Reconfiguring homeKit and Aqara FP2

Configuration Matter/Thread
, ,
1

Hiya, So I’m having an absolute nightmare with this, and given I’m fairly new to Home Assistant (2 months), I’m cautious about aimlessly fiddling about.

I have a lot of devices in my house, and I started integrating the FP2 mm wave sensors from Aqara recently. I got two and after a pain in the arse trying to set them up using an Android phone, and having google nest Wi-Fi, I eventually got them into the Aqara app by driving away from the house, hot-spotting my phone with the same Wi-Fi name and password, restricting 2.4Ghz, and setting up from the second phone. When returning home they connected to my Wi-Fi OK and worked.

When I got them back online they showed up as new integrations in HomeKit and were easy to add from there using the pairing codes on the back.

Fast forward to a few days ago, I learned that setting up Zones actually creates additional virtual room presence sensors. Great for automations and light tracking. So I ordered three more. However I was premature in my actions. I add them OK (drive down the road and hotspot again) to make sure they worked, once I knew they were paired and they were working in HA, I then went and configured zones on all 5 sensors.

This is where is went wrong. HomeKit started warning “Failed setup, will retry”, and they all got stuck in a state of “initialising”. I tried restarting, clearing cache, configuring, all to no avail. So then I tried taking the zones out the Aqara app, and returning them to the state they were when working, all to no avail. I then restored HA to a backup from the night before when they were working, all to no avail. Nothing would work.

Then I tried resetting the FP2’s back to factory state, and re-adding them to the Aqara app, but they wouldn’t show up in HA. I then tried removing every entity from HomeKit and restart HA, nothing showed up. I tried configuring HomeKit and the message was “No unpaired devices could be found”. I removed HomeKit and restarted HA, same thing. I reset the FP2’s again (down the road, in the car, hot-spotting phone), came back, they work in the Aqara app, but HomeKit still won’t find new entities.

I’ve retried everything in different sequences, HomeKit integration just doesn’t see them, but my router shows them up OK, I’ve given them all static IP’s (even tried new IP’s to fool it), HomeKit just won’t see them at all.

The only thing I can think, is either HA has them cached somewhere and I need to clear that out. Or they’re stored somewhere in HA in the DB or some config file with a mac address or some identifier that means a reset doesn’t make the device appear as a new device, and they need to be cleared out of there. But I don’t know where to look or what to do to make HomeKit think it’s a new installation and allow me to add all my devices back.

Please someone help? I’m not so great with terminal. I have a HA Green. and I have Studio Code Server setup, HACS, and a tonne of integrations and automations for all my stuff which all works OK with the exception of Motion Automations because I can’t get these dam FP2’s back into HA.

:sob: :sob: :sob: :sob: :sob: :sob: :sob: :sob:

2

So I’ve now spent my weekend doing nothing but trying to fix this, with more than 24 hours awake straight. The crossroads are here! And I’m done in… last question, before i do one of two things…

Will the aqara m2 hub pair with HA and offer up my FP2 Sensors that way?

If yes, then it’s another 50 quid and i try once more.

If no, then the 400 quid of aqara FP2’S go back, the 300 quid of other aqara sensors that works fine on Zha goes back too because f*** you aqara for being all “f*** you android users, if you don’t use homekit you’re not worth our effort”!

This has totally done me in and taken me over the edge!

3

Unless it cures cancer for your mother → go to sleep!

1 Like
4

How did you reset them? Using the button the device? If so it might not be enough; several people in the forum reported that after that it is also necessary to disconnect them from power for few seconds and reconnect. Soft restart by short button press might be not enough. Personally I also run into such issue one time (on 5 sensors).

5

Resetting was a pain in the hooha! it took quite a few goes on each, but most common variable to produce quickest results was:

  1. Power on, wait 10 seconds (even though it flashes immediately - jumping the gun here the rest would fail)
  2. Press and hold for 10 seconds’ish, till the light goes off briefly
  3. Unplug as fast as you can before the light starts flashing again (missing the target and the light flashed and nothing else would work)
  4. Wait a little while, about 10 or more seconds was ideal.
  5. Power on with USB, and wait about 10 more seconds (bare in mind, jumping the gun early would never work, and everything else would fail and i’d have to start again, or, as per the 120 plus attempts the few hours earlier - i’d try something else in a different way and sequence and it would fail)
  6. short press the button 10 times and then the light will go off briefly, and then start flashing after two seconds
  7. wait another 10 seconds
  8. attempt another pairing with the Aqara app using my two phones hot-spotting in the baking hot car with a seat full of other FP2’s needing the same proverbial kick up the toot.
  9. when the App find’s the Wi-Fi of the device to connect to after it’s done step 2, don’t click it yet! Wait another 5 plus seconds, then click it.

If all goes well, it connects into the aqara app.

Bare in mind, this is all Android, I don’t own any Apple products, at least not since I stopped working for them 19 years ago… i have to be hot-spotting off a second phone using the same SSID and password as my home Wi-Fi, but no where near my home, else it just won’t work.

Once it’s in the Aqara app, that’s it, it now an expensive and useless bookend because HA will never see it again unless you go out and buy apple products to fool it into the HomeKit integration…

The only test scenario I’ve not been able to achieve, and it’s impossible to do so unless I only want to ever monitor presence in my car, is to leave it powered on after binding with the Aqara app, but in all honesty, I can’t see that making a difference. plugged or unplugged, the Aqara app picks it up, HA doesn’t know it exists.

The plus side though, I’ve had 6 awesome steak burgers this weekend, because I have to park outside their shop while a waste my life away trying different scenarios with these FP2’s :joy:

For anyone thinking it’s worth trying to repair their FP2’s at home… don’t!

  1. You can’t choose 2.4Ghz as your preferred network from a mobile
  2. I have Nest Wi-Fi pro, so I can’t disable the other channels
  3. If I switch the Wi-Fi off, my phone goes into melt-down with the millions of devices trying to suddenly connect when I enable the hot-spot
  4. If I kill all power at the mains, then try the two phone hot-spot trick it works, but then go help me with all the fixing I have to do when I put the power back on when camera’s want reconfiguring, and all the devices are upset with me.