So I’ve been diving in on home automation for the last few months having always enjoyed howntech can make life smoother and figured I’d share my experience of using Aqara Matter and integrating it to my home automation.
Without giving my full setup (because security) here’s a glance at what I have:
Aqara FP2 in my living room
Aqara Door sensors on my windows and doors
Some Tapo Cameras
Hue lights (I know I bought them when I only had a hue system)
A few smart plugs
The Star of the show is the FP2.
MmWave presence sensing in my open plan living room/kitchen/Office is a game changer.
Lighting is all controlled via the locations set in AwaraHome.
For example, in the kitchen area:
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Am I stood in the kitchen area? - Turn on the hue strip on top of the cupboards I use as an upright.
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Am I stood specifically Infront of the cooker? - Turn on the cooker hood lighting
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Have I left the area mentioned above? - home assistant dims the lights in that area over 4 seconds.
Then there is when I’m working from home, Aqara tracks my presence and home assistant checks how long it sees me in the designated office area I set in the home app. If I’m there for more then 30 minutes there’s a good chance I’m working and a new routine starts.
- Turn off anything I left on in the bedroom (the ADHD is strong with this one)
- Run a timer that tells me to take a break at the 2 hour via my home speaker
- Activate my Bias Lighting to save my eyes
- put my phone into Do not disturb (combining Tasker, Home assistant and Aqarabfor this)
And then there’s the end of the day when I sleepily drag myself from the couch to bed. Awards communicates that I’ve gone to bed to my home assistant because 2) it’s late 2) I passed through the exit of the room 3) I haven’t been around for 30 minutes. When it sees that signal all the lighting I may have overridden, the TV and the non essential electrics are turned off automatically.
The cost savings in electricity alone on all of these little integrations have been fantastic but it doesn’t stop there!!!
Aqara also forms part of my home security system as i have integrated it to be an additional layer of sensors. The door sensors obviously connect but not all my doors get closed all the time (the hallway door for.example) so the FP2 provides a redundancy.
And finally, perhaps my favourite odd addition is that through matter, my home assistant can see the temperature sensor that’s inside some of the door sensors. In the summer, my house gets Hot! And I have metal window frames. By comparing the sensors temperature that’s connected to the metal frame Vs another sensor elsewhere in the home, if the delta is more than 1.5°C the system will automatically close my blinds to prevent the house getting overheated. This has been an absolute godsend over the extraordinary heat we’ve had this last few months
So in short… Thankyou Aqara for providing truly excellent device sensors and committing to open standards. My smartphone would be dumb without you