ZBDongle-E - flash or not?

[Steffi (Steffo)]

I got myself a ZBDongle-E as X-mas gift and I also got a few relays from myself as well.
I am using HA on a NUC i3 with HAOS and use Z-wave stick and RFXUSB for 433Mhz.
I intend to use IKEA devices with the ZBDongle-E and then I read somewhere that I should flash it to also support Matter/Thread befoew adding zigbee devices and this was to be future proof.
Is that a good thing or will it make my ZBDongle-E behaving worse with this matter/thread multitasking?
I have now installed it with ZHA but only added one device so before going further I need a strategy choice.
What is your opinion?
Happy new year to all and I hope someone can help me with wise directions

[Teknor]

You might reconsider to use Z2M instead of ZHA. I have used both for a couple of years (with ZBD-E) and experience better signals and stability with Zigbee2MQTT. Also update of the nodes firmware is much easier with Z2M. Z2M has developed a lot during the last year.

[Steffi (Steffo)]

Thanks for input.
Would using ZHA and the mqtt version be the same user wise od do I need like node-red for the mqtt automation?
Thanks in advance

[jerrm]

Everything on z2m is exposed as normal HA Devices/Entities. Nothing special is needed for automations or scripts.

[Hedda]

FYI, Sonoff ZBDongle-E (Silicon Labs EFR32MG21 based) is not recommended for Zigbee2MQTT and is still listed as experimental only because Z2M does not yet support backup and restore for Silabs based Zigbee Coordinator adapters → Supported Adapters | Zigbee2MQTT

So if you are going to use Zigbee2MQTT then better to buy the Sonoff ZBDongle-P (Texas Instruments CC2652P based) instead and just flash the Sonoff ZBDongle-E adapter with Zigbee Router firmware in orde to re-purpose it as a dedicated stand-alone Zigbee Router adapter by powering it via a USB-charger.

Note that adding a few dedicated stand-alone Zigbee Router adapters are recommended regardless if using ZHA or Zigbee2MQTT as a Zigbee network depends heavily on its mesh networking technology.

@Steffi

I read somewhere that I should flash it to also support Matter/Thread befoew adding zigbee devices and this was to be future proof.
Is that a good thing or will it make my ZBDongle-E behaving worse with this matter/thread multitasking?
I have now installed it with ZHA but only added one device so before going further I need a strategy choice.
What is your opinion?

I recommend not using multi-protocol/multi-PAN firmware and instead suggest using a separate dedicated radio adapter for each wireless IoT protocol that you want to use.

Also highly recommend you read and try to follow all the tips in these other threads:

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