OpenThread Border Router Setup

View source on GitHub

OpenThread Border Router (OTBR) currently offers support for both Radio Co-processor (RCP) and Network Co-Processor (NCP) designs. You can select either design for your OTBR.

Upon completion of this procedure, you will have an OTBR that functions as a Full Thread Device (FTD) in the design you chose.

What you'll need

  • A Raspberry Pi for the Thread border router.
  • 2 Nordic Semiconductor nRF52840 USB Dongles (one for the Co-Processor and one for the Thread end device).

Build and flash Co-Processor firmware

Follow the instructions based on the design you chose.

RCP design

In RCP design, OTBR depends on an IEEE 802.15.4 radio to send/receive Thread messages.

Follow step 4 of the Build a Thread network with nRF52840 boards and OpenThread codelab to build and flash a nRF52840 RCP device.

NCP design

In NCP design, the full Thread stack runs on the 802.15.4 radio chip.

Follow the instructions below to build the NCP firmware from the ot-nrf528xx repository you cloned in the previous step:

script/build nrf52840 USB_trans \
    -DOT_THREAD_VERSION=1.3 \
    -DOT_APP_CLI=OFF \
    -DOT_APP_RCP=OFF \
    -DOT_RCP=OFF \
    -DOT_MTD=OFF \
    -DOT_BORDER_ROUTER=ON \
    -DOT_BORDER_ROUTING=ON \
    -DOT_NCP_INFRA_IF=ON \
    -DOT_SRP_SERVER=ON \
    -DOT_SRP_ADV_PROXY=ON \
    -DOT_PLATFORM_DNSSD=ON \
    -DOT_NCP_DNSSD=ON \
    -DOT_ECDSA=ON \
    -DOT_SERVICE=ON \
    -DOT_BACKBONE_ROUTER=ON \
    -DOT_BACKBONE_ROUTER_MULTICAST_ROUTING=ON \
    -DOT_NCP_CLI_STREAM=ON

Then follow the same steps as RCP design to convert the firmware into hex format and flash.

Prepare Raspberry Pi

  1. Install Raspberry Pi OS on the RPi. Both Desktop and Lite versions will work.

  2. Once installed, boot up the RPi and open a terminal window and update the system: 

    sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Attach the Co-Processor

  1. Attach the Co-Processor device to the Raspberry Pi.

  2. Determine the serial port name for the Co-Processor device by checking /dev: 

    ls /dev/tty*
/dev/ttyACMO

Install OTBR on Raspberry Pi

To install OTBR using Docker, follow the OTBR Docker Install guide.

To install OTBR natively on Linux host, follow the OTBR Native Install guide.

Next
Setup (Docker)