ITead’s “Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus V2” (model "ZBDongle-E") based on Silicon Labs EFR32MG21 +20dBm radio SoC/MCU

Configuration Zigbee
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FYI, while many people reported that ITead’s TI CC2652P based “Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus” (model “ZBDongle-P)” can be a better Zigbee Coordinator and is recommended for Zigbee2MQTT, quite a few people have reported that ITead’s “Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus V2” (model “ZBDongle-E”) works better as a dedicated Zigbee signal repeater / Zigbee range extender if you flash it with Zigbee Router firmware and then power it with a simple USB-changer before you pair/join it to your Zigbee network → Sonoff_Zigbee_Dongle_Firmware/Dongle-E/Router at master · itead/Sonoff_Zigbee_Dongle_Firmware · GitHub

I highly recommend buying three (3) ZBDongle-E to re-flash and repurpose as Zigbee Router devices.

There is more related discussion about that here → Zigbee networks: how to guide for avoiding interference and optimize for getting better range + coverage

FYI, it is recommended to update to later firmware → https://github.com/Koenkk/Z-Stack-firmware

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Is the dongle E vs dongle P still an issue with zigbee2mqtt?

I ordered a dongle P, but received an E. Set it up on zigbee2mqtt and it worked without issue and using a few sonoff s31 plugs as repeaters.

I only have 5 end devices at this point.

Before I expand I want to see if it’s going to be an issue moving forward.

I can always repurpose it as a router/repeater if needed

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There is still only have experimental support for Silicon Labs EmberZNet based adapters in the zigbee-herdsman libary it depends on but if you upgrade to the very latest community firmware and use Zigbee2MQTT Edge (beta) releases then there is a new ”Ember” driver that you can configure it to use that is supposedly better than their ”EZSP” driver. Note that you should post any follow-up questions to that the in the Zigbee2MQTT community discussion forum on GitHub instead → https://github.com/Koenkk/zigbee2mqtt/discussions

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I have a general question as I own a ZBDongle-E to which I have connected several Xiaomi humidity sensors using the zigbee2mqtt protocol.

My question is as follows: I have purchased a https://moeshouse.com/products/wifi-3-in-1-co2-monitor
It says that it is fully compatible with the Tuya protocol. Do I need to buy anything extra for it to be recognized by Home Assistant, or will the adapter I have work? I have Home Assistant running on a Raspberry Pi 4.

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@Chris1989 all such questions about Zigbee2MQTT compatbility or support should not be posted/asked here in the Home Assistant forum but instead to Zigbee2MQTT’s own community discussions/forum → Koenkk/zigbee2mqtt · Discussions · GitHub

Though you can more or less find the same answer here for all new Zigbee products that you want to use in Z2M → https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/advanced/support-new-devices/01_support_new_devices.html

Edit: Update! Wait, the linked product is WiFi based (and not a Zigbee device), so can tell you that no Wi-Fi devices will ever work with Zigbee, as Zigbee is a completly different protocol so it totally unrelated here or ZHA and for Zigbee2MQTT, see → Zigbee - Wikipedia You really need to post that off-topic question elsewhere, not here.

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@Hedda is correct. Tuya WiFi devices are a completely different animal and will not work with z2m at all.

That said, you may be able to use the core Tuya integration (100% web dependent), or if lucky the HACS Local Tuya integration(web needed for setup only). I think there are a couple of forks of LocalTuya now, and haven’t kept up with which is best. I no longer have any Tuya Wifi devices.

When I did have a few Tuya WiFi plugs, the LocalTuya in HACS never gave me any problems.

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FYI, the popular Zigbee Gateway host application software Zigbee2MQTT to soon require EmberZNet 7.4.0.0 firmware or later if using a Silicon Labs based Zigbee Coordinator adapter. They have at least marked their old ezsp adapter code in their zigbee-herdsman library as deprecated with a reference that Z2M users should migrate to their new ember adapter code instead, and that new ember adapter requires EmberZNet 7.4.x.x Zigbee NCP firmware at a minimum (as it is not backwards compatible):

“Deprecated driver ‘ezsp’ currently in use, ‘ember’ will become the officially supported EmberZNet +driver in next release. If using Zigbee2MQTT see Improved Ember (EZSP) driver (experimental) · Koenkk/zigbee2mqtt · Discussion #21462 · GitHub”

Anyway, “deprecated” in this case only means that the code for their old ezsp adapter will no longer maintained by Zigbee2MQTT developers and that Z2M users will from now on have an yet undefined grace period to migrate to the new ember adapter.

Zigbee2MQTT’s developers on purpose choose to do a clean rewrite their new ember adapter code as “greenfield project” with focus on only supporting EZSP v13 (EmberZNet Serial Protocol version 13 which is only available in EmberZNet 7.4.0.0 firmware and later) to avoid constraints and limitations imposed by old code or old firmware.

Having personally migrated 100% of my Zigbee devices to Home Assistant’s own built-in native ZHA integration I am today not sure how well backup and restore is working these days if using their old ezsp adapter in Zigbee2MQTT but at least until recently there was no ability to restore from backup in Z2M if using that ezsp adapter in Zigbee2MQTT, see → Koenkk/zigbee-herdsman#319 and the unofficial workaround to backup and restore before if using ezsp adapter in Zigbee2MQTT was to backup and restore using zigpy-cli, see Koenkk/zigbee2mqtt#16478 but I believe the new ember adapter in Zigbee2MQTT has full native support for backup and restore but I am not sure about native migrations from ezsp adapter to ember adapter inside Zigbee2MQTT.

Note! Regardless of above, be aware that Silicon Labs adapters are currently still “experimental” in Z2M → Supported Adapters | Zigbee2MQTT however their plan is that this will change in the future with their new ember adapter code becomes more stable. Though for now only Texas Instruments CC2652 and CC1352 based adapters are officialy recommended for Zigbee2MQTT as of yet. So you might instead want to consider buying and migrating to ITead’s “Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus” (model “ZBDongle-P”) based on Texas Instruments CC2652P

PS: Not sure if ITead’s personel reads issues on their GitHub repository but posted feature request here:

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They have never released a single firmware update for the ZBDongle-E, dont see why they would start now. They seem happy for their users to rely on community built firmwares!

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