[SUGGESTION] Team up with Zigbee2MQTT and IoBroker developers/testers who is developing EZSP adapter support for zigbee-herdsman

[Hedda]

@NilsBohr (Nikita Selednikov) Silicon Labs EZSP compatibility in zigbee-herdsman as used by Zigbee2MQTT and IoBroker is still classified as experimental/unstable and thus listed as "not recommended" so wonder if I can suggest that you (and @Elelabs ) try to reach out to @Koenkk and @kirovilya as well as their fellow developers and testers of zigbee-herdsman for Zigbee2MQTT and IoBroker about possible sponsoring those projects by donating some of your Zigbee USB dongles and shield/hat adapters for Raspberry Pi as I know that you have done for a few other open source home automation projects?

Please see here where there is more back-story here -> Koenkk/zigbee-herdsman#319 (as well as Koenkk/zigbee-herdsman#317).

Summary; initial support for Silicon Labs EZSP v8 protocol was merged into zigbee-herdsman in February of 2021 by @kirovilya however as in a catch-22 situation lack of interest from more developers and testers has deterred other developers and testers who are willing to actively assist with improving the code and promoting it for use by others.

Hopefully, if more developers and testers of these popular projects have access to more Silabs EFR32 based EZSP adapters for development setups and labs for testing/debugging then it will motivate them to improve zigbee-herdsman + Zigbee2MQTT and IoBroker support for EZSP, (which if happens should improve stability of all Silabs based EZSP Zigbee Coordinators from all manufacturers for these projects), though maybe they could list Elelabs Zigbee USB Adapter and Elelabs Zigbee Raspberry Pi Shield as compatible on their websites if they have access to several hardware samples to test with.

@NilsBohr you could then also feel good about listing Zigbee2MQTT and IoBroker as compatible software on your product pages:

https://elelabs.com/products/elelabs-zigbee-shield.html

https://elelabs.com/products/elelabs-usb-adapter.html

If Elelabs @NilsBohr could help sponsor them with hardware by donating a few of your Elelabs Zigbee USB Adapters and Elelabs Zigbee Raspberry Pi Shields then maybe they could prioritize its code in order to support many different Silabs Zigbee NCP adapters via EZSP (EmberZNet Serial Protocol). Perhaps they can mention that they use Elelabs adapters as reference adapters for Silicon Labs EZSP compatibility. No strings attached of course as these are still hobby projects at their core with only a few developers volunteering on that project so far.

Again, as I understand it, zigbee-hersman, Zigbee2MQTT (a.k.a. Z2M), and IoBroker are all only spare-time hobby projects but still, I think that teaming up might give all involved projects some positive recognition in the open source communities that use them and the whole home automation scene in general which might attract more developers from the community willing to test it and help out with all these involved projects which in the long run could benefit all users wanting Zigbee with Silicon Labs adapters to become more mature and working with more Zigbee hardware dongles than it is today.

PS: @Koenkk and @kirovilya Best is probably if you yourself as well any any interested fellow developers/testers send an e-mail directly to "Nikita Selednikov" [email protected] (a.k.a. @NilsBohr on GitHub who is Product Manager at Elelabs) and ask if he can ship each of you a few Silicon Labs EZSP adapters as hardware samples for testing. Alternatively, send an e-mail to [email protected] as per https://elelabs.com/#contacts

PPS: FYI, Elelabs currently sell Silicon Labs EFR32MG13 based Zigbee USB Adapter (ELU013) and Zigbee Raspberry Pi Shield (ELR023), however, @NilsBohr have written as a reply to a question that they are working on product refreshes of updated variants based on the newer EFR32MG21 and EFR32MG24 (depends on Silabs supply chain I guess). Note that they sold Zigbee adapters for many years and have done such refreshes to newer and newer Silabs chips in the past which can be slightly confusing since they change SKU/article-ID but not the actual title of the products. Elelabs also do stealth releases of new SoC versions without any public announcements.

PPPS: German electronics maker Popp & Co (which was acquired by Aeotec in 2018) also sell white label versions of Elelabs Zigbee adapters/dongles as "ZB-Stick" and "ZB-Shield" under their POPP brand in Europe:

https://www.popp.eu/zb-shield/

https://www.popp.eu/zb-stick/

https://aeotec.com/about/index.html

[kirovilya]

Hello, I already have a stick ELU013 and shield ELR023 from Elelabs.

[Hedda]

@Koenkk @kirovilya Do you know of any more interested Zigbee2MQTT/IoBroker/zigbee-herdsman developers and/or testers?

Both development and testing usually require multiple dongles/adapters for debugging so have different test/lab enviroments.

Again also note that @NilsBohr have mentioned that Elelabs are working on a new EFR32MG21 (and EFR32MG24) revisions too.

[Koenkk]

@Hedda > Do you know of any more interested Zigbee2MQTT/IoBroker/zigbee-herdsman developers and/or testers?

I'm not aware of more developers. It is mainly @kirovilya

[Hedda]

@Hedda > Do you know of any more interested Zigbee2MQTT/IoBroker/zigbee-herdsman developers and/or testers?

I'm not aware of more developers. It is mainly @kirovilya

Are there then any Zigbee2MQTT and/or IoBroker advanced testers who are willing to actively try to break it and report issues?

[kirovilya]

I think there are no testers who will specifically deal with this. usually this is done by the users themselves, who are proactive and decide to try something new :)
now, most users have enough dongles on a chip from TI. and no one knows the obvious advantages of efr32 chips - therefore no one is interested.

[Koenkk]

now, most users have enough dongles on a chip from TI. and no one knows the obvious advantages of efr32 chips - therefore no one is interested.

• I've seen several users using the EZSP integration (this search will give you some)
• What are the advantages of the efr32 chips?

[Hedda]

now, most users have enough dongles on a chip from TI. and no one knows the obvious advantages of efr32 chips - therefore no one is interested.

I believe that most users are initially interested in solutions that do not require them to buy a new Zigbee adapter in other to try a different application. They may however then be interested to upgrade to a more powerful Zigbee adapter once they buy more devices and there is an easy migration path. For example, today a lot of users of OpenHAB's Zigbee Binding and Home Assistant's ZHA integration currently already own and use the older Nortek GoControl QuickStick Combo Model HUSBZB-1 (Z-Wave & Zigbee Ember 3581 USB Adapter), CEL Cortet MeshConnect USB Sticks (EM358, ZM357S-USB, ZM3588S-USB models), or Bitron Video/Smabit BV AV2010/10 USB-Stick with Silicon Labs Ember 3587), or Telegesis ETRX357USB/ETRX357USB-LR/ETRX357USB-LRS+8M (which for Home Assistant's ZHA integration first have to be flashed with other EmberZNet firmware with EZSP interface).

• What are the advantages of the efr32 chips?

If buying a new Texas Instruments Zigbee adapter is an option for all users then it might be harder to argue advantages other than the opinion that it is good to have options. If buying a new Texas Instruments Zigbee adapter is not an option and instead the user insists on wanting to use their existing Silicon Labs EZSP dongle that the users already uses in another Zigbee application that supports Silicon Labs EZSP.

Personally, I think there are several reasons why there is a good idea for an application to support multiple Zigbee stacks from different manufacturers. And the arguments of advantages for supporting multiple Zigbee stacks from different manufacturers are really specific to EFR32 as could apply to any other Zigbee stack that is not already supported by zigbee-herdsman).

A current argument is compatibility with more SoCs/adapters on the market can help when manufacturers have problems with supply chains or low on stock, real works example there now is that ITead's Texas Instruments CC2652P based "ZBDongle-P" USB-adapter is out-of-stock while their Silicon Labs EFR32MG21 based "ZBDongle-E" USB-adapter is in stock; see https://itead.cc/product/zigbee-3-0-usb-dongle/ vases https://itead.cc/product/sonoff-zigbee-3-0-usb-dongle-plus/

...with the still ongoing worldwide chip shortages and global shipping crisis we now know that when a supply chain fails then it can be catastrophic for manufacturers using those chips in their products. So could be said that you have been lucky that Texas Instruments have not suffered at the same scale from supply problems as Silicon Labs has during the last few years.

From an end-user's point-of-view, it allow users to migrate to a different Zigbee implementation and/or home automation platform (like for example OpenHAB, ZHA, deCONZ, Domoticz, custom XBee, etc.) without having to buy a new Zigbee USB adapter,

From a developer's point of view I guess there could use the pro arguments for chaos engineering, which in this case could enable you to find more bugs which may be seen more often or easier to find with a other Zigbee stack -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_engineering

I guess the only specific to EFR32 (when compared to Texas Instruments) is that Silicon Labs is arguable still the industry leader.

I am not an electronics system engineer but I also read comments from several that have used both Silicon Labs and Texas Instruments Zigbee SDK, tools and documentation with arguments that Silabs does make better tools and documentation for developers than TI.

PS: Both OpenHAB's Zigbee Binding and Home Assistant's ZHA integration support Silicon Labs EZSP and XBee as well Texas Instruments. OpenHAB's Zigbee Binding in addition also supports Telegesis interface, while Home Assistant's ZHA integration in addition also supports ConBee/RaspBee and ZiGate.

[Hedda]

now, most users have enough dongles on a chip from TI. and no one knows the obvious advantages of efr32 chips - therefore no one is interested.

I believe that most users are initially interested in solutions that do not require them to buy a new Zigbee adapter in other to try a different application. They may however then be interested to upgrade to a more powerful Zigbee adapter once they buy more devices and there is an easy migration path. For example, today a lot of users of OpenHAB's Zigbee Binding and Home Assistant's ZHA integration currently already own and use the older Nortek GoControl QuickStick Combo Model HUSBZB-1 (Z-Wave & Zigbee Ember 3581 USB Adapter), CEL Cortet MeshConnect USB Sticks (EM358, ZM357S-USB, ZM3588S-USB models), or Bitron Video/Smabit BV AV2010/10 USB-Stick with Silicon Labs Ember 3587), or Telegesis ETRX357USB/ETRX357USB-LR/ETRX357USB-LRS+8M (which for Home Assistant's ZHA integration first have to be flashed with other EmberZNet firmware with EZSP interface).

• What are the advantages of the efr32 chips?

If buying a new Texas Instruments Zigbee adapter is an option for all users then it might be harder to argue advantages other than the opinion that it is good to have options. If buying a new Texas Instruments Zigbee adapter is not an option and instead the user insists on wanting to use their existing Silicon Labs EZSP dongle that the users already uses in another Zigbee application that supports Silicon Labs EZSP.

FYI, in related news to this, a Silabs EFR32MG21 SoC will also be used in the official "Home Assistant SkyConnect USB Stick", see:

https://community.home-assistant.io/t/home-assistant-skyconnect-usb-stick-announced-will-be-compatible-with-both-zigbee-and-thread-including-matter-chip-over-thread/433594

So believe Home Assistant users who buy it might be more inclined to try out Zigbee2MQTT/IoBroker if there is full support for it.

That is, the best Zigbee adapter is the one that you own, (to paraphrase the saying "the best camera is the one that's with you").

You can by the way submit your interest in the official "Home Assistant SkyConnect USB Stick" here if want to get mailed updates:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScEjHSBJszUZfgO3MIDO51IHr3Oeohcs8BLpRIjY1liJ58IpA/viewform

PS: The exact same Silicon Labs EFR32MG21 SoC is also built-in to "Home Assistant Yellow" (formerly "Home Assistant Amber"):

https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2021/09/13/home-assistant-yellow/

https://www.crowdsupply.com/nabu-casa/home-assistant-yellow

[pipiche38]

Hi @NilsBohr trying to get in touch with you via email but no success