Aeotec Zi-Stick ZGA008 status/experience?

[Thermojito]

Would you based on own experience with Domoticz recommend Aeotec Zi-Stick ZGA008 with Zigbee2MQTT and Domoticz Autodiscovery?

When deploying a new system I would prefer to buy a new/late design where I can buy replacement if needed for as long time as possible.

The SiLabs EFR32MG21 chip inside is however listed as experimental by zigbee2mqtt.io and this specific product is NOT in the list of USB-devices at that site and other home automation systems all seems to have native/plugin support for this and not through MQTT. Aeotec as a supplier does however claim this stick to work with Zigbee2MQTT on their homepage. I haven`t found any evidence though from someone in this forum or others that can confirm that it works stable and complete.

The promising info though is that this chipset is said to have the newer Gecko Bootloader (GBL) that has the ability to enter bootloader mode automatically (also known as Auto-BSL) without need to pressing holding physical BTL/reset button or short circuit any GPIO/soldering-pads.

As I`m expecting Firmware update to be needed regardless of manufacturer this sounds convenient and lower risk/less time consuming.

Sure, I could potentially be able to buy/import an old deprecated SONOFF Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus ZBDongle-P from somewhere in the world and that seem to be stable for most/all users but it would not have the advantages above.

[pipiche]

They are some information on the French forum with ZigbeeforDomoticz plugin https://easydomoticz.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13864
What I found is that this is Elelabs based one

[robhiddinga]

Yes, i have zi-stick and got it working with latest domoticz beta on a pi5.
Flashed firmware, had a lot of issues and ended up with a working version using firmware ncp-uart-hw-v7.4.3.0-aeotec-zga008-230400
hint: download the firmware and not the page with the link to the firmware
Also a lot of try-n-error with zigbee2mqtt configuration.yml

Spoiler: show

homeassistant: true
frontend:
port: 8084
permit_join: true
mqtt:
base_topic: zigbee2mqtt
server: mqtt://192.168.xx.xx:1883
serial:
adapter: ember
port: /dev/ttyUSB-ZI_Stick
baudrate: 230400

The final change to get the devices registered in Domoticz was setting homeassistant: true which also required the auto discovery prefix in domoticz to be homeassistent.
I could not get it working on topic zigbee2mqtt although I did see the topic in the logging

Also Zigbee frontend finally running on port 8084

After having zwavejs-ui running I thought adding zigbee2mqtt would go smoothly, but it was a struggle.

[lost]

Flashed firmware, had a lot of issues

Hello, I have this zigbee controller since February and this worked out of the box on my side. But I'm using Z4D integration so this may make a difference, to avoid MQTT SW piles (+ no real need, all being co-hosted in my system).

Since then, no issue. Only a range that may have been better, despite manufacturer claims this device was good on this: Much less than zwave+ in my home, with a z-stick gen5 from same brand... but this may just be a zigbee flaw linked to 2.4GHz also used by wifi/BT I underestimated compared to zwave/868MHz. Cannot compare as that's my 1st and only zigbee controller.