Correct me if I’m wrong, but…
Buyer Beware! Aqara hubs use the Zigbee protocol, but lock out 3rd party devices!
A few months ago, I bought an Aqara hub and went deep into their ecosystem. I saw their hub and sensors had good reviews, plus they were using the Zigbee open protocol, so I figured I’d stick with their stuff. I had no reason to try other devices until recently.
I picked up a tilt sensor for my garage door from a 3rd party. I made sure it was also using the Zigbee protocol, so I assumed it would be compatable. Unfortunately, when I tried connecting it to the hub, I was wrong and it wouldn’t connect. Turns out, Aqara uses the Zigbee protocol, but locks out 3rd party devices. [source]
If anyone has a workaround to integrate a 3rd party device with an Aqara Hub (IIRC, I have the M3?), I’d love to hear about it. But until then - I’m looking for a refund. I would have never picked up their hub if I had known about their shennanigans; and consequently, I wouldn’t have picked up so many of their sensors.
When you go deep down the rabbit hole, you learn that in versions prior to Zigbee 3.0, there are all sorts of zigbee application profiles (like bluetooth profiles, if you’ve ever wondered why it matters that a bluetooth headset can be connected for calls, music, or both). Two prominent ones are Zigbee Light Link (LL) and Zigbee Home Automation (HA). There’s also Zigbee Smart Energy. and numerous proprietary profiles.
Hubs solely designed for Zigbee LL ecosystems don’t talk to Zigbee HA devices, and hubs designed solely for Zigbee HA ecosystems don’t talk to Zigbee LL devices, to say nothing of any propriety profiles they may also support.
Obligatory: https://xkcd.com/927/
Just to point this out for anyone seeing this thread, the aqara hubs with thread still let you use them as a thread for third party devices
This is pretty normal. Philips also uses ZigBee for Hue and you can’t connect non-Philips ZigBee devices to it. This is the major reason I started using Home Assistant. I use Home Assistant Yellow which has a built-in ZigBee radio but ZigBee radios can be added via USB to any setup running Home Assistant. ZBT-2 is pretty great for high performance unit. Sonoff have a cheaper dongle.
I’ve got the Sonoff dongle and it works pretty well. I’ve got lights from ThirdReality and sensors from Aqara, ThirdReality, and Sonoff. Everything works seamlessly in Home Assistant
Speaking of devices, I’m actually still using an ancient Conbee II and it’s rock solid. I thought about changing it recently and ordered a ZBT-2 for a more up to date product, but then I realised I was insane and set it up as a Thread Border Router instead, so I have both now.
I just got ZBT-2 for my first Matter/Thread device and hooked it up to my HA Yellow. This thing now does ZigBee, Thread and Z-Wave. 😆
Nabu Casa’s own documentation says the ZBT-2 does NOT support multi-protocols. The zbt-2 does work with Matter, but then won’t support Zigbee.
https://www.home-assistant.io/connect/zbt-2
“Connect ZBT-2 cannot do both Zigbee and Thread simultaneously. This technology is often called “multiprotocol” or “MultiPAN”. Though it is theoretically possible with the hardware within Connect ZBT-2, in our experience, this functionality doesn’t work well, and we don’t plan to implement it. We previously thoroughly tested multiprotocol with our Connect ZBT-1 adapter and found its operation to be inconsistent, often causing device stability issues. We do not believe multiprotocol is suitable for operation in the home, and strongly recommend dedicating a device to each protocol.”
I didn’t mean to imply it does. I use the built-in ZigBee radio on the HA Yellow. The ZBT-2 is only doing Matter/Thread. I also got a Z-Wave radio hooked to the Yellow’s GPIO.
Fair enough. I just didn’t want others who read your post to be misinformed.
Winning at protocol mastery. I commend thee.
I believe no company who makes there own hub allows 3rd parties? That’s why I have a zigbee dongle in HA
Do many companies let you use their hubs to connect to devices from competitors? I always assumed of you bought X brand, you could only connect to X brand.
If you are gettng a refund, would you consider using Zigbee2MQTT with a suitable dongle from Home Assistant, Sonoff etc.? Then you can connect your Aqara stuff and pretty much any other brand you want, without any of their hubs.
Apologies if I’m missing something subtle here but it seems normal that Aqara would want to tie you into their products only.
I’d just like to warn about the reverse way, using aqara products on a general hub. I’m running HA with z2m myself, and used to have a whole array of aqara devices. They caused me nothing but problems, so I have slowly phased them out to similar devices which actually follow the zigbee standard.
I have several Aqara devices, IKEA, Tuya, and others and havent experienced any issues with my Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 stick.
I used to have a sonoff zigbee 3.0 stick, which was a good device. But back then I still had problems. It probably depends on how many devices you have, but for me, especially when I had a lot of aqara router devices, they took down the whole network from time to time. And they would constantly fall out of the network. I still have one socket switch left, and it triggers by turning on the light in the same room(IKEA switch). There is no automation linked for this… Only solution is to downgrade the firmware of the socket switch several versions.
Curious if you use a Pi and had the stick connected directly? I don’t recall the exact issue or configuration but I know some of these sticks (possibly ZWave) work better when connected through a USB cable rather than directly to the Pi. I’ve got both of mine connected through a 1m USB cable and separated a bit to prevent interference.
Nah, I have it as a vm on a 2u server. I used to have it on a 1 metre extension also, and as soon as I changed the aqara devices, network was stable. I only changed the adapter because I wanted one on LAN.
I see. Maybe its just an issue with the repeaters. All mine Aqara devices are end points and the only router devices I have are IKEA repeaters.
Good point, I have hears of people having issues with Aqara stuff like that. Good flag.
Even hue, on their own platform allows third party ZigBee devices without complaints.
Really? I wasn’t able to connect Ikea bulbs to my Hue hub when I still used it. 🤔
I haven’t tried IKEA, but osram plugs and some Danish brand switches work just fine. New stuff gets plugged directly into home assistant though (via a zonoff ZigBee dongle).
Fortunately there are plenty of Zigbee dongles that are compatible with HA, and just as fortunately they will all support Aqara sensors using MQTT with very little effort.
It is not per se “locking out other devices”. More likely, it does only know it’s own devices and how to use them.
