One project I wanted to undertake over the holidays was to replace an Aqara M2 Hub that I use with an assortment of their sensors around my house.

Thankfully the sensors are all Zigbee, so they’re not tied down to something vendor specific/proprietary.

I decided upon using Home Assistant, for two main reasons: I already had everything I needed, and I wanted to give it another shot.

I had previously tried it and Hubitat out but found them too complex for what I needed at the time. This time around I was just going to use Home Assistant specifically for communication with these sensors and exposing them to HomeKit.

So, I brought out my spare Raspberry Pi 4, a PoE hat, a 32GB microSD card, and ConBee II stick (the Zigbee radio). I imaged the latest version of Home Assistant on to the SD card using balenaEtcher. I then set up Home Assistant, deleted the sensors from within the Aqara app one-by-one, and added them in to Home Assistant using the built-in ZHA (Zigbee Home Automation) integration. I did try installing the deCONZ Add-on, but it seemed to struggle to pair with some of the sensors. I also set up the HomeKit integration in Home Assistant so all of the sensors are back in the Home app. Lastly, I went through recreating the automations within the Home app.

Once that was completed, I pulled my TV off the wall, removed the Aqara M2 Hub and PoE to USB adapter hiding there, and hooked up the Raspberry Pi instead.

In future, I may set up further devices in Home Assistant to allow for more complex automations, etc.

The other tweak I made today was swapping over the magnet my Garage Door Opener uses with its open/close sensor for a much more powerful one. This should hopefully fix a periodic issue I have of the magnet not being close enough when the garage roller door closes slightly askew.

Currently listening: Mekons - “Where Were You”