Building an AQARA Smart Home (Part 1 - PLANNING)

This is the first part of a new mini series im starting! In this series I will run through my ideas, planning, installation, automation and testing of a whole bunch of different Aqara products. I will show you how and why I have chosen to use them in my Smart Home.

This first video acts as a small introduction and talsk about some of my initial thoughts and the methods you can use for setting up Aqara devices in your own smart home.

This video is a little different to usual. Let me know if it's something you are interested in seeing though!

▬ 🎥 VIDEO CHAPTERS: ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
0:00​​​​ - Intro
0:21​​​ - About this project
1:52 ​ - Planning and Aqara info
2:35 - Aqara Hubs
3:00 - Aqara Connection Methods
4:45 - How I planned sensors (Floorplan)
5:30 - Sensors and devices I will be using
5:52 - Aqara Light switches
7:15 - In the Next Video
8:30 - Outro
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[markusw]

Wish you good luck, you will need it.
My house is full with Aqara switches and sensors and originally I thought in the new house I will exclusively use them, as their look and feel is nice. But after using them for a while and other shortcomings I stay away.

Here is why:
1. every now and then a sensor or switch loses suddenly connection, if I leave it, few days later it is back, totally random in regards to which one - unreliable
2. they do not follow Zigbee 3.0 properly and "stick" to repeaters/controllers, meaning, if your repeater goes offline for what ever reason, they do not connect to another repeater unless you reset them - tricky in bigger houses
3. Their lineup to be fully used in a house misses some important ones such as Dimmer switch, Fan control, curtain switch and most importantly sockets.

I like their design and how tiny the sensors are, but due to that, I wont use them in our new house. That said, so far I struggle hard to find any brand that would offer all devices you need for a whole house...at least if you in Europe.

[CharlesMahan]

One of my newest automations uses an Aqara door sensor on the lid of the porch box i built for Amazon deliveries. When the lid is opened, an input boolean gets set to true. I used a conditional card to display that boolean on my dashboards as a button when it's set to true. Now when a delivery arrives, the button displays and i can press the button to reset the input boolean.

I recently enhanced this with the help of a door sensor in the front door. Now if the porch box delivery input boolean is set and i open the box within 2 minutes of opening the font door the input boolean gets cleared automatically so i don't have to flip the switch on the dashboard at all.

[KaleoMgmt]

Nice. I only have a few Door/Window sensors and a Motion Sensor (in the kids' room to turn off the lights!!!).

Playing with a single Button. In HA I'm using Trigger ID's, a Select Helper, and Time Conditions to have the single-click run through the Nighttime Routine for the kids: Brush Teeth, Wash Face, Nighttime Meds, get in bed for Story Time. The click triggers an Alexa message, updates the Select Helper option, and changes the appropriate lights in the house. It's absolute overkill, but it's a good Routine Reminder for the kids and kind of becomes a game.

[yeohkokcheow]

Nice video. I like Aqara smart devices a lot. The price is affordable with decent quality. Can't wait for the Part 2.

[utubejester]

Will you be using the Aqara hub and showing how you integrate that into home assistant?

[danieldekovic]

I'm using aquara temperature sensors and pir sensors. They are working great with zigbee2mqtt. I also use aquara smart plugs. They also works great as routers for my zigbee network.

[thr]

Nice mini series Mark, looking forward to this. I came from hubitat realm to HA recently. I only have the QBKG04LM, QBKG03LM, buttons and motion sensors and found 2 annoying things coming from hubitat as it was working perfectly. 1. QBKG04LM doesn't show any temperature and 2. The motion sensor kept wanting to pair with the main zigbee coordination (I use the same one as yours sonoff usb dongle). Even when I initiate the pairing right next to a router (e.g. IKEA socket), it kept going back to the main coordinator. If you have fix for any of these issues, please do share. Besides these issues, they all work perfectly.

[RAZOR]

Man, that's a beautiful kitchen!

[xtremeideaz]

lol. Like the Drama. The Doorbell got me curiously thinking - who was at the door! nice one!

[Grehund]

Nice one, Mark. Looking forward to the series. I've just started using Aqara to build out my HA smart home, too.

[philippines.buildinganew]

Great timing Mark
Just looking at their products for our new house build.

[MadMike]

Thanks for the video it help me out. I also have Aqara, do you know if they can be imported into Hubitat?

[MartinHiggs]

Great video - I started off with one room initally got comfortable with setup then ordered more

[Pabula]

Really looking forward for the next series, doing something similar, hope you show how you do the Akara integration with Home Assitant.

[peejayw]

Looking forward to this series. I am currently swapping out many of my wifi devices and moving to Zigbee. I love the Aqara door/window sensors as they are so much smaller. I am about to install an Aqara motion sensor in my letterbox to tell me when mail has arrived. I will be especially interested on any thoughts you have regarding the Aqara cameras as I am looking to replace my Wyze units.

[michaelkurzewski]

Hello Mark! May I steer your attention to Aqara FP1 sensor. I almost got my hands on few of these babies(still in transit), I think they will change smarthome sensing tremendously.

[brandoncroft]

Looking forward to it, I currently only own 1 aqara device and thats a temperature and humidity sensor. I used it my main bathroom so when a kid showers and does turn the fan on home assistant does it for them haha

[MAMDAVEM]

Mark it would be great if you also included how to best document your smarthome setup, kind of like a house manual.

[accordxtc]

This will be a great series that I can learn from. I have a bunch of Aqara product but always looking at ways to improve. Thanks 👍

[Gladers.]

Just got some Aqara products, using ConBee 2 and ZHA. Works like a charm! I like their sensor. But in order to expand the units to my garage what tips do you have? Do I need a smartplug close to the wall facing the garage and home the signal reaches the garage or what?