I have both the Sonoff ZBBridge Tasmota flashed and the Conbee II . I live in a large home , three floors , all concrete and brick walls . Which direction should I go in Home Assistant ? Appreciate your expert inputs as I am looking forward to reasonably robust interfaces with end devices. I have been studying the various posts and am worried about the "lost and unavailable " devices !!
I would go for conbee2. There’s a PR to update zigpy documentation that states:
zigpy requires a robust connection between the zigpy radio library and the serial port of the Zigbee radio. With solutions such as ITEAD Sonoff ZBBridge or a Ser2Net serial proxy connection over a WiFi network it is expected to see
NCP entered failed state. Requesting APP controller restartin the logs. This is a normal part of the operation and indicates there was a drop in communication which caused packet loss to occurred between the zigpy radio library and the Zigbee radio. The use of serial network proxies/bridges/servers over WiFi is therefore not recommended when wanting a stable Zigbee environment with zigpy.
You should update the conbee2 to latest available firmware and check the channel used to not interfere with WiFi. When building your zigbee network, start with plugs and lights and then with battery-powered devices
If you have some time, you might want to hold off and watch for the reports on this new adapter:
The Silabs group seems to be the leading folks right now in terms of current products (Zigbee 3.0), processor horsepower and configurations option for the coordinator.
I have been running one of the Sonoff Zigbee Tasmota’ed for a bit with good success, and have used the CC2530 in past (not recommended, while very stable, old tech and very underpowered for larger networks). As @makai stated some of the in the know folks around ZHA say that the way the Sonoff Zigbee coordinator device connects to the ZHA software is not a good model and may cause issues (I suspect with larger networks than I have).
I have read reports of good success with using the relatively low cost Ikea router (called repeaters, but that is a debatable proper name) spread around their installs to extend the the strength and range of their networks. This makes sense to me to have several properly placed dedicated devices to be the ‘core’ router backbone of your network. Zigbee devices are going to select how they route back to coordinator and between devices on their own, you have no say in the matter. But, the devices often make their choice based on the signal strength and quality of neighbor devices. So if you seed a strong backbone, I think you are doing your best to build up a solid network. The reason to use a ‘dedicated’ device for these backbone routing functions is that you can power cycle them without effecting attached power units, and if needed you can move them to change your network topology.
I would take the time to read through as many of the threads on zigbee experience as you can, lots of useful experiences to learn from.
Do study the interactions between devices from different vendors. A lot of thread on this forum and the Zigbee2MQTT forum. Problems in this area seem to have caused a lot of headaches. You probably will have devices from multiple vendors, not much choice. But some do seem to cause more headaches.
examples of useful threads:
https://community.home-assistant.io/t/some-lightbulbs-drop-off-tradfri/273237
https://community.home-assistant.io/t/zigbee-and-home-assistant-is-driving-me-nuts/266256
Good hunting!
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Really appreciate your inputs … Will do as you have suggested. Thanks again.
Many Thanks. Will go with Conbee II .How do I update the Conbee to the latest firmware ?
Thanks for your guidance . Will do a lot of reading . Plan to get 6 Ikea Repeaters .
If I was in your position to make sure you had a stable base, I would install the coordinator and the Ikea repeaters and nothing else. Then let that sit for say a week and see if it stays stable. Because if that does not, the variety of stuff you start to add on top will not be stable. That is not to say you are not going to run into devices that leave you scratching your head, but having confidence in what the base network is doing will help your sanity.
During that week, just remind your ‘significant other’ that candle light is ‘romantic’ and say ‘dear may I open two more bottles of wine’… and be sure to NOT mention my name… 
Good hunting!
You need to install deCONZ on a separate computer (a Pi or a windows computer). Then you can update using the GUI or using the CLI.
How to install deconz:
https://phoscon.de/en/conbee2/install
Update Using CLI:
CooL !! My wife will glow !!