Aqara Hub integration

Hi Guys,

I am new to smarthings, my house is fully homekit right now, but I bought a samsung family hub and I would like to manage from its screen most of my appliances. I was able to connect already the philips hue and the somfy blinds, but i am having issues trying to add my aqara stuff (mostly light switch). What i found around is that it is possible to do it with handlers, but my concern is that since it looks like it goes directly to the switch, not the aqara hub, when I synchronize the lights with my aeotec hub they will loose my homekit connection.

Is there a way that i can turn visible all of my homekit stuff also in smarthings (not the war around with homebridge) or can I at least in some maner also connect smartthings to my aqara hub to get visible all of the aqara stuff?

Thanks

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At the present time you cannot bring devices connected to an Aqara hub into your SmartThings account.

AUGUST 2022 OPTIONS

If you are willing to go through a lot of work, or if you only have one or two devices you want to bring over, you can use either IFTTT or Alexa routines (not SmartThings routines) as an intermediary and get some partial integration that way.

For this method you create a virtual device in SmartThings to act as a proxy for each Aqara device you want to see in your SmartThings app.

Now you create multiple rules in the intermediary.

For example, if this is a simple on/off switch, you create 4 rules.

A) If aqara turns the switch on, have the intermediary turn on the SmartThings virtual switch that is acting as a proxy.

B) If aqara turns the switch off, have the intermediary turn off the SmartThings virtual switch that is acting as a proxy.

C) If SmartThings turns the virtual switch on, have the intermediary turn on the Aqara switch.

D) If SmartThings turns the virtual switch off, have the intermediary turn off the Aqara switch.

As you can see, this is a lot of work to set up, but it does keep the two systems in sync. However, it may not be able to reflect all features of the device. This method works fine for a simple on/off switch, but it won’t work for a dimmer.

For devices with more complex features you may be able to use some combination of scenes and virtual devices, but it probably won’t be very satisfactory.

IFTTT options:

Alexa routines:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=202200080

FOR THE FUTURE: MATTER IS COMING

if you can wait about 8 months, the good news is that the home automation industry understands how frustrating this is, and a new standard, MATTER, is coming which is intended to make it much easier to use devices from different companies, even ones connected to different hubs, in the same app. All the big companies are on board with this at least partially, including Apple, Aqara, and Samsung.

So once Matter is released, now scheduled for late this fall, and each individual company has implemented its support for Matter, it should works like the following. No virtual devices, no special setup. Yay! :sunglasses:

The SmartThings app will be able to add the Aqara hub as a “matter bridge” and many of the aqara devices will then show up in the ST app. Pretty much the same way Aqara now works with HomeKit. From your description, this may be all you need. This will work because Aqara has announced that its platform will have two way integration with Matter. It can bring Matter devices easily into its app AND it will be able to add some of its hub models to other platforms’ apps. And this won’t change your existing Aqara/HomeKit integration, it will still work fine. :tada:

Unfortunately, as of this writing SmartThings has only decided to go for a one way integration with Matter. It will be able to bring other companies’ Matter compliant devices into the SmartThings app. But you will NOT be able to add a SmartThings hub to another company’s app. So it still won’t show up in Apple’s HomeKit app or the Aqara app. :disappointed_relieved:

Still, “half a loaf is better than none,” and it may well be that Matter will bring you everything you need, since if everything goes as planned you will then be able to easily add the Aqara hub to the SmartThings app, and many of its devices will come along with it.

But we will just have to be patient and see what actually gets delivered by the various companies over the next year or so.

Discussion thread about SmartThings and Matter:

Matter - smart home connectivity standard (formerly Project CHIP)

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Why do you want to use together Aqara and ST and Homekit at the first place. It will create 2 or 3 separated networks and data will go via clouds and be out unstable most of the time.

As previously mentioned it would not play nicely until Matter or even after.

The Homebridge thing works okayish for me , statuses and notifications are not working , but Siri actions and dashboard works well enough.

Hi Guys, Thanks for the fast reply. I will probably wait for matter.

Regarding using ST and Homekit, as aqara is connected to my homekit, is simple. All of my house is within homekit, but my new fridge (Samsung Family HUB) only has ST, so to control the things from the fridge (my wifi is not a fan of siri) I would need also to have ST “integrated” with aqara (at least). If you know a way of having my homekit dashboard on my family hub, would solve it :slight_smile:

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interesting, i thought it works only on the promo videos :slight_smile:

An iPad with Craigslist would be great as a dashboard. Definitely save you a lot of time and maybe even money

:slight_smile: We have iPad and work perfect…but it is not placed where the fridge is.

Andrew Me via SmartThings Community <notifications@smartthings.discoursemail.com> escreveu no dia quarta, 3/08/2022 Ă (s) 11:58:

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Now in May2023 all what we hoped for seems not to work yet… or maybe it’s just me. I’m trying to do exactly what you described… see in the smarthings app all the devices connected to Aqara to a matter bridge connection… but in my case Smarthings seems to fail the procedure to connect the bridge.

Please avoid comments on why I would need it… Aqara sensors are very unstable while connected directly to Smarthings hub (at least mine are) so having also an Aqara bridge was my idea to fix the issue…

Does anyone have suggestions?

SmartThings does not yet support adding ANY incoming Matter bridge of any brand. :disappointed_relieved:

They said they are going to, but they haven’t said when.

@Automated_House

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I was successfully able to bind the Aqara M2 hub with the Smarthings v3 hub. The single Aqara U100 lock connected to the M2 hub is now seen by SmartThings and correctly reports lock/unlocked status. However, i am not able to control the U100 from SmartThings (i.e. can not change lock/unlock state). Is this expected behavior?

SmartThings hasn’t officially turned on the import of matter bridges yet, so basically everything is still in a transition phase, not yet fully functional. You’ve actually gotten farther than anyone else I’ve heard of so far, so it sounds like they are making progress. But it’s not yet fully working.

You can go ahead and report it to support if you want, but they may not be familiar with what’s going on. :thinking:

@Automated_House @orangebucket

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thanks! I do see the the SmartThings app (Android v1.8.01.22) officially supports adding new Matter devices using either QR code or Setup code. I used the latter (Setup code) to add the Aqara M2 hub into SmartThings hub.

Yes, but “supports Matter devices” is not the same as “supports importing nonMatter devices via a Matter Bridge”. Adding the aqara hub is adding a Matter device. Accessing any of the other devices attached to that hub is “importing nonMatter devices via a matter bridge.“ I know it’s confusing, but it’s two different things. :thinking:

I tried the same thing with my v.2 hub and while I could pair the hub via Matter the lock did not show up in Smartthings.

Aqara water sensors are royally bad. Thanks to Amazon return policies returned 7 of them just now. They are so freaking weak that it literally needs to be right next to the hub to function. Otherwise within 2 days goes offline.

How many wired Zigbee devices (repeaters) do you have on your network?
I have never had a problem with my water sensors, although sometimes they seemed to be disabled, the water leak notification comes immediately.

I have over 50 Zigbee devices spread all over (none of them Aquara).

I am not taking a risk here with the assumption it’ll work if there’s a water leak. Just too risky.

Yep it may be that it’s showing disabled in the app or Web UI but if water’s detected might report but these are safety devices and should operate the way it’s meant to be. That’s my 1st. point.

Next - I moved 2 of these which are showing disabled into a different location where I had 1 more of these and bingo, post re-pair stayed connected for about 1 week with zero problems. It makes me realize their ability to retain/find/join/operate in the Zigbee mesh is the issue. In trying to preserve battery power (they advertise as 2 yr+ battery power) sacrificed is the safety and soundness factor.
Your opinion might vary but in my case it’s too bad a design coupled with too huge a risk.

You get what you’re paying for. AFAIK none of the Aqara leak sensors are certified to work with 3rd party devices, and you don’t have any Aqara repeaters probably that’s the reason for the observable behavior.

At least some of their models are certified to zigbee 3.0

That said, multiple community members have reported that they only work well with some third-party repeaters.

The hubitat community has been keeping a detailed list of what works and what doesn’t:

Xiaomi & Aqara Devices - Pairing & Keeping them connected - Devices - Hubitat

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Correct and which is why returned them. These are sales pitch with Zigbee 3.0 and what not so technically should work. The mere fact that they demand a repeater proves my point of these being extremely weak.