Hi, I have just seen that Amazon have a range of the MI-Home products at very good prices, and that the products use zigbee . So my questions are …
can the Mi-Home products be used with ST - my thinking is maybe but with their hub
If the device support zigbee then why would I need a hub
Can I integrate with ST via IFTTT that I know MI-Home does support
And finally has anyone done this yet and what success /pain have you had ?
I have a reasonable size ST implementation with Hive, Next and Blink all integrated so I am not shy at trying these things but would like to see if there are any stand out gotcha’s
There are two different companies that use the “mi-Home” name: Energie (France) and Xioami (China).
Integration with Energie is quite complex, but can be done. Or you can just use IFTTT, as you mentioned.
Xioami Devices can be individually added but they are not strictly following the same zigbee profile that Smartthings uses (the company Says they are only intended for use with their own hub) so there are 3 potential issues:
they can be really fiddly to pair. Many people report having to try 10 or 12 times for each device
they don’t work well with most repeaters, which can cause them to drop from the network a lot. IKEA Tradfri pocket sockets seem to be the exception, and fortunately those are very inexpensive, £9.99 as of this writing. But getting your network backbone set up right can be, again, fiddly.
at any time SmartThings could push out a hub update which could break the integration because of idiosyncrasies on the Xioami side. This has happened 2 or 3 times in the last two years. If this does happen, you just have to hope things will be ok again in the next update.
There are still people using these because of the price, but be prepared for some tears.
Or you could get their Gateway and just use IFTTT, but as @MinerJason mentions below, that only exposes some features and you have to set up as a China location.
See the FAQ (the topic title is a clickable link)
Also, for the future, be aware that just being “zigbee” is not enough. See that FAQ:
Its a great cloud based service that a lot of products support now to permit integration between platforms without the need to open up their platform and thus maintain security.
I use virtual switches in ST to arm and disarm my blink cameras for example.
If you’re referring to the Xiaomi Mi-home sensors, search the forums here for “xiaomi”. The majority of these sensors do work with SmartThings, but they don’t use a standard zigbee protocol, so some of the functions aren’t able to be fully exposed or utilized. They also can be finicky to get paired, and some people have had issues keeping them connected to their network. There are some repeaters that kick them off the network because their check in period is just longer than the repeater requires. I have over a dozen Xiaomi devices which have been working great for me for over a year. You’ll need to use custom dth’s for all of them.
The newest Xiaomi sensors are using zigbee 3.0, which means integration with SmartThings should be easier and more reliable. The vast majority you find for sale right now however are the older non standard zigbee protocol.
You can use these with the Xiaomi gateway, but integration between the Mi Home gateway and SmartThings will likely be limited. And currently only the China server supports the zigbee devices and gateway, so when you set up the Mi Home app, make sure to set your location as China.
And typically these sensors can be find much cheaper on sites like Gearbest, AliExpress, and Banggood. All of my Xiaomi sensors came from Gearbest.
Thank you that’s very useful information. I didn’t realise there were two different types or the fact that the use of zigbee wasn’t fully standard on the earlier stuff.
Also thanks for the tips on places to buy as my UK shops have been limited to Amazon or Vesternet
