I have a number of Aqara Motion Sensors connected to Aqara E1 Hubs. The Aqara E1 Hubs (and the connected motion sensors) are connected to my WiFi network and are visible in Home Assistant through both the HomeKit and Matter integrations.
In the Aqara iOS app I can see the motion sensor and illuminance levels of the Aqara Motion Sensors.
In Home Assistant I can see the motion sensor (and battery levels) however I cannot see the illuminance levels of the Aqara Motion Sensors in either the HomeKit or Matter integrations.
I use a lot of these sensors. However I do not own a Aqara Hub. Imo the idea when going for HA is to centralize your sensors in HA instead of brand’s hub.
In my installation I use Aqara motion sensor (Zigbee version) which are connected through Zigbee2MQTT and they do expose “illuminance” to HA. (I can tell this works with ZHA & Deconz too)
Maybe Aqara’s hub does not expose it to Home Assistant … cannot test myself.
Thanks - I’m thinking this is exactly it - the Aqara hub isn’t exposing the illuminance setting to HA.
I have 3 Aqara E1 hubs (our house is on 3 floors). If I get a brand new Zigbee coordinator, presumably I’ll need to get repeaters to cover the same area (and won’t be able to use the E1 hubs) or do some of these Zigbee coordinators have a big range? Other than the aqara sensors, I have some devices on their own wireless network - Hive heating, Heatmiser Neo - I think they are their own version of Zigbee.
Yop,
I think https://smlight.tech is the best way to go regarding your need. I am personally running a good old sonoff USB dongle which cover my need in an appartement. I have a few devices which are considered as Zigbee router (which mean they can act like relay for other Zigbee device) but I think smilight would be my #1 choice if I had to change.
The simple idea to handle my Zigbee coordinator via TCP instead of having it plugged to the HA server sound amazing. not even talking about how easy it looks to add repeaters with these cuties. lol.
Concerning your installation. I personally hate vendor’s hub. I use several devices for different brands (Aqara, Ikea, Heiman, …) which all would recommend to buy their hub for “best” integration. It feels like the opposite. They work great when you handle your whole domotic through the hub but you are limited to the vendor’s devices and their automations design. However exposing device to HA via brands integration is often a pain, while the community for Zigbee2MQTT or ZHA is doing a fantastic job for supporting every device from any vendor at their full potential in a single Zigbee solution.
To put it in a nutshell, if I had an advice for someone who plans to make a big installation in their house. Go for a universal Zigbee coordinator and handle your device in a single solution (ZHA / Z2M/ Deconz are good choices)
