I setup roughly 20 White Switches about 9 months ago, initially just with HomeKit. Worked great, but I had the problem that many have had where triggering a room would turn off both the light bar and the switch itself. I have a HomeAssistant instance running on a home server, so I shared them from my HomeKit thread network to HA, deleted them from my HK network, and bridged them back without the light bars. This worked great for a few months, until my HomeAssistant “lost” all of the switches. I’ve tried lots of things (resetting all of my HK hubs, resetting the HA instance, etc), but nothing seems to work. So it’s time to start over.
Before I factory reset all of the switches, I wanted to check in to see what folks who operate mostly in a HK environment are doing right now. I’m reluctant to redo the HomeAssistant instance without purchasing a dedicated HA box. Are folks adding them to HK and making a “dummy” room to put all of the light bars in? Is there a Firmware update that will allow me to disable the light bar control within HK?
Thanks in advance to those with more experience for your advice!
Have you tried resetting the Matter Server or rebooting the complete HA server (not just the HA Core instance). What version of HA Core and the HA Matter Server are you on? It would also we worth looking at the Matter server web interface to make sure the switches are still in its database, If so., I would try pinging them from the HA UI to ensure you still have Thread connectivity.
I have not had any problems with HA “loosing” connection to White Switches at all.
I run HA on a dedicated i7 Intel NUC (purchased from Ebay for ~$100). This works just fine and I have not had any issues with it.
I shared the switches to HA from HK (maintaining the thread network through HK)
I deleted the switches in HK (removing them from the thread network, but still there as “ghost” devices?)
I re-added them to HK through a bridge from HA (again, still working as “ghost” switches)
When the HomePods did a firmware update, they reset the entire thread network and they just… disappeared.
So is the solution that I need to leave the switches in HK AND in HA? Or should I really be purchasing a standalone thread dongle to add to my HA server and managing it exclusively from HA?
Actually you don’t need a thread dongle or to add the switches to Homekit at all.
This is what I recommend:
If you don’t have the HA iOS Companion App, download it and get it working first (Note: open that link on your phone).
In Homekit remove all of the Inovelli switches (which I assume are all showing as “Not available”).
Go into HA and delete any remnants of the Inovelli switches there,
Go into your phone under “General” → “Matter Accessories” and delete any remnants of the Inovelli pairings. This isn’t essential but it will avoid any unusual issues when you pair the switches to Home Assistant.
Update HA and the Matter Server to the latest (right now that is Core: 2025.8.2 and Matter Server 8.1.0)
Factory Reset all of the Switches… again this is to make sure we start from a known state.
Set the Apple Thread network as the “Preferred Network” (not essential but again good to do)
Using the iOS Companion App: “Settings” → “Devices & services” → “Thread” → Click on the “settings icon” and then “Send Credentials to Home Assistant”
Pair the switches direct to Home Assistant using the HA iOS companion app (it will not work if you try to pair via the web interface):
Then scan each switch’s QR Code with the HA Companion App and HA will add the switch etc.
If that all works then your switches should be paired to Home Assistant and will connect to the Thread Border function of your AppleTVs or Homepods and then go via Thread to the Inovelli switches. This is exactly how I have my HA instance configured and it works just fine,
After that you can share the switch portion of the Dimmer to HomeKit via HA’s HomeKit Bridge.
This is incredibly helpful, thank you! To be clear: do I need to factory reset each switch individually before adding with QR code? If so, how do I easily go about this? Or can I just assume I can add via the QR code and be all set?
Personally I would factory reset each one. That way we know we are starting from a known state. It is really easy to do.
The following is copied from the online manual for the White Dimmer.
To factory reset your White Series Dimmer switch, hold down on the top of the paddle (on) and the config/favorites button simultaneously for 20 seconds until the LED Bar (D) turns green, yellow, then red. It will blink cyan, green(non-neutral) or yellow (neutral), and then blue confirms the switch has been reset.
Note that if you have current switch software the LED Bar will flash red at the end of the reset cycle (rather than being steady red), but regardless when you get a red LED Bar the reset is complete. When you get “red” release both buttons. Give the switch 30 secs to “stabilize” and then re-pair.
One other tip, If you have only one Apple Border Router (AppleTV with Thread or HomePod), start with the switch closest to it and then “spread out” from there.
Great instructions! I would only add that after adding the switch, Home Assistant will show an update notification if there is one available. I recommend upgrading before changing any settings,
Totally agree. One adder to that, I recommend waiting approx. 5 mins between the firmware upgrade of each switch to allow the Thread network to completely stabilize.
Thanks for these helpful instructions! I upgraded everything to 1.0.5 before they “disappeared.” I presume that’s the latest version, as I’m not seeing any updates listed?
1.0.5 is the latest released version. @Kaleb_Inovelli posted a couple of weeks ago that a new version was “nearly there” but as of today, nothing newer has been released.
I reached out to our team and unfortunately, we still do not have an update on the status of the firmware update at this time. As soon as we do, we will let you all know!