ESP-THREAD-BR is the official ESP Thread Border Router SDK. It supports all fundamental network features to build a Thread Border Router and integrates rich product level features for quick productization.

The SDK is built on top of ESP-IDF and OpenThread. The OpenThread port and ESP Border Router implementation is provided as pre-built library in ESP-IDF.

The Wi-Fi based ESP Thread Border Router consists of two SoCs:

• An ESP32 series Wi-Fi SoC (ESP32, ESP32-C, ESP32-S, etc) loaded with ESP Thread Border Router and OpenThread Stack.
• An ESP32-H 802.15.4 SoC loaded with OpenThread RCP.

The ESP Thread border router board provides an integrated module of an ESP32-S3 SoC and an ESP32-H2 RCP.

The two SoCs are connected with following interfaces:

• UART and SPI for serial communication
• RESET and BOOT pins for RCP Update
• 3-Wires PTA for RF coexistence

The SDK also supports manually connecting an ESP32-H2 RCP to an ESP32 series Wi-Fi SoC.

Note that the SPI GPIOs are optional, if the UART is selected for communication.

The following image shows an example connection between ESP32 DevKitC and ESP32-H2 DevKitC:

In this setup, only UART interface is connected, so it doesn't support RCP Update or RF Coexistence features. You can refer to ot_br example in esp-idf as a quick start.

Similar to the previous Wi-Fi based Thread Border Router setup, but a device with Ethernet interface is required, such as ESP32-Ethernet-Kit.

These features are currently provided by the SDK:

• Bi-directional IPv6 Connectivity: The devices on the backbone link (typically Wi-Fi) and the Thread network can reach each other.
• Service Discovery Delegate: The nodes on the Thread network can find the mDNS services on the backbone link.
• Service Registration Server: The nodes on the Thread network can register services to the border router for devices on the backbone link to discover.
• Multicast Forwarding: The devices joining the same multicast group on the backbone link and the Thread network can be reached with one single multicast.
• NAT64: The devices can access the IPv4 Internet via the border router.
• RCP Update: The built border router image will contain an updatable RCP image and can automatically update the RCP on version mismatch or RCP failure.
• Web GUI: The border router will enable a web server and provide some practical functions including Thread network discovery, network formation and status query.
• RF Coexistence: The border router supports optional external coexistence, a feature that enhances the transmission performance when there are channel conflicts between the Wi-Fi and Thread networks.

• Documentation for the latest version: https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-thread-br/. This documentation is built from the docs directory of this repository.

• The esp32.com forum is a place to ask questions and find community resources.

• Check the Issues section on github if you find a bug or have a feature request. Please check existing Issues before opening a new one.

• If you're interested in contributing to ESP-THREAD-BR, please check the Contributions Guide.