I bought two and I’m not that impressed. It can’t seem to handle only shaped rooms well or when it doesn’t see the whole room. Also often it detects more people than there are. Also homekit link with HA is not working for me. Perhaps I haven’t found out how to install them well yet. Will keep at it.
I recommend you watch the automate your life video on these. He goes in with tips and tricks about location that may help. I have two setup and they are working great. Its only been a day though. I like to give it a full week of testing and see.
The video is long but covers a lot.
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Did you update it?
Great video and good food for thought. And yes I’ve updated the sensor.
I think so far the main problem is that my spaces don’t really seem fit for this sensor and it’s app. I live in a studio apartment.
The large open space downstairs just doesn’t seem to work at all. I think it might have to do with the area extending past the sensor’s range. Also, hanging lights are sources of interference for me.
The upstairs where my bed is is challenging at best. Although I’ve seem to have gotten detection for when I’m in bed successfully working, at least until I’ve reached the last few hours of sleep when it seems to not detect me anymore. Monitoring when I come up the stairs is something I can’t get to work, it seems there is something about coming from below that throws the sensor off.
Also the process of moving the sensor and resetting it is very confusing. It seems to be designed with the idea you know what the best place for the sensor is already.
Lessons:
- Homekit pairing works only when I’ve just installed the sensor for me. So do it first.
- Also in Home Assistant it is important to use the movement entities, the presence entities don’t work.
I’ll try to spend a few hours every day this week to tweak and see if I can get some improvements.
Happy hacking to all of you!
Hi Bo,
I’m getting mine soon and I am not on Apple ecosystem. Will it be okay to integrate it with HA via Homekit? Does HA get all the sensors including the mapping? or does it have to be done on their app?
I’m not too impressed that it still needs to communicate with their cloud for it to work…hope the DEVs can get this properly integrated with HA or even flashing it as it has it’s own ESP chip.
You can integrate the device directly with the Home Assistant Homekit integration. This will give you a illuminance sensor, a general presence sensor and 1 per zone.
The rest of the set up has to be done in the Aqara app.
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I don’t have an Iphone. How can i add it to Homekit?
It looks like the FP2 is being detected by Home Assistant for some people after it has been removed from HomeKit but not others. Unfortunately I’m in the camp where it isn’t recognised by Home Assistant.
I’m wondering whether the issue for me is that my IoT devices are in a different subnet from my HA server. It’s not been a problem for other HomeKit devices but maybe there is something quirky about the FP2. If I get chance this weekend I’ll temporarily shift HA to be on the same subnet to see if that helps.
I don’t have different subnets but i am getting stuck at step 1: “Add the FP2 to HomeKit through the Aqara App”
How can i do that when not having an iphone? When installing " Homekit" in Home Assistant, it says the following:
But how to proceed? How/where can i utilize the Home App when running on Android?
This:
Not this:
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Thanks, i forgot to mention that i already went that route:
after clicking submit, it does not ask for a code whatsoever… it just keeps showing the " running wheel".
Am i missing a step? Do i need to press somewhere on the fp2 first?
I got it working. It’s kinda weird but the following helped:
-my device was already connected to wifi by setting it up before in the Aqara app
-add Homekit Controller Integration, choose the FP2
-Homekit Controller spinning wheel running indefinitely
-while spinning Homekit Controller setup, reset the FP2 by 10 second long press on the device button
-while spinning Homekit Controller setup, open the aqara app and re-add the device
-in the background of Home Assistant integration page, the device is suddenly discovered. Cancel the Homekit Controller spinning wheel
-navigate to the discoved device in the integration page and enter the pincode as stated at the back of the device
It’s now succesfully added.
Super weird, but it works. Soldering and flashing Sonoff devices feels more straighforward to me than this, somehow i miss the logic.
Edit: thank you for your help!
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I’ve good news to report. Until now, there was conflicting information about the device not working after blocking internet access.
When blocking internet access, the device keeps running. Even after power cycling it. And even after opening the Aqara app and trying to make some changes to the device (which obviously does not work since this poorly designed app is cloud-dependent).
I have upgraded the firmware to the most recent version before blocking internet access. I am running version 1.1.6_0005.0025.
Another positive observation is that speed of detection is very high: it is equally fast as the Philips Hue Motion Sensor (which is considered to be the best of its kind that you can buy).
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Yeah that might be true. I cannot even find any mentioning of “Homekit” in the Android Aqara app.
I’m also seeing that here. I have a separate IoT VLAN, so I can easily block all the internet traffic for that entire network. Once I had one of the FP2s setup on the IoT VLAN, I blocked all access. It still reports in HA just fine. Interestingly, if I move my phone back to my regular network (which has access to the IoT network), the app still won’t talk to the FP2. So for you to use the Aqara app requires a cloud connection for sure. I may end up assigning the FP2s static IPs and then blocking their internet access and then just pause that rule any time I need to update the config or the devices.
If it’s not too much trouble, could you tell me, is the Home Assistant in the same subnet as your IoT stuff, or is it succesfully “talking” to the sensor from another subnet?
I’m asking because the older Xiaomi stuff (bulbs mostly) were setup not to responde to connections from a subnet different then the one they were on.
My solution at home has been to put one “network adapter” of the NUC I’m running HA on in the “MAIN” subnet, where the users can reach it and another in the “NOT” subnet (IoT without I), where I keep things that are never supposed to talk to the internet.
I’m thinking of getting this sensor if I dont manage to come up with something with similar capabilities but from the zigbee / z-wave reallm. Thanks in advance.
Not sure who you are asking, but mine is in the same subnet.
My HA instance and the FP2s are on the same subnet. It’s too much hassle to have HA on one subnet and the devices on another.
Does anyone have more than one?
Do they interfere with each other when covering a large room?
I have two set up. One in the Living Room and one in the Kitchen. They can ‘see’ a little of the same area. I just set the zones to not overlap each other and they are working great.
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