I am a super NEWBE on using HA. I have it all setup and it’s working great. HOWEVER, I have several Aqara devices. I can’t seem to get them integrated. I have found a few articles, but none are helpful. Most of them talk about HomeKit…I am not a apple user.
I do have a Aqara M2 Hub. Do I need to remove the M2 hub and integrate ZIGBEE?
Any help for a new guy would be AWESOME. Seems like this HA community is pretty cool!
Thanks ahead of time.
Which aqara devices do you have?
Hi all,
Im in the same position at the moment too, beeing a super noob to HA as well.
I too have an M2 Hub along with an E1 hub with multipul devises such as Wifi light switches (nutral) hooked up to my smart home wifi SSID and a range of Zigbee sensors linked to the M2 & E1 hubs that are on the same SSID.
Im running HA on docker on a NAS VM,
Other wifi devises on the same SSID i have been able to hook up, but some I cant. (Ill open another thread about hese)
thanks for replying.
This is kind of fun to try and figure out, but can’t get this one figured out.
I DO have my M2 on a different SSID, but same network. I can try and change it to be the same.
@templeton_nash I have several, motion sensor, switches, water sensors, door sensor and of course the M2 hub.
Thanks Oz, sorry but that made me even more confused. There are so many different ways to do it but nothing is making sense. Maybe I’ll just wait for Matter update???
I did purchase a dongle I saw on one tutorial, maybe that will work??
ConBee II The Universal Zigbee USB Gateway https://a.co/d/3LYmEtp
Yes if all your devices are zigbee then you should be able to ditch the M2 hub and connect everything to your Conbee stick.
Now I’ll have to figure out how to install the stick 
Yes there are options there as well. Personally I use zigbee2mqtt…Plugging in the stick is the easy part 
One thing to point out…I realize I don’t have supervisor. Do I need that? If I do. How?
The Conbee stick (and DeConz) software is known for being picky about devices and pairing can be a frustrating pita.
Better get a decent CC2652P chip based Zigbee stick like ZigStar v4 and then either use Zigbee2MQTT (Z2M) or the ZHA Zigbee integration in HA. Whichever you prefer is fine, I’m using Z2M.
Just use the HomeKit Controller integration after you’ve added all your devices to the hub.
It will utilize the Home Kit protocol to connect Home Assistant to the hub and it’s all local so very fast.
Sure you could do such things however most people want to stay local and independent from the cloud or software from vendors - both out of your hands and out of your control.
Why use a third party (you don’t trust) hub, then integrate it into some HomeKit translation layer and then passed to HA instead of using a HomeAssistant local integration in the first place?
Agreed, you have the one-time task of re-pairing your Zigbee devices to your new Zigbee coordinator in HomeAssistant but once that’s done you are free to do whatever you like your devices to do.
But in the end it’s up to each and everyone to set your homes up as you like! It’s your home!
OP write he is new to HA, and as me he seemed to already having the Aqara M2, when starting with HA, believe me,( and i know you know) it’s so easy to integrate the M2, it works flawless , and one can focus/use your time ( which we all spend A-lot of ) on learning, building up your system. I don’t see any rightful advice in pacing new folks into Z2M / MQTT etc, im sure ( as you know) there is whole lot more one can initially focus on, and eventually if there in future is a need to expand, or when Matter/thread is become more common, then go for whats available on the market … i had Ikea, and Aqara hubs before i started with HA (edit: and bunch of wifi devices, now in local tuya)… you know, wanted 1 place to “stash it” manage it from … i quickly kept my fingers long away from mqtt etc, with all these “Topics” here AND during past years development of the code, while people (some) have been screaming about breaking changes, my system was running flawless, and major “problems” have been caused by the learning curve i found my self in … But luckily, my simple, yet stable hubs works in harmony, so for i will wait till the Thread/Matter market explode, and the price goes down, build up knowledge and my system …
True on the one hand but on the other it’s a much bigger pain to re-pair all devices and adjust all entity-names and automations later, when an already considerable amount of devices has been paired to the Aquara hub…
Will we ever get rid of that “Task” ? , broken devices/new device, naming convention change do to changes in opinion/network etc.
Is that so ? , trust me, within the next coming let’s say 5 years, even you probably find out you want a “New type” of Coordinator do to the changes that Matter/Thread will cause, beside until that time occurs , im sure you had to re-pair a few device(for various reasons), and added another bunch of “new” devices 
… So come out of your current “comfort-zone” and face the reality
EDIT:
PS: it might be because alot people uses coordinators like conbee II etc, and ZHA / Z2MQTT ( im not sure) , but i know be looking regularly here in the Forum … Drops-outs of devices, lost-devices, strange behavior-devices etc. etc. etc. YOU name it, it’s not “entirely” cause by the Controller (mostly not), but the integration/insights/knowledge of same , Z2M - ZHA … I.E Ikea-Hub / Aqara-Hub ( the 2 hubs i current use ) Flawless, NO pain, No problems(very few, minor) … in Short, very comfortable and stable … which various topics in this forum don’t give the picture of, ( when it comes to ZHA / Z2M )
PS: i Know i stick my head out with above commends, but im not into a debate regarding this, so don’t expect any further from my side ( that goes for anyone/everyone that have another Opinion/Experience , as im fully aware these exist out there )
I’m sorry and I don’t mean to be rude, but I have to disagree with what you’re saying.
Sure you could do such things however most people want to stay local and independent from the cloud or software from vendors - both out of your hands and out of your control.
HomeKit is local and doesn’t use the cloud for control. You can even block your HomeKit devices from accessing the cloud and they work perfectly. If OP wants to block their Aqara Hub from the internet (as I have) they can still control it via HomeKit.
Why use a third party (you don’t trust) hub, then integrate it into some HomeKit translation layer and then passed to HA instead of using a HomeAssistant local integration in the first place?
There isn’t a “translation layer”. HomeKit just another way to receive data from the Hub and is a totally local integration. You have to have a hub regardless of the method you chose and OP already has the M2. With HomeKit it’s all local and really no different than running an MQTT broker or using ZHA.
Agreed, you have the one-time task of re-pairing your Zigbee devices to your new Zigbee coordinator in HomeAssistant but once that’s done you are free to do whatever you like your devices to do.
Zigbee support in HA isn’t 100%. Since the M2 hub is providing the conversion to the HomeKit API as long as you can pair the device to the M2 it should work perfectly in Home Assistant via the HomeKit controller.
ZHA and Z2M are great but for newer or less technical users the M2 hub paired with HomeKit is very easy.
I‘m not talking about HomeKit, I’m talking about the Aqara hub in the first place…
The Aqara Hub is a Zigbee hub that connect to HA via HomeKit. I don’t see think there’s much of a difference between that and ZHA or Z2M. Just another way to get Zigbee into HA.
And a easy/stable kind if you ask me, Beside, it’s not “only” a Zigbee hub, as it has support for BLE, Bluetooth4-5.0 AND is an IR-Blaster, on top of this, it connect to the network/HA through either wifi, but MOST important through Ethernet, which give you ultimate flexibility in i.e avoiding interference on/from the other 2.4gHz device.
Beside it’s upgrade-able either via internet or USB-port … speaking about upgrade
Soon it supports Matter also
So i REALLY can’t put my self into the head of the people complaining about /ditching Aqara M2
PS: i forgot it even has a speaker ( HA & Google Home/Assistant supported ) … I haven’t yet made any use of this … BUT it’s pretty cool, i.e GO to/Settings/Devices/Integrations/Homekit-Controller, click on the M2, Aqara M2, device - click on “Identify” 
… and a sweet voice says “Normal link Confirmed”
So to all M2 negative people i would like to say, if you don’t have other things to do, find a shovel and dick a horizontal hole