So I bought some Aqara devices (hub and 2 cubes) on prime day, admittingly not researching it as in depth as I should have. I thought it was a simple pairing through zigbee from HE to the Aqara hub, and connect the devices to the Aqara hub. If I'm reading this right now, do I need to install homekit on a spare device (raspi?) Or do I need additional zigbee repeaters to connect he to the Aqara hub? I see some recent development efforts for drivers and apps for th Aqara devices itself.
I am using this.
The Xiaomi/Aqara devices definitely behave better when connected directly to the Aqara hub but I only have my 'problematic' devices connected to it.
The rest I connect directly to my HE hub.
Hy, from what i understand cannot ad agara hub to HE, I'm very interested if is any possibility to add like any device, no working like a hub, but maybe alarm, night light etc....
You can trigger the alarm by modifying a Xiaomi Aqara or Xiaomi Mijia (easier) contact sensor. You need to close some dry contacts in HE, when they close that will cause the contact sensor to report [closed] to the Aqara hub. In the Aqara app, you create an automation for the contact sensor and you can do things like a doorbell sound as I have done here, or trigger the siren sound.
I used to use this method for the alarm sound so that when my Ring Alarm went off, this would sound too as a supplemental siren. But, I no longer do that since we had too many events where the alarm sound would suddenly go off by itself on the Aqara hub in the middle of the night. So now I just use the doorbell sound. For whatever reason, that never goes off by itself.
The HomeKit addition of the Aqara hub allows HomeKit to control the light in it. So if you have a HomeKit hub (Apple TV 4 or later, HomePod, HomePod Mini or always on iPad), you can setup Homebridge to expose HE virtual switches to HomeKit. You then use HomeKit automations to sync the device to the virtual switch. Most of my motion and contact sensors, and several buttons are Xiaomi paired directly to the Aqara hub, then synced with Hubitat Elevation using this method. It's very fast and effective. Reliability is 100%
Thank you @SmartHomePrimer, unfortunately I don't use any apple devices.
regarding Aqara Hub is very slow response, is a CN version and when I set or do something application response slow (I try with Mi Home, today I will install Aqara app and test)
My mainly question remain, nobody cannot create a app in HE to install this HUB?
There’s a Mi Connector app for an older Mijia hub of a very specific type, but nothing for Aqara.
HomeKit is the only bridgeable route for Aqara at this time. I feel sorry for anyone that can’t use it because getting the Xiaomi devices back into HE by this means has been so fast and reliable for me.
Nothing changed, but you sort of need to ask yourself if an Aqara hub it still relevant. I have an Aqara HomeKit hub and the Mijia Multimode Gateway, and I don’t use either one of them now. Since the Aqara hub no longer has a loud siren built-in, it’s not really an alarm system anymore, and they never were that good to begin with in that role. Now that the Hubitat C8 hub supports Zigbee 3.0, integrations directly with Aqara devices could potentially be more reliable. Plus, with Home Assistant Device Bridge you can bring pretty well any Aqara device and so many more into your Hubitat environment. And using Hubitat’s Rule Machine automation, you can really easily create some very powerful home automations. I have all of my Aqara devices (except for the leak sensors) directly connected to home assistant. They never drop and are 100% reliable. The Home Assistant Device Bridge creates an almost perfect match between the two hubs.
Thank you for the answer! For me, the sole need for bridging an Aqara hub to HE is the new FP2 presence sensor. It is WiFi and expect that part of the processing is done in the Aqara hub, not in the FP2 sensor itself. As this is a rather complex and non-standard type of sensor, I don't think a future Matter update is close and even if it happens this year, it may be very simplified as functionality.
Interesting. Please share your experience if you try that. Not something that I need but someone else might find it useful. When I experimented with the Mijia multimode gateway as a HomeKit controller, I found that while certain devices worked, they were quite limited in HomeKit. When the same devices are connected directly to Home Assistant, they have all of the settings that the Aqara Home allows, and sometimes more.
[Edit]
I’m guessing you’ve already watched this video with a review of the Fp2 (skip to 13:49). I haven’t really looked at this too much because I’m on the fence about millimeterwave. However, it does state that you can use it without a hub and as you said, it’s HomeKit compatible (which I didn’t realize until now that they are primarily focusing on that aspect rather than relying on the hub to do the HomeKit integration). So potentially you could use it with Hubitat directly, because they have their (still in beta) HomeKit integration, and you could also use it with Home Assistant, which also has a HomeKit integration and can even function as a HomeKit controller, which Hubitat is not currently able to do.
