Update.
@RobertCNelson I booted again with the “minimal” image to see if I could get lowpan.service working on that, and the service starts but gives an error.
$ systemctl status lowpan.service
● lowpan.service - Create 6lowpan (IEEE802.15.4) network device
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/lowpan.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (exited) since Thu 2023-03-30 11:50:16 UTC; 42s ago
Process: 539 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/create_lowpan $CHN $PAN $MACADDR $IP6 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Main PID: 539 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
CPU: 110ms
Mar 30 11:50:16 BeaglePlay create_lowpan[539]: create_lowpan:PANID:0xabcd
Mar 30 11:50:16 BeaglePlay create_lowpan[539]: create_lowpan:MACADDR:
Mar 30 11:50:16 BeaglePlay create_lowpan[539]: create_lowpan:IPADDR:
Mar 30 11:50:16 BeaglePlay create_lowpan[539]: . taking wpan0 down
Mar 30 11:50:16 BeaglePlay create_lowpan[539]: . create lowpan0
Mar 30 11:50:16 BeaglePlay create_lowpan[559]: Cannot find device "wpan1"
Mar 30 11:50:16 BeaglePlay create_lowpan[576]: command failed: No such device (-19)
Mar 30 11:50:16 BeaglePlay create_lowpan[579]: Cannot find device "wpan1"
Mar 30 11:50:16 BeaglePlay create_lowpan[582]: Cannot find device "lowpan0"
Mar 30 11:50:16 BeaglePlay systemd[1]: Finished Create 6lowpan (IEEE802.15.4) network device.
This looks like same issue of missing MAC ADDR as mentioned in @toddm other thread here (Beagleplay - lowpan0/wpan1 only show up when running from emmc - #2 by RobertCNelson).
So in summary:
If you are running the minimal image and then install beagleconnect package, the lowpan service won’t start because somehow it is missing a MAC address in /etc/default/lowpan