Home Assistant’s SkyConnect dongle, now sold as Home Assistant Connect ZBT-1, launched in December 2022 with a headline promise: one USB stick, one Silicon Labs radio chip, running Zigbee and Thread at the same time. No second dongle, no juggling coordinators. That pitch is the reason “multiprotocol” still shows up in searches years later, and it’s also the reason the answer has gotten more complicated than the original marketing suggested.
The short version: multiprotocol firmware exists, but Home Assistant no longer recommends it, and the add-on that enabled it is on its way out. Concurrent Zigbee and Thread operation on a shared radio proved unstable enough that it stays an experimental feature, with existing users pointed back toward single-protocol firmware. Meanwhile Sonoff, a competing vendor, has published its own claim that the same chip family runs both protocols stably on its hardware. This article works through what the promise was, why it got walked back, what the official guidance says today, and how seriously to take Sonoff’s counter-claim. Every path here stays on your local network, whichever one you pick.
What “multiprotocol” on SkyConnect/ZBT-1 was supposed to do
SkyConnect (and its later Connect ZBT-1 rebrand) uses a Silicon Labs EFR32-series radio chip — the same chip family used across a number of Zigbee coordinator dongles on the market. The pitch specific to SkyConnect was a special “multiprotocol” or MultiPAN firmware mode: instead of dedicating the radio to a single protocol, the firmware would time-slice the chip so it could run a Zigbee network and a Thread border router concurrently, on one piece of hardware. For a buyer choosing coordinator hardware, that was the appeal — Zigbee for the existing device mesh, Thread for the newer Matter-over-Thread devices entering the market, without needing a second dongle or a second USB port.
“SkyConnect” and “Home Assistant Connect ZBT-1” refer to the same underlying hardware line; the product was rebranded. If you see either name in a forum thread or an older guide, treat them as the same device for firmware-compatibility purposes.
Why Home Assistant walked multiprotocol back
Running two radio protocols concurrently on a single chip is a genuinely hard engineering problem: the chip has to time-share its radio between Zigbee’s and Thread’s different timing and channel requirements, and any timing slip shows up as dropped packets on one protocol or the other. Home Assistant’s own Connect ZBT-1 documentation says that after extensive testing, multiprotocol remains an experimental feature it does not recommend using, and that dedicating an adapter to each protocol is the setup it recommends instead.
“Paused” understates where this ended up. The Silicon Labs Multiprotocol add-on that made the mode usable is documented as no longer supported and due to be removed, with existing users told to migrate their radio back to Zigbee or Thread firmware.
That guidance is summarized here rather than quoted: the exact wording lives on Home Assistant and Nabu Casa support pages that have been revised more than once, and it was last checked for this article in August 2026. If a purchase or a reflash hinges on precise phrasing, read the live page first.
What the current official recommendation actually says
The practical guidance is simple even if the backstory isn’t: one firmware per dongle. Flash Connect ZBT-1 with either the dedicated Zigbee firmware or the dedicated Thread firmware, not the multiprotocol build, and run it as a single-protocol coordinator. If you need both protocols through Home Assistant, run two adapters, one for Zigbee and one as a Thread border router, rather than one adapter attempting both.
| Setup | What it runs | Current status |
|---|---|---|
| One dongle, Zigbee firmware only | Zigbee coordinator (ZHA or Zigbee2MQTT) | Supported, standard path |
| One dongle, Thread firmware only | Thread border router | Supported, standard path |
| One dongle, multiprotocol/MultiPAN firmware | Zigbee + Thread concurrently | Experimental, not recommended; enabling add-on being retired |
| Two adapters, one Zigbee + one Thread | Zigbee coordinator and Thread border router, separately | Official recommendation if you need both protocols |
Connect ZBT-1 has a successor. Home Assistant Connect ZBT-2, announced in November 2025, uses a newer Silicon Labs EFR32MG24 chip and supports Zigbee (ZHA or Zigbee2MQTT) or Thread and Matter via an OpenThread Border Router. It does not change the answer here: Home Assistant says running both at once is theoretically possible on that hardware, but that it works poorly enough there are no plans to implement it.
That lands where the rest of this cluster already points: pick a Zigbee coordinator on the usual criteria — our ZBDongle-E vs ZBDongle-P comparison and the SMLIGHT SLZB-06 setup guide cover the mainstream options — and treat Thread support as separate hardware if and when you need it, rather than a bundled feature of your Zigbee coordinator.
The Sonoff counter-claim: read it skeptically
Sonoff, a hardware vendor unrelated to Nabu Casa, publishes a blog post titled “Multiprotocol Is Not Dead” that makes a direct counter-claim: after what it describes as configuration and CPC task stack optimizations worked through with Silicon Labs’ support, its own ZBDongle-E ran MultiPAN firmware v4.6.0 — built on EmberZNet SDK 8.1.1.0 and OpenThread SDK 2.6.1.0, on the EFR32MG21 chip — with 100 Zigbee devices and 50 Thread devices simultaneously for five weeks without crashes.
This is a vendor claim published on Sonoff’s own site about Sonoff’s own hardware and firmware build, not an independently verified result and not the same firmware Nabu Casa ships on SkyConnect/Connect ZBT-1. Both products use Silicon Labs EFR32-family radios, but that doesn’t mean the two firmware builds behave identically. Treat the claim as one vendor’s data point, not a resolution of the underlying instability Home Assistant identified.
That distinction matters more than it might look. “Same chip family” is not “same firmware, same drivers, same testing.” Sonoff has a commercial incentive to differentiate its ZBDongle-E from the official Home Assistant hardware on exactly this axis, and the post cites no independent benchmark behind the five-week, zero-crash figure. The test network isn’t described either, which matters: Sonoff’s own hardware spec puts the ZBDongle-E at roughly 30 devices joined directly to the coordinator, so a 100-device Zigbee test implies mains-powered routers relaying most of it. Weigh it as unusually specific vendor copy — the version numbers are worth something — rather than a settled result.
What to do in 2026 if you’re setting up a coordinator today
If you’re buying or configuring hardware now, follow the official guidance rather than a vendor claim you can’t verify: run single-protocol firmware. If your setup only needs Zigbee, flash Zigbee firmware on your coordinator of choice (our ZHA vs Zigbee2MQTT comparison covers that decision if you haven’t made it) and leave multiprotocol alone. If you also want a Thread border router for Matter-over-Thread devices, budget for a second dedicated adapter — a ZBT-1, the newer ZBT-2, or any supported border router — rather than trying to make one radio do both jobs.
If you already own a SkyConnect/Connect ZBT-1 and specifically want to try multiprotocol anyway, understand what you’re choosing. On the official side it’s an experimental configuration whose supporting add-on is being retired, so it isn’t something to build a household on. On Sonoff’s side it’s a stability claim nobody outside Sonoff has verified. Either is reasonable for a tinkering setup you can afford to rebuild. Neither is what this site would recommend for a production Zigbee network you depend on daily.
FAQ
Can I run Zigbee and Thread at the same time on one SkyConnect/ZBT-1? Technically yes, using multiprotocol/MultiPAN firmware, but it’s experimental rather than recommended, because concurrent operation on the shared radio has shown instability — and the add-on that enables it is being retired. The supported path is one protocol per dongle.
Is multiprotocol firmware safe to use on Home Assistant Connect ZBT-1 in 2026? “Safe” in the sense of damaging hardware, yes. Reliable for a network you depend on, no, not according to current official guidance — and it’s on the way out rather than merely deprioritized, since the Silicon Labs Multiprotocol add-on is documented as unsupported and due for removal.
What’s the difference between SkyConnect and Home Assistant Connect ZBT-1? They’re the same hardware line under two names — SkyConnect was the original branding, Connect ZBT-1 is the current one. Any firmware or multiprotocol guidance that applies to one applies to the other.
Do I need two dongles for Zigbee and Thread? Under the current official recommendation, yes: one adapter flashed for Zigbee, a second acting as the Thread border router. That holds for the newer Connect ZBT-2 as well, which runs either protocol but not both at once.
Does Sonoff’s ZBDongle-E support multiprotocol better than the official ZBT-1? Sonoff says so, citing a five-week test on its own hardware with specific firmware and SDK versions. No independent source has verified it. Worth knowing about, not settled.
What’s verified, what stays local, what to check yourself
The “concurrent Zigbee and Thread is unstable” finding, the one-protocol-per-adapter recommendation, and the multiprotocol add-on’s retirement all trace back to Home Assistant’s own documentation, checked in August 2026 — not to any testing performed for this article. No multiprotocol firmware was flashed or benchmarked here. That wording has changed across documentation revisions before, so check the live page yourself if a purchase or reflash depends on the exact phrasing.
Sonoff’s stability claim is reported exactly as Sonoff describes it and attributed to Sonoff: no independent benchmark stands behind the five-week, zero-crash figure, and the post doesn’t describe the network topology it was measured on. The firmware and SDK versions Sonoff names are worth cross-checking against your own dongle before trying to reproduce anything, since a matching chip family doesn’t guarantee a matching firmware build.
Every configuration discussed here runs locally through Home Assistant. None of them depends on a cloud service, whichever firmware path you take.