Hello. I’m looking into doors and windows sensors to integrate with Home Assistant. I don’t have any alarm system yet, but it will become part of it.
Which one would you recommend?
PS: I’ve got a Zigbee dongle, but no Z-Wave dongle. I would consider adding one if Ring offers the best solution.
The following video was recently shard with me. You may find it answers your question.
The Aqara sensors are solid with good battery life. If your zigbee mesh is solid, Aqara should be fine.
I’d try to get the newer zigbee 3.0 if available for you.
I know Ring has an outdoor version if that is an issue.
Great video - Amazing some people can do all the testing and share their findings. Thanks.
Im running both. The Ring Sensors are a PITA to get configured and working properly but work well once you do.
The Aqara sensors are easier to pair and also work very well. Just starting to acquire sensors? I would recommend the Aqara since they are much easier to pair. Zigbee can be a fickle bitch though…
I’m also running both. I was running the Aqara but they are absolutely awful at staying on my zigbee network. Other manufacturer devices are stable on my zigbee network and my Aqara zigbee 3.0 devices seem to do a better job of staying on the network but the contact sensors drop off all the time. There is a zigbee 3.0 Aqara contact sensor available on Aliexpress but the Ring sensors were much cheaper for me so I’m gradually replacing all my Aqara contact sensors with the Ring sensors. My Ring contact sensors paired with ZWave JS in seconds.
As an update almost a year after my last post, I would probably recommend the Ring sensors now. They pair much easier now than at this time last year.
I dont have any issue with the Aquara sensors though. They all still function perfectly.
I have about a dozen of each type in use right now.
Hi all! - also interested in some ring sensors. Can I connect them directly to HA or do I need the ring alarm base station?
Thanks
Another vote for Aqara. After seeing what Amazon did to that dude’s smart house for no good reason, it’d be a cold day in hell before you catch me with any smart devices owned/made/operated by Amazon.
Not to mention that the Aqara sensors work great, the battery life is outstanding, and they are cheap.
In case you haven’t heard what happened with the dude’s house:
As if all that wasn’t bad enough, there’s a follow-on video on that dude’s channel that Amazon kicked him out of the Amazon Affiliate program for reporting on this issue!!!
And yes, I still give them money, solely out of sheer convenience (and often times price - and I even happily steer other people towards deals on their site), but again, I won’t buy anything made by them or that connects to their servers. I mean, I try to stay away from anything cloud wherever possible, but ESPECIALLY Amazon-owned/operated cloud stuff. YUCK.
Here’s an update from me after another six months of use…
I now have 9 Ring contact sensors (8 gen 1, 1 gen 2) and 17 Aqara contact sensors (yes I over bought the Aqara’s!).
The Aqara contact sensors (and the Aqara battery powered sensors in general) have been the cause of 99% of my issues with Home Assistant this past year (contact sensor, temp & humidity sensor and TVOC).
If I could go back and start all over the one thing I would change is not listen to all those Youtube videos singing the praises of Aqara and avoided their battery powered devices. What they don’t tell you is that Aqara devices don’t play nicely with Home Assistant (at least with ZHA in my case, can’t speak to Z2M) and the devices constantly become unavailable (lookup the many, many, many threads on this online!).
I want to build home security in HA and I simply can’t rely on Aqara contact sensors. In contrast the Ring sensors have worked flawlessly. I can rely on them for my home security setup and have had zero issues. The battery life looks to be rock solid too.
You don’t need the Ring base station, or in fact any setup or connection with Ring software, so you do not need to be reliant on Ring/Amazon at all. I installed the Zwave JS integration on HA which was pretty easy to do and now my Ring contact sensors are locally connected to HA. As a bonus, with the lower frequency Ring Zwave devices I can even use the devices on my garage and garden office, something the zigbee based Aqara’s couldn’t dream of covering on their own (I’d need to install multiple routers in-between).
Maybe you should have listened closer to the YouTube videos and posts talking about how well the aqara stuff works…
Maybe you should read the multiple online threads as to why that’s not true
Ive not had much trouble at all with the aqara sensors, but I think the Ring sensors are better. I would recommend the Ring sensors unless size is an issue. They are a bit larger.
Ive not had any of the Ring sensors fail, but have had 1 aqara die completely on me.
I can teach you, but I can’t understand it for you.
…thanks for the offer, I’ll pass on it 
…
Sounds to me like blaming aqara for underlying zigbee issues.
20+ door sensors here. 50+ total aqara battery sensors. All in place well over a year, pushing two years. All rock solid.
That would be a valid observation if I didn’t also use multiple Sonoff, Hive and IKEA zigbee devices in my ZHA network that work pretty much flawlessly. But since I do, your observation is without any basis.
That’s exactly what’s going on, he just doesn’t want to hear it.
Easier to just let him think he’s right and move on. I personally couldn’t care less if he wants to use inferior products, it doesn’t change how well they work for everyone else.