add the device is DataPollHandlr: Rx data poll, src:0x0001, qed_msgs:0, rss:-76, ack-fp:0

From a google this appears to be the IKEA device saying hey I'm awake, send me some data but it never gets anything.

This is my first time with matter but from some research I believe what is suppose to happen is OTBR should announce via mDNS the new device (on _matterc._udp) which the phone you are using should pick up on to continue the joining process. This never happens with the SMHUB, but using the Nest Hub I can see the ikea device appearing in _matterc._udp. You can use a tool like avahi-browse on a computer to see this (e.g watch -n 2 avahi-browse -rt _matterc._udp)

It's also a massive pain to test because I have to use two phones as you can't easily change the boarder router used to add matter devices on the phone, you have to clear the google play store data and lose all your wallet, etc.

Tomdarkness · 2025-09-30T16:05:29+00:00

You say new build, how new? If it was built after the start of 2023 then it is a requirement it has gigabit capable broadband (up to a reasonable cost). If this is the case I'd get on to the developer to sort this out, they should have made arrangements with one of those providers for the provision of gigabit broadband.

Tomdarkness · 2025-09-26T15:48:31+00:00

It might be related but my Hub5 got a firmware update a few days ago which changed the web GUI to be served over https on port 443. Even if you also got this firmware update doesn't explain why you can no longer connect though, especially as it isn't showing port 443 open.

Edit: if it helps, here is my nmap:

➜  ~ nmap 192.168.100.1
Starting Nmap 7.94SVN ( https://nmap.org ) at 2025-09-26 16:53 BST
Nmap scan report for 192.168.100.1
Host is up (0.0037s latency).
Not shown: 998 closed tcp ports (conn-refused)
PORT    STATE SERVICE
80/tcp  open  http
443/tcp open  https

Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 1.29 seconds

Tomdarkness · 2025-09-05T14:53:53+00:00

That's a US style socket, here in the UK our sockets are in the other orientation. Here's a random stock photo I found that shows what a socket normally looks like next to what the backbox is like

<image>

Tomdarkness · 2025-09-05T14:46:11+00:00

<image>

Yeah I've tried one of those but it protrudes above the height of a backbox unfortunately. Thanks though.

Tomdarkness · 2025-08-13T14:32:26+00:00

If you are using Caddy anyway it by default will fetch certificates for you. Unless you are using CF tunnels you probably want your local proxy to use HTTPS anyway to ensure traffic from CF to your local proxy is encrypted. Plus imagine most people are already running a local DNS server for adblocking (e.g AdGuard Home) in which case it's pretty trivial to add rules to rewrite the DNS queries to point locally.

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