Aqara Device Integration Woes

Hey everyone,

I am new to HA and bought a bunch of Aqara devices: motion, window/door, water, temperature. I also bought the Aqara M2 hub because I thought it was the only option; however I quickly learned I could also use a Zigbee USB stick.

The Hub was tricky to get paired to HA, but once I did (via Matter), it was smooth sailing. Or so I thought… I could not see my water sensors, and that’s a deal breaker because if I can’t setup automations from those sensors, then that’s a major issue for me.

I purchased the Sonoff Zigbee Dongle-E USB stick. I installed zigbee2mqtt, got some sensors paired to it, but the motion sensors don’t seem to be detecting motion. Major fail. I tried unpairing and repairing, same issue. I moved my HA & Dongle next to the sensor (via usb extension) and I still have the issue.

I am seeking simplicity and reliability. Does anyone have a tried & true setup going on they can recommend?

I’ve been using them for several years and find the reliability good - but as with all things zigbee, the strength of signal and quality of the usb stick matter most. Door sensors, thermometer/humidistats, vibration and PIR sensors.

I did have reliability issues with the cheap £15 usb stick exactly as you describe, but then bought a slae.sh stick and everything just worked and has remained working. Literally the only failures I get are with batteries running out. I don’t know anything about Sonoff’s stick - I would expect it to be okay based on reputation, but others may have more experience about it.

Before you buy one, a couple of cheaper things to try:

  1. Using a USB A to A extension lead, move the USB stick away from your computer. The metal of the server can cause interference. (Although if you’re still having issues very close, this probably isn’t going to help that much and it sounds like you’ve already tried. They shouldn’t be right next to each other, but a few meters away should be good for testing).

  2. Restart zigbee2mqtt, then re-pair the device by holding down the set button on it until you get the long flashes. Very occasionally I’ve had z2mqtt fail to re-pair until I did that. (Running in docker)

  3. Turn off any wifi networks temporarily. Zigbee is on 2.5ghz and some people have reported interference, although I myself haven’t noticed any.

Tailing z2mqtt’s logs is a good way to see what it’s doing and the exact chatter from the devices.

Thanks for your response. I moved the stick and HA further away from my computer and it helped with mqtt recognizing the device manufacture and listing it as “supported” – that’s positive; however, it still doesn’t pickup any changes.

I’m going to test out with another motion sensor to see if I get the same result. If this doesn’t work, I think my next step is to tryout another product.