ZHA vs Zigbee2Mqtt - which is the most stable?

Configuration Zigbee
47

“No one”? At least “XZG Firmware” (which is used by several network-attached Zigbee Coordinator adapter manufacturers including ZigStar) and “SMLIGHT” Zigbee network-adapters both have WiFi configuration as well as a VPN client built-in available via easy-to-use settings in the UI. They are marketing them as " Key features" without any warnings about why it is a bad idea to use those feature, instead just making it easy for users to believe it is a good idea to use them WiFi and/or VPN. I have not checked but think there are other similar firmware that at least have WiFi configurations built directly into the UI too simply because the ESP32 chip they use has Wi-Fi capability(?).

I mean, if a feature is there then why should a user not assume that it should work without any problems.

IMHO best would be if the XZG Firmware developers would just remove those any Wi-Fi and VPN features completely from their firmware as using them can give users a bad experience and put an extra strain on the developers of Zigbee Gateway project whose users buy those.

Much better to not make it easy to create a bad setup.

After many years of me helping many ZHA and Zigbee2MQTT end-users here in this community forum or other support channels for those two projects I can tell you from my own first-hand experience that while it is true that most users do tend to use stable wired Ethernet LAN connection and therefore those often seem to have no problems there are still many end-users here reporting issues and asking for help here where it turns out that they connecting a network-attached Zigbee Coordinator adapter over Wi-Fi or VPN (which is why that warning against using Wi-Fi or VPN had to be added specifically).

These are are just a few examples:

And as I do not follow all other projects that uses such adapters what I have seen is only a fraction of the recorded cases, which I guess should mean that there is a multitude of number of unrecorded cases that are using a network-attached Zigbee Coordinator adapter over Wi-Fi or VPN, and might be having problems because that today or in the future, which in turn can create an unfair reputation via word-of-month, etc. the ZHA and Zigbee2MQTT projects being unstable when the root cause is really the users network or setup not being stable enough for a network-attached Zigbee Coordinator adapter.

1 Like