Hi, I am new to HA, running it on an RPi4 with SSD. I have installed a Conbee II stick with the hope of adding Zigbee devices in my house (ie: mainly Aqara), but I am not finding any progress with this.
I have a G3 as the Aqara hub where I’ve connected a few Aqara switches, thermostats and FP2 sensors in the house that seem to work in the Aqara home app, but I can’t seem to get them to appear on HA.
I would be grateful if someone could provide me with some advice as to how to proceed.
Thanks
Mine may be a dumb question, but do you have Zigbee installed on your HA ?
Have you reset the devices and attempted to pair them using ZHA?
Yes, multiple times. Aqara camera G3 is the Aqara hub I use. I first reset it and tried to see if the Conbee stick would pick that up. It didn’t. Then I tried other Aqara devices like light switches in pairing mode. Didn’t pick up either.
So you put ZHA into joining mode and it never sees the devices?
Is there any way to use the Homekit integration? I can’t seem to find it on HA.
I don’t have a home kit hub like an Apple Tv/Homepod, but Home app on the iPhone does show all Aqara devices. Unsure how significant that information would be for HA though.
Quite lost here. Pretty sure I’ll be giving up on HA soon if it’s this difficult to integrate devices, which is a shame as I wanted to move to HA from Alexa and IFTTT as the functionality was so limited and my requirements couldn’t be met with them.
Alright. Just went back and re-read. The G3 and FP2 are LAN, not ZigBee based devices.
Can you specify the other devices that you have?
I know the FP2 can be brought into HA via the Homekit integration, but it needs to not be associated to any other Homekit controllers to do so. It also needs to either be on the same VLAN as HA or you need to have mDNS enabled between the networks.
Other threads about the G3 suggest that you need to add it using the Homekit integration right after rebooting the G3.
Hi, thanks very much.
I have a few Aqara radiator thermostats, about 6 Aqara 1 and 2 gang neutral switches in addition to the FP2 sensors and the G3. I believe radiator thermostats and switches are Zigbee.
As I have only 1 network setup in the house, I think I have the FP2 in the same VLAN as HA, but do correct me if I’m wrong, or how to ensure that they are on the same VLAN. When you say that FP2 should not be associated to any other homekit controller, does that mean that I should remove them from the Apple’s Home app?
May I know how to add the G3 using the Homekit integration? I can’t seem to find the Homekit integration on HA. I’m quite new to HA, so please bear with my immaturity on the whole thing.
Thanks very much for your input.
Then you only have one VLAN. They are something that you have to purposefully setup.
HA should auto discover it. If not, you can go Devices->Add Devices->Apple->Homekit Devices and see if it show sup there. I don’t own any of these so I couldn’t say for sure.
I’m not 100% since I don’t use the app. I would try resetting the sensor, use the Aqara app to connect it to the WiFi, and then see if HA auto discovers it. If not, try the manual add like I outlined above.
Do you have the model numbers for the devices?
Thanks. Can’t seem to get HA to discover the Homekit devices. Homekit controller integration as per this article doesn’t appear on my end HomeKit Device - Home Assistant
Below are the model numbers
Radiator Thermostat - SRTS-A01
Switch double rocker neutral - WS-EUK04
Switch single rocker with neutral - WS-EUK03
Well, they all are ZigBee devices and all are on ZHAs and Zigbee2MQTTs compatibility list, but maybe there is a problem with the underlaying Conbee stick, respectively with the FW.
Check the FW of the stick and go to the latest which is 0x26780700 from May 2022.
They won’t get discovered…
As the pics show you…
Add device that’s what ya need to use…
And if im correct those devices have a button to make
Connection
There are 2 different “Homekit” in HA,called: 1. Homekit-Integration( Bridge ), 2. Homekit-controller( Homekit-Device), i don’t know whether your G3-hub is supported in both, or either.
But your zigbee-device need to be paired to a “physical” controller, neither above “integrations” it self have the ability to “discover” a Zigbee device( it’s the physical Controller who provides the paired zigbee-device) whether you want to use your G3-hub(zigbee-controller) or Conbee-hub(zigbee-controller)
So either way you choose your zigbee-devices first need to be paired to the “Controller”, and/or the Controller(G3 or Conbee) needs to be “Discovered” by either Integrations ( and then add your zigbee devices )
PS: no zigbee devices can be paired 2 places !, so first make sure which Controller to use, … start over make sure all devices are unpaired/ or only paired in the 1 Controller you want to use
Here is how i added my M2 hub to Homekit-Device, maybe it works with your G3 also
Thanks. How to find the firmware of the Conbee? It’s quite frustrating that everything in HA is super difficult to find. I spent a good amount of time trying to figure that out, and failed.
Thanks so much.
For some reason, today out of nowhere the G3 camera appeared on the unconfigured integrations list on HA, and then upon configuring it, all my Aqara devices (switches and radiator thermostats) except the 3 FP2 sensors were picked up on HA.
I don’t really know why HA is so sporadic like this.
My next quest would be to look toward finding a way to get the FP2 sensors to appear on HA. I’m pretty sure another good 24-48 hours of my life would just have to be spent on this. So frustrating.
But sincere thanks to everyone who advised me on this. Really appreciate all your inputs.
I wouldn’t call HA “sporadic”, it’s more like “Versatile”, thou lots have to be performed in a “structured” manner.
I don’t have any FP2-Sensors, but below is a simple search upon same. You might get the answers you are looking for here
https://community.home-assistant.io/search?q=FP2%20sensors
I wouldn’t blame HA for much of this. There are so many things that have to go right in the background, with most of those being external to HA, for all of this to work. This isn’t a problem unique to HA either. I can understand it can be a frustrating experience, but there’s only so much that can be done from a platform perspective. There are a lot of dependencies on the environment that HA runs in.
For example:
ZigBee is notorious for having issues caused by radio interference with WiFi. If someone were to set their ZigBee dongle up right next to a wireless access point, without picking the right radio channels for both, then the WiFi will drown out ZigBee. The user experience will be that HA would never find their ZigBee devices. Is this a platform problem? No. But the user will have the tendency to blame the platform for it, because that’s what they perceived as the problem.
That gets into the nature of DIY vs paid service. The DIY user may not know better and, for lack of better terms, end up shooting themselves in the foot. They will eventually learn to deconflict the ZigBee and WiFi (or just give up) and will know better moving forward.
Paying a professional to set everything up in the first place means the professional will (hopefully) already know these best practices allowing them to get everything up and running out the gate.
The tradeoff here is DIY and having to deal with these pains up front or shelling out some coin to have someone else deal with it and just hand you the keys to a running system.
This is not a matter of HA. HA is so user friendly. Seriosly.
If you use a certain gateway (conbee) you have to learn about how to use and handle it, regardless of the home automation software your are willing to use.
I can’t help here because I am not quite sure about your setup… your are telling:
Hi, I am new to HA, running it on an RPi4 with SSD. I have installed a Conbee II stick with the hope of adding Zigbee devices in my house (ie: mainly Aqara), <
What did you mean by installed? Did you just stick in the conbee to the RPI or did you install its software (deConz)?
ps
since you don’t know how find out what FM your conbee is running on, why not upgrade to the latest possible to get? It doesn’t hurt and we/you can rule out its the problem.
