Xiaomi Opple 6 button remote

💬 Lounge
13

Unfortunately there are two other threads referring to the Aqara-Opple button "switches", so it's hard to know where to post my findings on whether they can be used with the Hubitat Hub, but since this this thread refers to them by name, I'm going to post here:

I have gleaned the best information on how the Aqara-Opple button "switches" work from a technical standpoint from this DeCONZ Rest Plugin comment thread on GitHub:

Here are some choice quotes from that thread to explain how they work, and the potential issues as a result:

Technically, no, the switch does not communicate with the gateway; it sends broadcast (groupcast) messages, which are also picked up by the gateway. The gateway eavesdrops on the messages from the switch to the group.

Note that these OPPLE switches work very differently from the other Xiaomi switches, which indeed send reports straight to the coordinator, and cannot control lights directly.

I concur it controls all the lights: 2 top buttons are on and off, the middle buttons are dim up or down and the 2 lower buttons are more yellow or less yellow color.

It would seem the Opple is a hybrid, just like the Hue dimmer switch: it sends both commands to control the lights directly as well as reports to inform the coordinator.

is there a way to make it control only specific lights?

Normally, I’d suggest to create a group, add a light to it and bind the switch’s client clusters to that group. Not sure if that’ll work for Xiaomi, though. Might be enough to bind only one cluster, but could also you need to bind all three ( On/Off , Level Control , and Color Control ).

well - its kinda working now, with lots of limitations. you can use it to control on/off, dimming and color as long as your lamps are also controlled by conbee - you can create a group of lamps in phoscon and connect the switches using the bind option in deCONZ (you can bind to a group or to a single light). but thats about it.

To stop the Opple from sending broadcasts, you need to create bindings from the On/Off and Level Control clusters. Best practice is to a group. The switch doesn’t know nor care wether any lights listen to that group.

So, based on all of that, as I've mentioned here, it sounds like these Aqara-Opple button "switch" devices operate much like the IKEA 5-button "steering wheel" remote that Hubitat has stated they will not be supporting.

However, if it's possible via a device driver to configure the Aqara-Opple buttons with bindings from the relevant clusters to a non-existent group (i.e., with no members), then perhaps it could be made to work with Hubitat. However, there are other peculiarities discussed on the above-linked thread which will probably make it a real challenge to build a driver that accesses the full functionality of the buttons.

The first thing to settle before even deciding to spend any time working on a driver is whether these devices' need to send messages to a group in addition to reports to the coordinator will work on the Hubitat platform at all.

I think only @mike.maxwell would be able to answer that (and I imagine he would be able to correct me on any misuse of terminology or misguided explanations I've given here as well! :rofl:)

2 Likes