Add documentation on how to use ZBT-1 as OTBR with container installation

[seppeel]

The problem

At first thanks for the great documentation page for the connect zbt-1!
I want to buy and use the connect-zbt1 as open thread border router but i am not using the home assistant OS - i am using the container installation type.

the documentation does not contain any information on how to flash the thread firmware and start the OTBR with containers.

Im pretty sure that i will manage to do this somehow by using the silabs firmware builder and building a container image with otbr-posix but i would like to benefit from the efforts you already put into the HA addon (automatic firmware upgrade and i see some patches?)

so i would appreciate if you could write some documentation on how to use the existing ressources from https://github.com/home-assistant/addons/tree/master/openthread_border_router

Link to the page

https://connectzbt1.home-assistant.io/procedures/enable-thread/

[agners]

Im pretty sure that i will manage to do this somehow by using the silabs firmware builder and building a container image with otbr-posix but i would like to benefit from the efforts you already put into the HA addon (automatic firmware upgrade and i see some patches?)

The problem is the upstream builds ot-br-posix container images (namely the images available at https://hub.docker.com/r/openthread/otbr) are more geared towards OpenThread development. There has been some discussion about how to use the images in the upstream GitHub discussion at https://github.com/orgs/openthread/discussions/10311. However, there are always some caveats of using it.

Ultimately, I think it would be better if the Home Assistant project would offer it's own OpenThread Border Router container geared towards production use together with Home Assistant. It is on my to-do list, I just did not come around. So for now, there is no good answer for this unfortunately, hence also not documented 😢

[seppeel]

I understand, thanks.

Ultimately, I think it would be better if the Home Assistant project would offer it's own OpenThread Border Router container geared towards production use together with Home Assistant. It is on my to-do list, I just did not come around. So for now, there is no good answer for this unfortunately, hence also not documented 😢

I agree, i would like to see an "official home assistant otbr container" with all the documentation that a newbie needs.
Gonna wait a bit until i theres more movement in this topic to buy a zbt-1.

Thanks for your answer.

I would like to keep this issue open and would appreciate if you could keep me and maybe some others posted if you have any news here.