Aqara - What would you go if starting from scratch?

Hardware
1

Long story short is I have an Aqara hub (v1 I think) alongside about 30 various Aqara sensors including door/window, temp, water leak, etc. About 6 months ago they all kept disconnecting and reconnecting every 30 seconds. I had to start fresh and change from the Aqara app to the Mi Home app, repair and rename them into HA, and re-add them to every automation. Fast forward to now and his behavior is happening again. I have the hub paired through Homekit into HA and all of the Aqara entities will disconnect at once and then come back. Randomly it will work for a few hours then start disconnecting again. The sensors on the app itself are fine. It doesn’t seem like a hub problem but for some reason it doesn’t work well with HA consistently. I have moved the hub right next to the router too and the issue remains.

So fellow Aqara users, if you were to start again fresh knowing what you know now, how would you implement Aqara sensors into HA? Would you use the Aqara hub (which version?) or something like Z2M? If so, which dongle? The hub worked for well for a long time for me but I can’t keep dealing with everything failing every few months but I’m also not sure what the root of the problem is.

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2

I would use an ethernet coordinator like the SLZB or the UZG and build a solid mesh with plenty of routers.

3

Or one of Tubes PoE coordinators.

4

Thanks for the input. I haven’t found myself using Z2M or similar yet so I’m new to this world. So getting something like this and connecting it to one of my switches, HA would pick it up and I would then use Z2M to connect my Aqara sensors to it? And in theory I could get a bunch of these around the house to help make the mesh network or would I use different hardware for routers? With that being said my house isn’t that huge at 1900 sq ft although it is 3 stories including the basement

5

Yes. It will not be automatically picked up though, you will need to configure it and HA to talk to each other, it’s not hard. They can also be flashed with router firmware, yes. Might not need it if you have enough routers (bulbs, thermostats etc, stuff that is mains powered and can route), but good to have a backup that you can reflash to coordinator firmware if something happens.