Hello,

I’ll try address unanswered questions:

You’re right, you need a Border Router to use the Commissioning App. OpenThread provides an Open Source reference design for Border Router, you’ll need a Raspberry Pi 3B and for example Nordic’s nRF52840 DK (for Network Co-Processor).

A guide on how to setup a Border Router and how to use the Commissioning App can be found on OpenThread wiki:

https://openthread.io/guides/border-router/raspberry-pi-3b

https://openthread.io/guides/border-router/external-commissioning

Note though, that Zephyr samples with OpenThread are pre-comissioned, so in case you would like to do the commissioning procedure again, you’ll have to perform specific actions to stop the network, I’ve described it here:

https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr/issues/6874#issuecomment-384631952

That’s where commissioning comes in. Zephyr samples are pre-comissioned (they have hardcoded Network Key, PAN ID and channel), hence they form/join network rightaway. In real world you’ll need a commissioner though, that’ll allow new nodes to obtain these values from the network. You have several options for commissioning procedure:

• Any node can become on-mesh commissioner, if compiled with appropriate flag “COMMISSIONER=1”. In this case, you can introduced new nodes to the network via CLI commands (good for development, not very useful in real-world use case though);
• If you have a device with some kind of interface (for example Border Router with NFC shield), you can use it as on-mesh commissioner as well. In that case you can trigger the commissioning for example via NFC, no typing needed (there is such an example in nRF5 SDK for Thread - http://www.nordicsemi.com/eng/Products/nRF5-SDK-for-Thread)
• A commissioning app can be used as a external commissioner. In that case you need a Border Router that will proxy the traffic between WiFi and Thread. In that case you can generate a QR code for a joining device, scan it with your phone, to enable a device to join the network.

Thread commissioning is complex topic, that might be hard to understand without diving in into Thread Specification. You can check this page for some more information about it:

https://openthread.io/guides/build/commissioning

If you refer to the Commissioning App here, it communicates with Thread Nodes via Wi-Fi. In this scenario Border Router serves as a proxy, that forwards relevant Wi-Fi traffic to 802.15.4.

Currently there is no support for 802.15.4/BLE multiprotocol operation in Zephyr.

Regards,

Robert