Aqara water sensor temperature reading

Hardware
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#1

So I bought a 3 pack of the Aqara water sensors after a recent water leak. Little finicky to get paired but they did. I have battery, moisture, temperature readings. But the temperatures are not updating often. Not like the Aeotec water sensor.
So I send Aqara a message. I include screenshots. They responded.

I can’t explain how you are getting this data for the Water Leak Sensor. In the Aqara Home app and Apple Homekit, it only detects the presence or absence of water.

We do not support the Nortek GoControls USB zigbee/zwave dongle and cannot predict your results when using it with Aqara products.

I find this amusing. HA is obviously reading a temperature from the device. I know because I put one in the fridge and it read colder.

How is HA reading a temperature from a device that supposedly doesn’t support temperature?

I’ll keep testing them every day but think I’m going to return them and get more Aeotec. The Aeotec also shows connected on the network. The Aqara don’t, even though they report wet when wet and dry when dry.

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#2

The aqara devices use a custom zigbee cluster. When this was reversed engineered over the years temperature was found encoded in there. I don’t think its the air temperature it is reading but the device internal temperature. Its not really meant to be used for anything. Pretty much all they do is report the presence of water and their batter level.

I think that’s why aqara support is confused.

#3

Thanks.

The Aeotec seems like a better built quality. Really considering sending the Aqara back and getting Aeotec.

#4

Do you really need the temperature reading?

I think the difference in price compared to an Aeotec would make me consider if it’s something I really need or is the most important thing the leak sensor what you actually bought it for.

the temp may be nice but is it important enough to spend easily twice as much for it?

#5

Yeah, I hear ya. I’ve been monitoring the performance of the Aqara. I introduce water multiple times a day.
As of this morning I have 1 sensor that’s been unavailable for 4 hours.
I’ve found other people comment they’ve seen issues with the Aqara staying connected.

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#6

really?

I’ve never had any issues with any of the aqara stuff until this last update when half of all my various sensors went unavailable and I had to re-pair them. but so far so good after that.

#7

@finity do yours show connected to your network? Mine don’t. One is about 12 feet from the HA.
Other than the one showing as unavailable, they will still report wet, when not showing on the network. The Aeotec has showed connected from the first pairing.

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#8

The Aqara devices are known for being problematic. Mainly the older devices that came out before the zigbee 3.0 versions but I have seen people complain about the newer devices as well. This is evident by the number of posts you see about them and the fact that some hubs don’t officially support them. Now as I say things I predict others will jump in and say “I don’t have any problems at all”. That may be true but all of our environments are different.

If you want to have less frustration then go for another brand. If you want to stick with them there are a couple things you can look at doing.

  1. Change the zigbee channel to reduce interference. On my old hub I did this and it helped with reliability as I was able to reduce interference from other things with the zigbee devices.
  2. Look at your routing devices. The Aqara sensors don’t work properly with all routers and will constantly drop off and not reconnect when this occurs. I’ve always had the best success with ikea plugs when I needed routers. But I also had to make sure that any zigbee device I introduced was not a repeater that would break the mesh. This was just too much to worry about.

They are nice devices though when they work. Fast, cheap, small and power efficient.

#9
  1. Change the zigbee channel to reduce interference. On my old hub I did this and it helped with reliability as I was able to reduce interference from other things with the zigbee devices.

I was reading and can’t figure out how to do that on the GoControls USB stick.
http://www.gocontrol.com/detail.php?productId=6