RDK-B IoT Barton

Scope

As part of RDKM Broadband team we want to bringup IoT Barton on a platform of choice and make it available as reference for the community,The platform should be broader enough to support all IoT use cases so that depending on operator requirement he/she can test their specific use cases

Technical capabilities of Barton

• Discovery
• Pairing
• Configuration
• Firmware Management
• Control
• Eventing

Product requirements

• Matter SDK
• Zigbee 
• OTBR
• BlueZ/BLE
• Wi-Fi
• USB 

Platform requirements

• Multiple USB Ports(More than 3 Minimum)
• Wi-Fi support with atleast one radio (2.4Ghz)
• In Built Bluetooth/BLE (or) USB BT support
• In built Zigbee support (or) USB Zigbee support
• In built Thread support (or)  USB Thread support
• Reference -https://www.silabs.com/development-tools/wireless/efr32xg24-explorer-kit?tab=overview

Protocols supported

• Matter
• Zigbee
• Thread
• OpenHome (Referred in one of the page,to be confirmed)

Available platforms in RDKM RDK-B platforms and One - One Mapping

• Platform Name	Bluetooth/BLE	Zigbee	Thread	Wi-Fi	Number of USB Ports	References
  Banana Pi R4	No Inbuilt BT & supported only through  USB / USB3.0 hub	No Inbuilt support (Supported through USB 3.0 hub)	No Inbuilt supportSupported through USB 3.0 hub,Update got from Austin team)	Yes	1 (can be used for BT)	BT Integration in BPI R4 Bluetooth support in Banana Pi R4(Reference)
  Raspberry Pi 4	Yes	Supported through USB	TBD through USB	Yes	4

Banana Pi R4

• Does USB 3.0 hub can be used to connect USB Bluetooth,USB Zigbee,USB Thread dongles
  • Yes,If so did we confirm
    • BT USB tested - Details can be found here - Bluetooth support in Banana Pi R4(Reference)
    • Zigbee detected through ACM interface by enabling kernel config for acm (CONFIG_USB_ACM)

single USB dongle for Zigbee,Matter 

•  Yes - Silab's xG24 Explorer Kit (brd2703a)

High level Expectation

• Barton

Thread EFR32 integration reference in BPI R5

• OpenThread & Bluetooth platform integration in BPI R4 with silabs radio

Bluetooth EFR32 integration in BPI R4

• OpenThread & Bluetooth platform integration in BPI R4 with silabs radio

References

• https://static.linaro.org/connect/bud17/Presentations/BUD17-120%20-%20Linux-wpan-%20IEEE%20802.15.4%20and%206LoWPAN%20in%20the%20Linux%20Kernel.pdf
• https://linux-wpan.org/documentation.html

Child pages

• • 2025q2 barton build
  • Steps
  • 2026q1 barton build
  • Use cases supported
  • Steps
  • Bartoncore doc review
  • Review of opensourced documentation
  • Quickstart
  • Development ecosystem
  • Yocto build 
  • Is this code been ported/tested on any real target platform
  • Configuring the protocol (config/cmake/options.cmake)
  • Where do we get documentation 
  • Matter
  • Barton on RDK-B
  • Scope
  • Key insights
  • Block diagram
  • Use case diagram
  • RDK-B IoT Build
  • Preliminary
  • Barton core
  • Verification of barton in RDK-B
  • CLI
  •  
  • Matter onboarding stages Barton
  • Vendor integration
  • Silabs radio integration
  • OSS component support
  • linenoise upstep
  • Verification with matter device
  • Associated wifi matter device
  • Verification of thread
  • Logging
  • IoT devices used
  • Thread smart plug
  • Wifi smart plug
  • Known issues
  • Demo video (April 10/14 2025)
  • Matter over wifi demo
  • Matter over thread demo
  • Working image (Will be shared on request to License members)
  • Barton verification using reference application
  • Scope
  • Commands
  • Core commands
  • Matter commands
  • Thread commands
  • Other
  • Building barton in Host Machine
  • Steps to compile code
  • Steps to test
  • How to use reference app
  • Datamodels supported in barton
  • Resource datamodel for a zigbee light
  • Generic info
  • Reference format
  • Introduction to BartonCore & Architecture
  • Github Documentation
  • What Barton offers
  • What is not there in Barton
  • Block diagram
  • What is actually Barton Device service do
  • Supported OS runtime
  • How does client interact
  • Pairing & commissioning
  • Device drivers
  • subsystems
  • Matter
  • Thread
  • BLE
  • Zigbee(Roadmap)
  • Device communication watchdog
  • Database
  • Barton Reference App
  • Interacting with Barton from your Code
  • Setup and Initialization
  • Client Creation and Startup
  • Event Registration
  • Device Interaction
  • IoT Technology & standards Introduction
  • References
  • OpenThread & Bluetooth platform integration in BPI R4 with silabs radio
  • Scope
  • Banana Pi R4 release used
  • Hardware used (as of Jan 2026 PoC, to be expanded with more devices, device types)
  • Where to purchase SiLabs hardware
  • Highlevel block diagram of Thread & Bluetooth
  • Kernel side changes for Thread
  • Minimal kernel changes
  • User space code changes for Thread in meta-cmf-broadband/recipes-connectivity
  • cpcd
  • otbr-agent
  • Yocto changes for Thread
  • Image install changes in BPI for thread
  • Runtime changes for Thread
  • cpcd.conf
  • cpcd.service
  • Directory creation
  • systemctl enable otbr-agent
  • otbr-agent.service
  • Testing of thread
  • Firmware upgrade of BRD module
  • Documentation for thread
  • Key check points when we land in issues for thread
  • More technical explanation on user space
  • Can i assume that the above mentioned kernel config to be enabled,if so why , kernel side explanation
  • Code changes to support Bluetooth 
  • download recipies
  • Install btattach
  • Image install
  • Testing bluetooth
  • process state
  • hciconfig
  • Device connection using bluetoothctl
  • systemctl status
  • Yocto support for Barton
  • Scope
  • List of recipes
  • Dependencies
  • How to build reference App

Appendix

• Optional -  meta-openembedded/meta-networking/recipes-support/wpan-tools/wpan-tools_0.9.bb:2:HOMEPAGE = "http://wpan.cakelab.org/releases/"