Hello. Some reviews on Amazon argue that Aqara products do not strictly comply with the Zigbee specifications. In particular people complain it does not act as a bridge with other non-Aqara products.
If you have a mix of Aqara and non-Aqara devices on your Zigbee network, could you please share your own experience? Do they work well together? Any pairing issue? Do they tend to go offline?
The current (zigbee 1.2) Aqara products have issues with some router devices. If you dig into it a little more you can find a handful of mains power devices they don’t seem to like routing through.
The other complaint is that they don’t find better routes to the coordinator if one is available. My experience is it varies by device. The motion and temp/humidity sensors seem pretty good about rerouting in my experience. The door sensor listed, not so much.
The door sensor listed seems to be pretty stubborn, and doesn’t seem to change routers unless forced. If the router the sensor is attached through goes down or is removed, they have eventually attached to another router in my testing, but it takes a while - you will miss events until they reconnect.
Best practice is to explicitly join the zigbee 1.2 Aqara device via a router you know is geographically appropriate AND not likely to be moved or lose power.
Bottom line though is I have a house full of that model door sensor with no issues (with above caveats).
If not in a rush, there are newer zigbee 3.0 Aqara models hitting the market that (theoretically) shouldn’t have the routing issues. They’re available via AliExpress now. I haven’t seen them anywhere else for the US (but haven’t looked very hard). No clue about UK availability.
This is a great write up that has a lot of great information about pairing Aqara devices. It’s from a Hubitat forum, but the info applies to Z2M just as well, especially regarding router devices.
I have two Aqara motion sensors and several other zigbee devices. I read that Hubitat post before and I think as long as you don’t have any of the devices under the “Zigbee repeaters reported NOT to work with Xiaomi devices” you generally will be ok. I also have several Ikea outlets listed as " Zigbee repeaters reported to work with Xiaomi devices".
They have occasionally gone off line and need to be reset. Its usually after power outages (although they are battery powered devices). Its not a huge deal as they aren’t in any “critical” application and when they go out it is a minor inconvenience. However, if reliability is key, I would recommend another product.
This thread was a good discussion of several motion sensors
Just have to read the specs. If it is Aqara doesn’t explicitly say “Zigbee 3.0” assume it is 1.2.
WRT the door sensor, the MCCGQ11LM is 1.2 and is the only Aqara door sensor on the Amazon US site.
MCCGQ14LM is the newer cosmetically identical zigbee 3.0 sensor, I ordered from AliExpress, but it may be more common in other regions.
There is another “P1” door sensor with a larger battery and form factor that is spec’d as zigbee 3.0, again not commonly available in the US, I haven’t used it.
Is it reliable? And which ZigBee coordinator do you use?
I’m planning to start with ZigBee, and my first device would be door sensor. Thinking about Aqara, but I want to make sure it’s reliable. Currently, I have 0 ZigBee device.