Just looking for any recommendation of alternatives to xiaomi aqua motion sensors? We have lots in our place but I am getting sick of them being so unreliable and having to re-pair them or it being a 50/50 shot whether they will actually work.
The house is quite small and they are not far from base station so they should be fine there or is this more a hubitat problem and all motion sensors are going to be pretty unreliable?
I've replaced most of mine with smartthings sensors and they've been way more reliable.
How many do you have? There is a limit to how many can connect directly to the hub. If your at the limit each time you add one, you knock another one off.
I have a ton of them with @iharyadi repeaters in place and I never lose a single sensor. They are rock solid.
Not much, think 5 motion sensors and 4 door sensors.
Might be the go, saw JB sells them now
Yep that's where mine are from, wait for the 20% off sale every couple of months or the RAVC have them cheaper if your in VIC.
Sweet, thank mate will keep an eye out for that deal.
where did you get the @iharyadi repeaters from, do these also do LUX measurments. I am in South Africa.
Have you looked at this?
Pretty much any supported Zigbee motions sensor should be about as fast and more reliable (the Xiaomi devices are not standard and are known to work well only with specific repeaters; even if they are close to the hub, you can't choose their route). The SmartThings motion sensor recommended above is great, but the Iris v2 (3326-L/3326-L2) motion sensor, long discontinued and only now getting hard to find, is a longtime favorite of many. The v3 (IL07_1) isn't bad either. The Osram/Lightify motion sensor is made by the same OEM as the Iris v2 and is also good. There are lots of other options, and you could also do Z-Wave if you wanted and open up even more. The only issue there is that in my experience, nearly all of these are slower than any Zigbee motion sensor I've used, which can be be annoying with (at least indoor) motion lighting automations.
In any case, yes, this is a Xiaomi thing. If you haven't read this thread about how to keep them happy on Hubitat, you should: Xiaomi & Aqara Devices - Pairing & Keeping them connected. If you want to not have to worry about this--something I'm slowly doing myself--then replacing them with standard devices should give fewer headaches. Most of them just cost more, so that's the tradeoff--and I think the main appeal of the Xiaomi devices in the first place. 
(PS - They've been rumored to be releasing Zigbee 3.0 devices soon for a while now, which if implented according to the standard should work with Hubitat and not be subject to these issues. But if they're intended to be marketed outside China or for use with other systems, they'll likely cost more.)
Another possibility if you’re in the Apple world is connecting via Homebridge. The new Mijia Multimode gateway is $25 and supports HomeKit. If not, getting the special gateway needed and using MiConnector is the way to go. Much less expensive that replacing a bunch of sensors.
Those Xiaomi sensors and devices are actually not garbage. They just seem that they’re not good quality because they are a proprietary Zigbee that works absolutely perfect with Xiaomi Aqara and Mijia Gateways, but they unstable when joined with standard compliant Zigbee radios.
You already know how much of a struggle it is to get them to pair to HE. It’s actually just as hard to get them to pair to SmartThings too. But when you pair them to a Xiaomi gateway, they join almost instantly every time, always respond really fast, and never drop.
Iris v2 sensors were dirt cheap on Ebay awhile back. I bought 20 of them. There were 3 duds, but they were only like $5 each. I'm pretty happy with them for what they are.
I have other Aqara sensors, quite a few. I've only had 2 instances where I needed to re-pair them to the HE. I'm using all Ikea repeaters and it seems pretty stable.
Important motion sensors (e.g. security) are all either wired Bosch Blueline sensors, or GE CADDX wireless. But you'll need an alarm system that works with HE (like an Elk M1 Gold) or a Konnected board to do this. Not sure if Konnected has a CADDX option, but that would be super sweet. The batteries in my CADDX sensors routinely last me 7-10 years.
Thanks for that, think will try with ikea repeaters and if no go there will give mijia gateway a try
You're welcome. I just added an update to my post. I found out this evening that the Opple button controllers that do show up in HomeKit with the Aqara HomeKit Hub, do not show up in HomeKit when paired with the Mijia Multimode Gateway. For me, this is a huge disadvantage that I hope they change. It's one of my favorite controllers, so I'd be pretty bummed if I didn't already own the Aqara HomeKit Hub. Get the Aqara HomeKit Hub if you think you might consider one of those controllers at some point. I can't say that they'll never allow it to show up in HomeKit from the Mijia Multimode Gateway, but they definitely don't right now.
By the way, the Aqara HomeKit hub is on sale for just $34 USD for the next 12 hours. It's the Chinese plug version (they included an adapter when I bought mine), but it's otherwise the same as the US plug version. It is ETL approved and fully compatible with North American 110~120v 60Hz power.
You can also buy the US plug version from Amazon for $50 and get it faster. Plus you can return it to Amazon much easier if you don't like it.
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