My Experience with ZBT-2 - Mixed Feelings
Just received my ZBT-2 and wanted to share my experience. TL;DR: Design is fantastic, Zigbee works great, but there’s a frustrating software integration issue.
The Good
Design: Absolutely love it! Clean, professional, matches the ZWA-2 aesthetic perfectly. The build quality is excellent.
Zigbee functionality: Works flawlessly as a coordinator. Successfully migrated from ZBT-1, all my devices are connected and responsive. Zero issues with Zigbee performance itself.
The Problem
Here’s where I hit a wall. I also have a ZWA-2, and the integration experience is night and day different:
ZWA-2 experience:
- Plug in → immediate recognition
- LED control available in HA (can turn the antenna LED on/off)
- Status sensor showing device health
- Firmware updates work smoothly
- Everything just works
ZBT-2 experience:
- Initial connection showed LED control (antenna light was on)
- Attempted firmware update → failed with timeout error
- Used the web toolbox to install firmware (succeeded)
- After reconnection: LED turned off and control entity disappeared
- Only firmware update entity remains, no LED control, no status sensor
- Zigbee works, but feels like incomplete integration
Comparison
It’s like ZBT-2 is only half-integrated into Home Assistant. The ZWA-2 gets full hardware integration with all control entities, but ZBT-2 is missing the same features despite being newer hardware.
What’s there:
Zigbee coordination (works perfectly)- Firmware update entity
LED control (was there initially, disappeared after update)- Status sensor
Questions
Has anyone else experienced this? Is the LED control supposed to be there? The ZWA-2 has it, and the ZBT-2 hardware clearly has an LED (I saw it working initially), so why can’t we control it?
I’m running HA 2025.11.2. Firmware on ZBT-2 is 7.4.4.5 (installed via web toolbox).
Would love to hear if others are seeing the same thing or if I’m missing something obvious!
Additional Thought: Zigbee 4.0 and Suzi
A bit disappointed that NabuCasa rushed this to market with Zigbee 3.0 instead of waiting for proper Zigbee 4.0 hardware with Suzi support. I recently bought a Philips Hue Bridge Pro and same story there - Zigbee 3.0, no Suzi on the horizon.
Both devices will probably get some Zigbee 4.0 features via software updates eventually, but without the hardware support for Suzi, it feels like we’re getting yesterday’s tech in today’s products. Would’ve been worth the wait to have full Z4.0 capabilities from day one.
P.S. Posted more technical details in a separate thread for anyone interested: