A Home Assistant community member has released a custom integration for the Lafaer LWR01 and LWR02, two Matter-over-Thread presence sensors. According to the developer’s forum post, the sensors work well over Matter for basic data, but their deeper settings (sensitivity, presence timeout, radar distance segments, energy thresholds) are only reachable in the Lafaer App, not through the standard Matter interface. The new integration brings most of that into a sidebar panel in Home Assistant. It is a GitHub project announced on the Home Assistant community forum. We have not used it or the sensors ourselves, so what follows is what the project’s own pages say.
What it does
- Discover, take over, rename and remove sensors from a device list.
- Show presence, illuminance, battery level and device information. The LWR02 also shows temperature and humidity; the LWR01 reports its power source.
- Adjust sensitivity, presence timeout and low-light reporting, plus detection mode on the LWR02.
- Set radar distance segments and energy thresholds. The LWR02 gets live energy charts, and the LWR01 gets a high-performance mode toggle.
- Control the LED, identify a device, run radar self-learning and reset radar parameters.
It talks to the sensors directly over Thread/IPv6 from Home Assistant, so your phone does not need to be nearby.
What it does not do
The README is clear that this is a configuration and status panel. It does not create continuously updated entities for dashboards or automations. Keep using the Matter integration for those. Firmware updates are not included, and it cannot add a sensor to a Thread network; the sensor must already be on one.
The catch: one management key
Each sensor stores only one management key. Taking a device over in Home Assistant replaces the App’s key, so the App can no longer manage it. Pairing through the App again invalidates Home Assistant’s key. Pick one tool for tuning and expect to switch back and forth only deliberately. Removing a device from the panel clears only the integration’s local record; it does not reset the sensor or remove it from Matter.
Before you install
- Network: you need a Thread border router and working IPv6 from Home Assistant to the sensor. Automatic discovery needs mDNS. If you run VLANs or containers, that is where it will most likely fail. The README also mentions access to UDP port 5683.
- Version: the declared minimum is Home Assistant 2024.12.0, though the author recommends a current release.
- Install: add the repository to HACS as a custom repository of type Integration, or copy the files in manually, then restart.
- Battery: the panel connects only when needed, and closes an idle connection after a minute. A sleeping sensor may need a short button press to wake it.
- Automations: the README warns to check detection behaviour after changing settings before relying on it for anything important.
This is a one-developer custom integration, so treat it that way: test on one sensor first.
A useful side effect for troubleshooting
In a separate forum thread about Lafaer sensors failing, the developer points out that because the panel bypasses Matter, it offers another way to check connectivity. If it can read the sensor while Home Assistant’s Matter integration shows it unavailable, the problem is likelier on the Matter side than a complete loss of Thread. That is the developer’s suggestion, not a confirmed diagnosis, and they were asking for reports.
Our take
If you already own these sensors and have been stuck with phone-only tuning, this is a sensible convenience, provided you accept giving up the App. If you are shopping, note the underlying lesson: Matter gets a sensor into Home Assistant easily, but vendor-specific tuning may still live in an app. Check where the settings you care about are exposed before you buy.