Hi all,
I’m quite new to using home automation and planning to have h2 switches throughout the apartment.
Context: I only want to use HomeKit as much as possible and not have to use the aqara app. I only have two wire connected. No neutral wire. I heard I can set everything up via zigbee and migrate to Apple home.
Use case:
-
all h2 switches control combo of dumb and smart lights. Don’t need anything to fancy in terms of button presses.
-
For bedroom it’ll have a relay to turn on and off the bedroom. Second and third button to adjust the brightness (smart lights in bedrooms and study) last button to rotate between scenes. Eg high brightness etc.
-
For the four button switch do all relays need to be connected? My living room only has one power source for the light but would like a rail light. Was thinking first button turn on the first half of rail lights and second button turns on the second half of the rail lights. Third button is the relay
Concerns: I’m concerned about m3 hub not responding. I want to do more automations but my first priority is 99% reliability. What should I do?
Yes, the M3 can expose all your Zigbee devices to Apple Home (via HomeKit or Matter integration, you can choose either).
In my experience, this hub is very reliable in terms of device control. I haven’t had a day when the hub was not responding when I tried to control my smart devices. There have been a few moments when the automation were late (not triggered immediately), but after a while, it started working normally (I didn’t need to do anything to fix it).
All H2 switches can be installed without neutral.
The switch button can work in two ways - it can either directly control the switch or work in decoupled mode.
When a button of the switch directly controls the switch, it doesn’t even need the hub to work. The click is just handled by the smart switch internals and it works the same as a dumb switch. You can change the button to decoupled mode - in this mode, the button stops controlling the switch and works as a trigger for automations and it needs the hub to work.
You don’t need to use all channels in the switch. You can reuse the unused buttons in decoupled mode as a trigger for automations.
Btw the 2-button version (EU) just needs 1 button to control the physical switch (1 channel), the 4 button version needs only 2 buttons to control the 2 channels. So if you install the 4 button version (EU) in your case, you get 3 programmable buttons + 1 button that controls the light
5 Likes
You can do all of your automations in Apple Home if you wish and, normally, I suggest using a single place to do automations. The Buttons from the H2 will appear in Apple Home if you use decoupled mode, which is what you’ll do for smart lights.
However, my experience of using Apple Home is that if you have to go into Shortcuts, you’ll get about a 2 sec delay whilst (I think) it fires up shortcuts. The more you can do inside normal Apple Home Automations the better… so here you’ll need a 3rd party app which will give you more flexibility.
Alternatively, though, I am using the Aqara automations for this particular use case as it is much quicker. so I have Matter lights being controlled by the H2 and it is near instantaneous in response.
Also, Aqara has a on/off action which means if the light is on, it turns off, and vice vera. You’d have to code that in Apple Home.
Here’s my blog post: Using an Aqara H2 EU Switch to control Smart Lights
3 Likes
For simple automation, i think that aqara do much better,
99.9% my automation done in Aqara application
after a week of getting appliances I have my switches. I think the key part I want to use it for is to have off / on internal relays and the second button (the non relay one) to cycle through scenes like how hue does it. Would it be possible?
A side note do you have separate vlan in your network? I’m planning a simple unifi network and was wondering if I needed a separate iot vlan for the m3 hub / Apple TV etc
I wanted to ask if pairing like 9 switches to the m3 difficult. I have the electrician to install it but I won’t be able to move the m3 hub closer.
Also if you have any networking learnings that’ll be good!
It’s really easy. You just open the app, click plus → Add accessory and follow instructions on the screen.
The switches are probably already in the pairing mode (new switches go into pairing mode immediately after powering). If they aren’t, the instructions on the screen will tell you how to enter pairing mode
You will be offered an option of choosing Thread firmware (default) or Zigbee. Personally I prefer Zigbee (it offers more custom settings), but you can choose Thread if you want. But then - they won’t be automatically added to HomeKit, so you probably want Zigbee.
Pair switches closest to the M3 first. All Zigbee devices form a network and devices with neurral (like switches or smart plugs) work as Zigbee network extenders. So it won’t matter if some switches are further from the M3 - they will have a great signal because other switches will extend the network
2 Likes