I've been wanting to put a small Z-wave temp/humidity sensor in my humidor for a while, to replace the Caliber IV that I've had in there for years. There are precious few devices small enough to fit nicely in my 100ct humidor, and I'd been eyeing the Aeotec aerQ as a possibility, but got tired of waiting.
Anyway, I've long admired the tiny size and minimalist design of the Aqara products. I'd read all of the mixed reports about success/failure with the Xiaomi products and Hubitat, but since I've been very careful up until now to only use Z-Wave products in my home, not wanting to deal with contention on the 2.4GHz band, I figured I'd order a humidity sensor from Amazon, and a couple of outlet/repeaters from Ikea, and see what happens. I did my reading ahead of time and noticed that folks were saying the Aqara Hub is locked to Zigbee channel 25, so I set my C-7 up to use that channel.
Anyway, my outlets haven't arrived yet (they were supposed to arrive today, but instead I received a 20oz bowl that has a very similar article number to the outlets I ordered ) but I figured I would try to pair the thing up and calibrate with a Boveda pack in a ziplock bag, even though I thought it was unlikely to work in my office.
For contexts: my C-7 is in a structured wiring enclosure near the center of my 1500sqft home, but my office is 3-4 walls away, and my humidor is in a usually-closed closet. I also have 3 Ubiquiti IW-HD APs, one on 1, 6, and 11 broadcasting 2.4GHz Wi-Fi. I figured this was going to be an uphill battle.
Imagine my surprise when the thing paired up immediately. I installed @veeceeoh's driver, and everything "just worked."
After seeing a couple of updates come through, I figured I'd toss the ziplock bag in my humidor and close the closet door. Surely the updates would stop.
Nope. Still working great. LQI of 254-255, and RSSI of -77. I did some reading up on LQI and RSSI, and while that RSSI number isn't incredible, or anything, it's "good enough" while I wait for a couple of outlets to arrive.
Not only that -- I'm going to let it sit for a bit longer but as of my last reading, it's 72.9% RH in a ziplock with a Boveda 72RH pack, which is supposedly +/- 1% itself, so this thing looks to be startlingly accurate right out of the box.
I've gone ahead and ordered two more to put in my bathrooms for use with my Smarter Humidity Fan app, so I can repurpose my Zooz 4-in-1 sensors elsewhere, given they are all reading ~10% high, out of the box (at least it's consistent!). Looks like they'll be downgraded to motion-detector-only.
I'm starting to think that I'll just reserve my C-7's Zigbee radio for Aqara products, since I like them all so much, and be a happy camper!
Anyway, just wanted to share a story of encouragement to anyone who was on the fence about these little devices, like I was.