How do I backup my system?
I have over 50 child devices and over a 100 automations and 4 hubs
I can’t find any backup/ restore functionality?
Surely there must be a backup function or is Aqara more a fun hobby system?
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I’d love to see a backup facility. But as these are stored in the cloud I guess they are backed up anyway.
I’d also like to see or have the ability to migrate devices between hubs, there is some functionality but its limited and didn’t go well for me when I migrated devices from an M hub to an M3.
So I’d like to see a proper migration tool between any type of Aqara Zigbee Hub
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It seems like there’s no real backup if your main hub for some reason is reset, broken or damaged there’s no backup plan. Everything is lost. There’s no way to backup from the cloud or even have another hub take over or have a back up hub you can replace the broken hub with
If your entire home or just some parts of your home, are dependent on their Aqara system, you have a total breakdown
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Just to clarify - these are two different scenarios. If you reset the device and are using Aqara’s app connected to the cloud, when you re-pair it, it should retain the previous settings as long as the device record was not deleted from the app.
If it’s damaged, you are mostly right. Aqara hubs do work in clusters with self-healing so that one can take over for automations, so that you won’t lose those, however, child device pairing is not shared between the hubs automatically.
They also have a hub migration feature, where you can move the settings of one hub to another.
All in all, some kind of manual backup and restore feature might be benefical. But you should at least be aware of the existing features even if they don’t fit the scenarios you may thinking through 100%.
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I use the M3 Hub connected to Home Assistant with the Homekit intergration.
My automations run in Home Assistant it automatically backs up daily. If my M3 hub does go down I would have to reinstall all devices however my automations would slill be in place. I know this is not the ultimate solution but until we come up with something better this is a good backup for the automations. The reason I like the M3 hub is it is so easy to install the Aqara devices with this hub, the network the M3 Hub builds is solid and it just works. Hopefully backup is coming for the M3 hub that would be so nice!
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I understand that have migration is a possibility when you would actually use it. I don’t know. I can’t see the used case for this. You could switch your old M3 hub for new M3 hub you can’t make a clone it will reset the old one
And for the hub being able to restore itself after reset good luck with that, I dare you to press 10 times on the button behind your M3 
Yes, you’re so right. It would be nice to have a back up. My plan is to control my lights and my heating in my house. These are normally installation that would be nice to have reliable working for years on end.
Something like Time Machine on Apple computers would be nice. A backup from a local NAS or HDD that you could migrate to a new Hub if upgrading or replacing a Hub that has failed for some reason. The option when you setup the new hub to import from a Time Machine type backup would put Aqara yet another step ahead of all other Smart Home platforms.
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No question that is overdue.
Two things we should always do, unplug the internet and see what still works and have a plan for a system failure that you can recover from easily.
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Agree 100% on checking your local functions with the internet disconnected.
Aqara and Home Assistant are strong in this area. The overall cloud dependency for these companies is near zero, with the exception of voice assistants. My Smart home is built to work with or without internet. If you use an API to integrate a product it will go down when you unplug the internet. I have to have the spouse approval on all products she has zero tolerance for a light, fan, thermostat not working if the internet is down. I did swich my internet to 5G and took out the possibility of a tree taking out my internet during a storm; 3 years now and I have not looked back. We need backup on everything. One is none two is one.
In some respects, backups are irrelevant because when an automation is created it is automatically backed up.
Even if you delete a hub or remove all devices, your automations remain. However, they obviously cannot execute if the devices they reference no longer exist.
What I would like to see is a feature that allows the connected devices from a failed hub to be restored to a new hub. In the event of a hub failure, having the ability to migrate those devices would be an awesome facility.
To minimise disruption, I have set up my home with hubs in most large rooms. This prevents me from having to pair hundreds of devices again should a hub fail (which would be the case if you were running only one or two hubs).
Most of my hubs currently manage between 10 and 40 devices:
- Office – M100 (1)
- Office – M2 (20)
- Ground Floor – E1 (19)
- Ground Floor Toilet – M100 (8)
- Utility Room – M100 (9)
- Kitchen – M2 (37)
- Living Room – M3 (22)
- Bedroom 1 – M2 (37)
- Bedroom 2 – M2 (12)
- Bedroom 3 – M2 (12)
- Bedroom 4 – M3 (22)
- Family Bathroom – E1 (13)
In the past, I ran my smart home using Home Assistant with a single coordinator. While the system was relatively small it worked fine, but as it grew larger I began experiencing constant issues. That’s why I eventually moved to a multi-hub configuration.
I still use Home Assistant but only from the perspective of exposing devices to voice assistants oh and a nice wall board. I have zero automations in Home Assistant, it can crash and everything still works in my smart home.
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there are some iOS apps that support HomeKit backups, that would be my only guess for something like this