I’m looking to purchase a Xiaomi gateway and some motion sensors and some smart swtiches for my house. These seem like very good value compared to my one and. only hue motion sensor, which is great, but about three times the cost of one Xiaomi motion sensor.
I’ve spend hours playing with DIY motion sensors based around D1 mini’s and HC SR501 motion sensors running tasmota, but haven’t managed to make them reliable enough for everyday use. I constantly seem to get false readings from them I’ve also tried mysensors in the past, but with limited success.
There seem to be various different gateways available and it’s a bit confusing. Could people recommend which one would be suitable? Also any input from people using Xiaomi products with HA, would be much appreciated?
This is the gateway that I use. One thing to take into account with the Xiaomi motion sensors is that they stay ‘triggered’ for 2 mins after motion is detected so any automation you have will be subjected to that. ie: the sensor wont go back to ‘no motion’ for at least 2mins from first seeing motion / 2 mins from when motion stops.
Thanks for your input, I’ve seen the other threads, but seems like quite a lot of work and more fiddling around and more complicated compared to just adding the gateway, unless there are other advantages.
Take a look at the awesome Zigbee2mqtt bridge. I use it with 4 Xiaomi motion sensors, 6 temp and humidity and 2 ZigBee power sockets. Works super well and does not need cloud connection to Chinese servers.
I have both the Xiaomi Hub and use ZIgbee2Mqtt. I find the Xiaomi Hub to be more reliable. With Z2M, there’s no way to determine the routing, and you absolutely can’t cover an entire house without routers with the range the dongle has. I have some light bulbs that act as routers. The network detects the light bulbs, and uses them as routers. Then, someone will turn the bulbs off at the switch and, of course, the lights don’t work any more, but neither does anything that was using it as a router.
One Xiaomi hub seems to cover my entire 2600 sq ft house. To my knowledge, I’ve also never missed a report from one of them. They work every time. Flawlessly.
I don’t find the range to be limited at all. My house is over 4000 sq ft and I have sensors at the edges of my house with no extra routers. They seem to work perfectly however I have added a Xiaomi socket to be able to add more devices to my network.
My house is 2600 sq ft all on one floor. So, if you have a 2 story house, than, despite your house being larger than mine, I might have a bigger footprint.
For me, the coordinator is located at the edge of my house. If I moved it more to the center, it would get better range, there’s just not a good place to put it in the center of my house that isn’t ugly. There’s one end device in particular that is tricky for me. It’s about 35’ away from my coordinator and the signal has to travel through 4 walls. Without routers, these two devices are unable to communicate. Maybe my walls have more insulation/interference than a typical wall? Maybe I have more interference in the 2.4Ghz band than you do? I’m not sure. I tried 4 different coordinator dongles thinking maybe I had a bad one all with the same effect. If I add a router just on the other side of the first wall away from the coordinator the distance becomes 20’ to the next device and only has 3 walls to travel through. This seems to make it without issue. There may be extra interference in the room that I have the coordinator in, so perhaps my situation is unique to me.
Regardless, with more than 20 devices or so, you’re going to need a router any way since there is a device limit on the CC2531 as a coordinator. And if you have any decent Zigbee Light Bulbs, you’ve got routers as a result anyway.
I was using the gateway, but I’ve changed over to zigbee2mqtt. For zigbee2mqtt I have 1x cc3251 as a coordinator and 2x cc2531 as routers. I could not get the cc2530 to work as a coordinator.
I find the Xiaomi gateway more reliable and less work to setup. It also has better range. The gateway doesn’t need internet access to work, you can block access on your router if you wish.
With zigbee2mqtt it takes 2-5 minutes to add a sensor as you have to push the button many times to try and get it to pair. The gateway just works. Zigbee2mqtt does allow you to choose the zigbee frequency and use non Xiaomi zigbee devices, where as the Xiaomi gateway is for Xiaomi only.
The Xiaomi gateway also gives you an RGB nightlight for your hallway and a speaker you can use for a doorbell which is nice. After setup you no longer need to use the Xiaomi app.
The zigbee2mqtt gateway only costs about 5usd or something like that however you will need to spend another 10usd to buy the fishing till to add the firmware. So it’s maybe cheaper.
I found the Xiaomi gateway unreliable when I had a cheap WiFi router and running ha on the pi. Now that I have all unifi gear and running ha on an Intel nuc it is rock solid.
I’ve also tried mysensors in the past, but with limited success.