This works perfectly fine with the Aqara Hub M3 (EU version, currently newest), too... Thanks so incredibly much for the explanation! This really made my month tbh, as I had already given up on the hope to control all devices connected to my Aqara M3 Hub - but it works exactly as you showed it without having to re-configure or factory-reset anything. ❤
Thank you so much! I was about to give up on getting this connected to HA until I thought to look for a video guide and found this. Quick note, seems in the Aqara settings they removed the function settings sub-menu and now there's just an expose to matter sub-menu that lets you select get pairing code, which you can use with HA.
I wanted the Aqara Door Lock so that required me to get the M2 Hub. I was wondering if running the M2 along side my TubeZB Coordinator would be advantageous. You kinda touched on that as well as briefly mentioning stability of devices and exposure of entities within a device but i really wish you would have gone into full detail with your experience. Did you see stability improvements? What additional entities were exposed? Any other observations?
So I'm not sure Ive seen any real stability improvements. But my Aqara stuff has been working pretty well using Zigbee2MQTT. I notice that not all the attributes come over. For the motion sensor I just get occupancy. No lux sensor. and no actual motion. Just the occupancy. I haven't looked to see if that is a Matter standard issue ,wher they haven't included lux sensors. But it could be Aqara wanting to keep "key features" on their hub.
I'm debating whether to get the M2 or M3 hub. I don't plan on using an Aqara hub for its Aqara automations. Any automations will be done in HomeKit or HA. Thus, for my purposes, there is no advantage in getting an M3 over an M2, except the M3 is newer (maybe longer life cycle in the future), and M3 is PoE (not as big a deal, but nice). My question is: is Matter support for the M2 still in Beta, or is it officially supported? If I only plan on using Aqara Zigbee devices with either M2 or M3 hub, and wish to expose the devices to HA using Matter, is there any advantage of having an M3 instead of an M2? Theoretically, it shouldn't matter, right? Although I've seen little information online in people using the M3 with HA via Matter.
Hi, I did what you mentioned and got it connected. The contact sensors work great but the wireless mini switch only has battery info and not the button press. Do you know why? Also the water leak sensor doesn't show up in home assistant but shows up in the aqara app
Yeah it's an oddity in Aqara's matter integration. Try the homekit integration to connect it to homekit (no iphone or homekit hub needed), the button works a treat there.
Well, for starters the homekit integration actually works. Matter always fails for me even on the newest firmware. All my other matter devices work fine, the aqara hub is just a piece of junk.
Agara moved the Matter option in the app. It's now just under the M2 Hub settings. And it's just called Matter. And as long as you have Matter setup in HA you should be able to go in and add a matter accessory in the integrations panel? Which part isn't showing up for you?
This doesn't work well if you have an IoT VLAN. Even the Matter beta docs state to maintain a flat network. I went another route. I added the M2 to HomeKit and Home Assistant saw the bridge.
Did it just show up at the devices tab? I have my M2 hub connected to HomeKit via the homekit integration but I can not connect to Home Assistant (my home assistant is on a different VLAN, Unifi)
That edit at approximately 0:10 was rough..... Some hubs work really well with Matter, and Aqara is one company that integrated Matter well on their hub. I just wish they would make their indvidual devices matter compatible. Aqara products are pretty decent for the price though.
Yes, I just blocked the M2 from internet and it is working locally over Matter from HA, U100. Dropped wifi and Bluetooth on my phone, Aqara app shows devices unavailable and can't control. Over matter you only get lock/unlock and battery level. Have to have the app to set fingerprints, codes, temporary access etc. *I believe that can be done locally with a Bluetooth connection but not 100%*
Can I use the M2 hub to connect non Aqara devices to the hub and then integrate into home assistant. Essentially eliminating the need for a zigbee dongle on my raspberry pie…
I am unable to add my aqara hub I just installed the skyconnect controller but nothing shows when I try to find matter device in home assistant app. please help.
Does the M2 hub work with Zigbee? I have a bunch of older Aquara Zigbee devices and sometimes struggle with getting them to work. If I pair them with the closest repeater, they don't work. If I pair them with the controller, they work better.
Thank you for this helpful video> I do not have a Matter hub but thinking it might be a way to get Aqara E1 Blinds working better in Home Assistant as with Zigbee I'm unable to use Google Voice or Alexa due to the blinds not being paired in Aqara App. But this may be other issues I don't know how to resolve to get the voice to work with these blinds. Any tip or help on this will be much appreciated,
do you need an Apple Homepod mini to work with the Aqara system or just the M2 Hub.? I have some matter/wifi bulbs I want the FP2 to control the lights when I enter or leave the area of a room. Parts I have Aqara FP2, M2 hub, wifi/Matter LED Blubs. Can't get the bulbs to see homekit or within the aqara app. What am I missing?
So I'm new to the whole home automation echo system. I ordred an "Aqara LED Ceiling Light T1M ", so if I understand this correctly, in order for me to use Home Assistant on let's say a Pi, I've have to buy the Aqara M2 hub as well? Pi (home network) >> Aqara m2 hub >> connects to Aqara light?
I don't think the FP2 is paired to the hub. It's Wi-Fi based and doesn't use the hub. And from what I could tell there is no way to link it to the hub.
Good video for those that already have the aqara hub and a good update. But i would cation anyone that's looking in to buying one of these. If you can avoid it don't buy hardware hubs. As anyone who has had one and lost access to it (insteon hubs comes to mind here, as well as MyQ garage door opener removal of access to HA and many other IoT platforms) can attest to, you can own a paper weight at any time. Thats why i like home assistant so much, it can run on a lot of different hardware (even a old PC you have laying around). Again good video.
That's a good point. I need to test this. The idea with Matter is the connect is local and doesn't involve the cloud. So in theory I should be able to now block the m2 hub from the internet and it still integrate with home assistant.
@@SlackerLabs That is indeed a valid point, but not the one i was trying to make. My concern to not put to fine a point on it was even though we bought these IoT hubs the company's that made them own them and reserve the right to "Update" them whenever they want. They could decide (not that they would mind you) that home assistant is causing to big a security risk (just as MyQ did) to "their" hubs and modify their firmware to prevent it from connecting to their hub. The point i'm trying to make is we can't prevent them from doing what they wish when they wish to "our" hardware.
@@HATipsByLarry I wouldn't be too worried about it. Any electronic device with firmware becomes outdated, whether the company is alive or not. Philips Hue version 1 bridge as an example. At least aqara isn't too expenisve so you are not losing much. It would be nice if companies could be forced to release a final firmware giving full local access when they know their services are going offline, but we are not quite there yet.
@@SlackerLabsI'm interested in both points here. Keeping control completely local, which you theorize can be done just by blocking the M2 from the Internet (after the initial device discovery). That's one reason why I've avoided ecosystem hubs. Xiaomi/Aqara is a great example. I don't want them accessing my network any more than what is needed for initial setup, and maybe to update firmware when I decide I want it. That's the 2nd issue: what happens if/when Aqara decides it doesn't want me integrating with 3rd party systems like HA? In theory keeping the hub off the Internet 100% of the time should keep me in control. I wonder if you or anyone else has put that theory to the test. Does the M2 keep full functionality even without an Internet connection 4:07 ?
I use home assistant but not the hub. I've got a SONOFF Zigbee 3.0 USB dongle that works fine. I do have to add the Aqara devices to home assistant twice for some reason.
Would be nicer to have possibly OTA update all of my exist Aqara devices for Thread and Matter supports and keep using only SkyConnect stick. Sadly, no such possibly with aqara. No OTA update support sucks.
I just purchased several Aqara window sensors without the HUB only to come to realize that they sometimes are showing up as "Unavailable". I'm hoping this is only temporary, but does anyone know if getting the HUB and then connecting it via HA is going to eliminate this issue?
Problem is, it is pretty useless. I tried different Aqara devices via Matter in Home Assistant. But they don't offer the same amount of functions as e.g. in Z2M. The Vibration Sensor only has vibration and I can't even trigger automations with it. The cube also has no triggers, at least as far as I could see.
Right. I was trusting the home assistant docs that provides steps for adding a matter device on Android. If it didn't work you might want to submit an issue because the HA team believes it does work. But like you said. I don't have an android device so I can test it.
There is no function setting. Hub M2 (fully updated), iphone (fully updated), iphone aqara app (fully updated). I see device settings and under that, no function setting, no "bind to matter" to be found anywhere.
I see a matter option now. No function setting. But under the general setting header I have a matter option. So it appears they moved some stuff around.
@@SlackerLabs ok so that matter section replaces the function part but that doesn't help with adding to HA will have to do some research on how to bind matter into HA and how to troubleshoot
@PaulHoughton does it not give you the option to get a matter pairing code when you go into that option? Mine has the option to get a code or connect it to apple home. The pairing code is what you need. Then you should be able to open the HA app and add a matter device and enter the pairing code. I will make sure it still works on my dev system.
Honestly I don't think the Matter compatiblity with the Aqara hubs is that important since they already have Homekit and that has worked realibily enough for me. I
@@pepperumo5116 My Matter connection from Aqara to Home Assistant randomly died the other day. This never happened on HomeKit for me, but now I just can't get HomeKit to connect again.
i have a nortek zigbee/zwave dongle attached to my rasberry pi .. it detects zigbee and zwave devices all the time without products native app setup. Will my dongle work without the m2 hub? Specifically the u100 lock
Did it exactly as you described it. Works perfect with Aqara M2 Hub and Aqara Sensors. Thanks a lot.
Works nicely with the Aqara E1 Hub too. Thank you!
This works perfectly fine with the Aqara Hub M3 (EU version, currently newest), too... Thanks so incredibly much for the explanation! This really made my month tbh, as I had already given up on the hope to control all devices connected to my Aqara M3 Hub - but it works exactly as you showed it without having to re-configure or factory-reset anything. ❤
Jeff, thanks soooo much for this. I was actually contemplating dumping my Aqara gear before finding your video. Thumbs up and subscribed!
Me too!
Thank you so much! I was about to give up on getting this connected to HA until I thought to look for a video guide and found this. Quick note, seems in the Aqara settings they removed the function settings sub-menu and now there's just an expose to matter sub-menu that lets you select get pairing code, which you can use with HA.
I wanted the Aqara Door Lock so that required me to get the M2 Hub. I was wondering if running the M2 along side my TubeZB Coordinator would be advantageous. You kinda touched on that as well as briefly mentioning stability of devices and exposure of entities within a device but i really wish you would have gone into full detail with your experience. Did you see stability improvements? What additional entities were exposed? Any other observations?
So I'm not sure Ive seen any real stability improvements. But my Aqara stuff has been working pretty well using Zigbee2MQTT. I notice that not all the attributes come over. For the motion sensor I just get occupancy. No lux sensor. and no actual motion. Just the occupancy. I haven't looked to see if that is a Matter standard issue ,wher they haven't included lux sensors. But it could be Aqara wanting to keep "key features" on their hub.
I'm debating whether to get the M2 or M3 hub. I don't plan on using an Aqara hub for its Aqara automations. Any automations will be done in HomeKit or HA. Thus, for my purposes, there is no advantage in getting an M3 over an M2, except the M3 is newer (maybe longer life cycle in the future), and M3 is PoE (not as big a deal, but nice). My question is: is Matter support for the M2 still in Beta, or is it officially supported? If I only plan on using Aqara Zigbee devices with either M2 or M3 hub, and wish to expose the devices to HA using Matter, is there any advantage of having an M3 instead of an M2? Theoretically, it shouldn't matter, right? Although I've seen little information online in people using the M3 with HA via Matter.
Are you able to use the IR functions of the hub from HA this way?
Amazing, this has saved me hours of searching the internet. Thank you so much.
Hi, I did what you mentioned and got it connected. The contact sensors work great but the wireless mini switch only has battery info and not the button press. Do you know why? Also the water leak sensor doesn't show up in home assistant but shows up in the aqara app
Yeah it's an oddity in Aqara's matter integration. Try the homekit integration to connect it to homekit (no iphone or homekit hub needed), the button works a treat there.
I think you're missing some transition text at the start :D
What’s the difference between doing this and using the HomeKit devices integration? Seems to be the same.
Well, for starters the homekit integration actually works. Matter always fails for me even on the newest firmware. All my other matter devices work fine, the aqara hub is just a piece of junk.
It seams this is all old info already. I just setup Home Assistant (2024.2.1) and none of these options are showing up for me...
Agara moved the Matter option in the app. It's now just under the M2 Hub settings. And it's just called Matter.
And as long as you have Matter setup in HA you should be able to go in and add a matter accessory in the integrations panel? Which part isn't showing up for you?
This doesn't work well if you have an IoT VLAN. Even the Matter beta docs state to maintain a flat network. I went another route. I added the M2 to HomeKit and Home Assistant saw the bridge.
Did it just show up at the devices tab? I have my M2 hub connected to HomeKit via the homekit integration but I can not connect to Home Assistant (my home assistant is on a different VLAN, Unifi)
That edit at approximately 0:10 was rough.....
Some hubs work really well with Matter, and Aqara is one company that integrated Matter well on their hub. I just wish they would make their indvidual devices matter compatible. Aqara products are pretty decent for the price though.
Yes it was. But the intro sequence for jacked and I didn't catch it until after it went live. So it was a hack job.
Can you run this Locally with the M2? I was looking to get some of the Locks but was put off by the fact they are cloud account required.
I am very curious about this as well.
Me too
Yes, I just blocked the M2 from internet and it is working locally over Matter from HA, U100. Dropped wifi and Bluetooth on my phone, Aqara app shows devices unavailable and can't control.
Over matter you only get lock/unlock and battery level. Have to have the app to set fingerprints, codes, temporary access etc. *I believe that can be done locally with a Bluetooth connection but not 100%*
Worked perfect with my M1S Gen2 hub too!
Oddly, its brought some of the devices in (M3 hub) but not all of them. The FP2 sensor for example is not showing....wonder why?
Thank you for the info!
Can I use the M2 hub to connect non Aqara devices to the hub and then integrate into home assistant. Essentially eliminating the need for a zigbee dongle on my raspberry pie…
It can manage the sensor, but M2 itself can control IR devices and I found no way to do it in HA. May I ask if you found a way?
I am unable to add my aqara hub I just installed the skyconnect controller but nothing shows when I try to find matter device in home assistant app. please help.
Does the M2 hub work with Zigbee? I have a bunch of older Aquara Zigbee devices and sometimes struggle with getting them to work. If I pair them with the closest repeater, they don't work. If I pair them with the controller, they work better.
M1S2 Gen 2 doesn't connect that way. "Error happened" each time I try to connect.
Thank you for this helpful video> I do not have a Matter hub but thinking it might be a way to get Aqara E1 Blinds working better in Home Assistant as with Zigbee I'm unable to use Google Voice or Alexa due to the blinds not being paired in Aqara App. But this may be other issues I don't know how to resolve to get the voice to work with these blinds. Any tip or help on this will be much appreciated,
also did it but then with the aqara m3 🥰 works fine
do you need an Apple Homepod mini to work with the Aqara system or just the M2 Hub.? I have some matter/wifi bulbs I want the FP2 to control the lights when I enter or leave the area of a room. Parts I have Aqara FP2, M2 hub, wifi/Matter LED Blubs. Can't get the bulbs to see homekit or within the aqara app. What am I missing?
So I'm new to the whole home automation echo system. I ordred an "Aqara LED Ceiling Light T1M ", so if I understand this correctly, in order for me to use Home Assistant on let's say a Pi, I've have to buy the Aqara M2 hub as well?
Pi (home network) >> Aqara m2 hub >> connects to Aqara light?
If you have a Zigbee dongle on your pi then you don't need an Aqara hub.
Great work, thanks for that!
I don't see the FP2 in HA only the Hub.
I don't think the FP2 is paired to the hub. It's Wi-Fi based and doesn't use the hub. And from what I could tell there is no way to link it to the hub.
Good video for those that already have the aqara hub and a good update. But i would cation anyone that's looking in to buying one of these. If you can avoid it don't buy hardware hubs. As anyone who has had one and lost access to it (insteon hubs comes to mind here, as well as MyQ garage door opener removal of access to HA and many other IoT platforms) can attest to, you can own a paper weight at any time. Thats why i like home assistant so much, it can run on a lot of different hardware (even a old PC you have laying around). Again good video.
That's a good point. I need to test this. The idea with Matter is the connect is local and doesn't involve the cloud. So in theory I should be able to now block the m2 hub from the internet and it still integrate with home assistant.
@@SlackerLabs That is indeed a valid point, but not the one i was trying to make. My concern to not put to fine a point on it was even though we bought these IoT hubs the company's that made them own them and reserve the right to "Update" them whenever they want. They could decide (not that they would mind you) that home assistant is causing to big a security risk (just as MyQ did) to "their" hubs and modify their firmware to prevent it from connecting to their hub. The point i'm trying to make is we can't prevent them from doing what they wish when they wish to "our" hardware.
@@HATipsByLarry I wouldn't be too worried about it. Any electronic device with firmware becomes outdated, whether the company is alive or not. Philips Hue version 1 bridge as an example. At least aqara isn't too expenisve so you are not losing much.
It would be nice if companies could be forced to release a final firmware giving full local access when they know their services are going offline, but we are not quite there yet.
@@SlackerLabsI'm interested in both points here. Keeping control completely local, which you theorize can be done just by blocking the M2 from the Internet (after the initial device discovery). That's one reason why I've avoided ecosystem hubs. Xiaomi/Aqara is a great example. I don't want them accessing my network any more than what is needed for initial setup, and maybe to update firmware when I decide I want it.
That's the 2nd issue: what happens if/when Aqara decides it doesn't want me integrating with 3rd party systems like HA? In theory keeping the hub off the Internet 100% of the time should keep me in control. I wonder if you or anyone else has put that theory to the test. Does the M2 keep full functionality even without an Internet connection 4:07 ?
That’s a really useful tutorial but once it adds it to matter, putting it in home assistant just fails. I don’t know why.
I use home assistant but not the hub. I've got a SONOFF Zigbee 3.0 USB dongle that works fine. I do have to add the Aqara devices to home assistant twice for some reason.
So I guess you have firmware updated the dongle to handle Matter?🙂
What about the M1S? Will it also be Matter compatible?
When I was doing my research on the Aqara ecosystem I seem to recall reading that only the M2 would get Matter.
Would be nicer to have possibly OTA update all of my exist Aqara devices for Thread and Matter supports and keep using only SkyConnect stick. Sadly, no such possibly with aqara. No OTA update support sucks.
I try it with android, but when scan qr code to homeassistant i found error "can't find device" Do you know how to fix it?
I dont know that one. That might be an issue with the Android companion app.
I just purchased several Aqara window sensors without the HUB only to come to realize that they sometimes are showing up as "Unavailable". I'm hoping this is only temporary, but does anyone know if getting the HUB and then connecting it via HA is going to eliminate this issue?
I followed what you did and my door sensor shows up in home assistant but my leak sensor doesn't show up, any idea why?
Same here
Android's built-in smart home controls now work with Home Assistant
I added the m2 to home assistant but no accessories are showing up. Anyone else have this issue? Running on a pi4
Problem is, it is pretty useless. I tried different Aqara devices via Matter in Home Assistant. But they don't offer the same amount of functions as e.g. in Z2M.
The Vibration Sensor only has vibration and I can't even trigger automations with it. The cube also has no triggers, at least as far as I could see.
But you lose the zigbee extender signal that connected to ha
I don't think you should say things like "it should work with Android" if you haven't tried it. It didn't work for me using an Android phone.
Right. I was trusting the home assistant docs that provides steps for adding a matter device on Android. If it didn't work you might want to submit an issue because the HA team believes it does work.
But like you said. I don't have an android device so I can test it.
Thank you 🙏🏻
There is no function setting. Hub M2 (fully updated), iphone (fully updated), iphone aqara app (fully updated). I see device settings and under that, no function setting, no "bind to matter" to be found anywhere.
hmm. Let me check mine. Hopefully they didn't remove that...
I've got the same problem no bind to Matter option and when I try to connect with the code HA and Google home can't find the M2 hub
I see a matter option now. No function setting. But under the general setting header I have a matter option. So it appears they moved some stuff around.
@@SlackerLabs ok so that matter section replaces the function part but that doesn't help with adding to HA will have to do some research on how to bind matter into HA and how to troubleshoot
@PaulHoughton does it not give you the option to get a matter pairing code when you go into that option? Mine has the option to get a code or connect it to apple home. The pairing code is what you need. Then you should be able to open the HA app and add a matter device and enter the pairing code. I will make sure it still works on my dev system.
Matter still doesn't 😂
Honestly I don't think the Matter compatiblity with the Aqara hubs is that important since they already have Homekit and that has worked realibily enough for me. I
I tried matter and HomeKit, the reliability is not great in either case
@@pepperumo5116 My Matter connection from Aqara to Home Assistant randomly died the other day. This never happened on HomeKit for me, but now I just can't get HomeKit to connect again.
What is Aqara? What kind of devices do they provide? A 10s intro would’ve been nice.
If you are watching this video or this channel, surely you must be aware of the different existing home assistant smart devices 😊
@@Sarvesh2910 I'm interested in Home Assistant and I've seen some video's on this channel, but I've never heard of Aqara.
@@Sarvesh2910don't call him surely
i have a nortek zigbee/zwave dongle attached to my rasberry pi .. it detects zigbee and zwave devices all the time without products native app setup. Will my dongle work without the m2 hub? Specifically the u100 lock