I have released an early version of Hobat, a dashboard and command-line toolkit for exploring and troubleshooting Thread networks that I have been working on for the past couple months.
https://github.com/jhawk42/hobat
I built Hobat to help me better understand my own home automation systems (Apple Home and Home Assistant) and Thread network that has multiple (8+) Thread Border Routers (OTBRs on HA ZBT2 & ZBT1, Apple HomePod Minis, Apple TVs), and a fair number of Thread devices (70+) from a variety of vendors with a combination of both Matter over Thread and Apple HomeKit (HAP) over Thread devices.
The existing Thread tools are super useful: Home Assistant MatterJS Server has a great dashboard for Matter over Thread devices, Thread Tools, Eve App, etc. I continue to use them on my Thread network.
However, I wanted a place where I could experiment, learn, compare several data sources, inspect MAC and MLE counters and link quality, decode Thread-related mDNS records and retain data locally for deeper analysis.
Hobat currently collects and normalizes data from sources like: OTBR CLI `ot-ctl`, the OTBR REST API, Home Assistant Matter Server, mDNS, Eve exports and Thread Tools exports. It provides interactive topology and table views, filters for nodes, links, and diagnostics, editable device labels, and CLI workflows for collection and health analysis.
I wanted Hobat to use an intentional cache-first design where routine usage uses saved snapshots in a local data directory instead of repeatedly querying the live Thread mesh, while longer diagnostic collections can be run deliberately (direct refresh option in UI or schedule at a specific time with cron to call the hobat td_cli) as the longer collections can take a large number of minutes to complete. Hobat runs directly in Docker (recommended) or on Python. My environment is Debian.
This is an early release with some rough edges, bugs and some work-in-progress items. However, I have found Hobat to be useful for troubleshooting my home Thread network and wanted to share it with the community.
It would be great to get feedback from people running varied Thread environments in areas like:
– Data sources or diagnostics that would be most useful to add to help people troubleshoot their Thread networks.
– Feedback on running Hobat on Thread networks with different OTBR and device combinations.
– Confusing setup steps, incorrect assumptions, or interoperability issues.
– Ideas for making topology and low-level Thread data more useful for troubleshooting.
Issues, discussions, and contributions are welcome.
Since this is just a hobby project, replies might be a bit slow.
Source: r/homeassistant · by /u/greenfish3276