Protocols

Protocols & Standards Overview

HomeNode is engineered around protocol independence. Devices from diverse physical transports and ecosystems are unified by the HomeNode Server supervisor and exposed locally without cloud dependencies.

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📚 Protocol Specification Pages

Protocol	Description	Transport	Module
BTHome	Open BLE broadcast standard for battery sensors, Shelly BLU, buttons	BLE Advertisements	homenode-module-bthome
Matter & Thread	CSA multi-admin smart home standard, native controllers and bridges	IPv6 (Thread / Wi-Fi)	matter-controller, matter-bridge
Shelly RPC & BLU	Gen2/Gen3 WebSocket/HTTP RPC, Gen1 CoAP, Shelly Pro 3EM meter	LAN / Wi-Fi / BLE	shelly, bthome
Tuya Local & Cloud	Port 6668 AES-encrypted local protocol for LSC solar inverters & plugs	TCP 6668 / REST	tuya

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🌐 Network Transports

1. IP-Based

• Transport: UDP, TCP, IPv4, IPv6
• Service Discovery: mDNS / DNS-SD (.local), SSDP / UPnP, Passive ARP, ICMP active ping sweeps
• Application Protocols: HTTP/1.1, WebSockets, REST, CoAP, MQTT, TR-064 (AVM FRITZ!Box)

2. Mesh & Low-Power Wireless

• Thread: Low-power IPv6 mesh (802.15.4) coordinated by Thread Border Routers (Apple HomePod, Nest Hub, OpenThread)
• Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE): Passive advertisement monitoring (BTHome) and GATT connections
• Zigbee: Direct 802.15.4 coordinator mesh (planned module homenode-module-zigbee)
• LoRa / Meshtastic: Long-range off-grid packet mesh for remote perimeter sensors

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🔗 Bridges & Ecosystem Gateways

HomeNode bridges legacy and vendor-specific protocols into the modern Matter ecosystem:

• Matter Bridge: Exposes Shelly, BTHome, Tuya, and Zigbee devices as native Matter nodes to Apple Home, Home Assistant, and Google Home.
• Home Assistant API Bridge: Bi-directional event integration with local Home Assistant servers (:8123).