I like Aqara products but try to avoid using their hubs (cybersecurity concerns). Just wondering whether it is possible or how to connect their sensors to 3rd party hubs like the Ikea Dirigera Hub or other zigbee hubs. I placed order for HA skyconnect but has not been delivered yet and the Ikea hub is already in operation. I also have a Philips Hue bridge but guess this is an unlike option
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I have a Aqara Temp and Humidity sensor with my (hacked) Lidl Silvercrest Zigbee ZHA Hub running fine. Only the Aqara sensors battery life is not a recommendation, I believe if this devlops linear it might last only a total of 6-8 month
thanks, do you mind sharing the generic pairing process unless it is proprietary to the Lidi Silvercrest Zigbee ZHA Hub. Would you know whether it is possible to pair with the Ikea Dirigera Hub ?
the pairing is not very Hub specific, ZHA software integration encapsulates that for you. If the Zigbee hub supports HA (integrated with ZHA), then just put the new device into pairing mode, and start discovery in ZHA thru HA integrations menu.
However if I read about that specific Ikea device, and same applies to Hue Hubs circumventing Ikeas and Philips “ecosystem protection” meachnisms is the issue.
I would wait for the community to research and find ways with the new Ikea thingy (and accept risk to brick it, like I did with my Lidl ZigBee Hardware Hack) or wait for your skyconnect
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thanks, I may wait for the skyconnect as you suggested
IKEA’s gateways only support IKEA devices, Philips Hue Bridge only support Hue-compatible (“Works with Philips Hue”) devices, Aqara hubs only support Aqara devices, Tuya gateways only support Tuya.
Tip is to buy a couple of CC2652P-based Zigbee Coordinator USB adapters and test both Home Assistant’s own native ZHA integration (component embedded inside HA) as well as Zigbee2MQTT (stand-alone gateway/hub/bridge appliation) as either of them can support more or less any device that follows the Zigbee specifications and have some different benefits, (ex. ZHA is very easy to get started with while Z2M allows for more flexible installation options), so good idea to try both and you can always re-use one or several of the Zigbee Coordinator USB adapters as as “Zigbee Router” devices (a…k.a. Zigbee repeater/extender) by flashing an other firmware for that. Read https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/zha and https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/guide/installation/03_ha_addon.html
Regardless, be sure to read and follow this which among other highly recommended advice for a stable Zigbee network mentions that you will want several Zigbee Router devices → Generic best practice tips on improving Zigbee network range and general stability · zigpy/zigpy Wiki · GitHub
Suggest maybe also read → https://www.blackhillsinfosec.com/understanding-zigbee-and-wireless-mesh-networking/
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really appreciate the pointers. I guess this would be one of my hobby projects to explore during the holidays.
Personally I feel that this area is evolving so quickly (Matter, zigbee, thread, zwave, etc) that is hard to keep up
New to you maybe, however, note that no other than the Matter standard/protocol is ”new”, as instead all the other standard/protocols are rather relatively old in the world of technical standards, and even though the Matter standard might not show from an end users point of view as the technology tried abstract and hide away all the complexity make it easier from end users, but he Matter standard is at its core actually based on a combination Zigbee and Thread technology (as well as Bluetooth Low Energy for commissioning via BLE). Also, the development of Matter was led by the Zigbee Alliance (later renamed to the Connectivity Standards Alliance) and among the leading development companies were Google/Nest, (who originally released OpenThread and started the Thread Group with those companies that are now together developing the Matter standard, which among others also include Silicon Labs (who own the Z-Wave brand and technology).
Zigbee and Z-Wave are both more than 20 years now, and while Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) was only officially released in 2009 and the Thread protocol was only truley released in a widespread form in 2014. Thread technology still has its basis in the IEEE 802.15.4 technical standard from 2003 and IPv6 which became a public Draft Standard for the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) back in 1998 and is, in turn, the latest revision of the Internet Protocol (which we all use today as IPv4, while IPv6 is slowly being adopted).
This is the reason why all these standards share the same technologies and take inspiration from each other.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zigbee
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thread_(network_protocol)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth_Low_Energy
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thanks again, you are right, I am a newbie to all these but try to learn. Appreciate various links
Hey guys, I wondered if I connect my Dirigera hub to my SkyConnect, will it act as a ZHA extender?
I have my Dirigera hub connected to HA via Apple controllers, not sure how to connect via SkyConnect directly.
I found that best (and cheapest) was to add ZHA extender is to add Ikea Tradfri Signal repeaters at various stragic locations of the house. These things are really dirt cheap
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No, you can not do that. You can not connect two Zigbee Coordinator to the same Zigbee network, (Dirigera hub is an appliance with its own propriatory Zigbee Gateway software application and a built-in Zigbee Coordinator radio module, and the same goes for all other Zigbee gateways/hubs/bridges). Read this introduction to ZHA and Zigbee → https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/zha#introduction and https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/zha#limitations
Tip is also to follow → https://community.home-assistant.io/t/guide-for-zigbee-interference-avoidance-and-network-range-coverage-optimization/515752
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Glad to hear these worked well for you, I was planning to head out to ikea on Monday 
Thanks for the reply, I’ll start reading through these now.