You know that feeling… when you’ve left your home and you just can’t remember if you closed the garage door or not? This is especially true for my mom. Half the time she would turn around to check. So I decided to fix this for her by installing a few smart devices in Apple Home with eventually led me to get over 100 Aqara devices that has captured a home BREAK IN, saved our basement from being flooded, and now gives my family a peace of mind when away from our home!
In order for everyone to control all the smart devices in our home I am using Apple home to consolidate all the devices from different manufacturers to allow everyone to control everything as easily as possible instead of having dozens of apps for them to manage.
Break in Event:
We were eating New Year dinner at a friend’s home when I got a notification that a person was detected inside our home from my G2H Pro Camera. At the time I was new to Aqara and haven’t yet gotten to set up the security alarm system so it didn’t trigger the critical alert on my apple devices so didn’t notice anything wrong until we arrived home. I saw paper scattered all over the floor
So I pulled up the camera feed.
He managed to open the windows somehow and wandered over to my desk where my FP2 turned on the
Lighting up the neatly placed
making it super easy for the theif to see as he stole all the money in it.
He then moved over to my mom’s table where he stole all the cash in the wallet that was recently refilled. Luckily he didn’t steal any cards or valuable items. However he saw the G3 Camera and turned it around. (Great for controlling TV with my hand gestures)
Same for the 2nd Floor G3 Camera that was offline the whole time for some reason so nothing was recorded when the thief turned it around.
The thief went out the way he came in as all other doors are locked. I was able to use the FP2’s occupancy data to determine that he was digging around our house for more than 20 minutes (Can’t use camera as he turned all of them around). I was surprised how slow he was going around almost as if he’s shopping for groceries. Anyways, I have since set up the Aqara alarm system.
Basement Flood
I took the infinitive to place a aqara water leak sensor in the machine room in our basement. It paid off big time as it turns out the sewer pipe has clogged and pee pee and poo poo water was leaking into our basement.
All the cameras played a loud alarm as well as sending critical alarm notification to all apple devices in the home.
Porch Pirate
I have placed a G5 outdoor camera on the ground to keep an eye on packages that arrives and goes. I was using Amazon’s package pickup return service and someone was supposed to come pick it up that day. When I checked the camera I was like that isn’t Amazon pickup! Thankfully Amazon still refunded me the money. With the G5 Pro camera I am now able to know the exact fate of packages at our door. (If someone steals the G5 camera they won’t be able to use it due to Anti-Theft Lock).
The G4 doorbell is nice as when pressed it shows up on Apple TV as well as playing a chime on all the homepods, but SUPER ANNOYING with the constant notifications so I just turned it off. I wish Aqara adds milometer wave to it so that it only notifies me if someone is actually on our porch instead of walking across the road. Oh wait! They released the G410 with that exact feature!? Can’t wait to replace my G4 - once it goes on sale on Amazon.
Just moved in to university dorm and already replaced the light switch in my room with the Aqara Zigbee Smart Light Switch (with Neutral,Single Rocker) and it SO FAST AT RESPONDING IN APPLE HOME THAT THE LIGHT CAN’T EVEN KEEP UP.
I was lucky enough to be the first 100 People to use the FP300. I have implemented it in my university dorm’s hallway blowing the minds of my roomates. “Spreading the Aqara love” Now at night when they have to use the washroom they don’t have to be blinded by the bright ceiling lights or touch any light switches!
So far Aqara has been the most fast responding and reliable system I have used despite a few bugs from here to there. You guys provide a unmatched peace of mind to know what’s going on at home. Going with Aqara has been the best decision I have made. I hope I have inspired some of you with some more ideas.
Bonus video of all the lights in action (Thank you thief for not stealing any of my tech gadgets)(I can just activate music mode with one click in Apple shortcuts) [Aqara please make more lighting products as I am forced to go with Govee right now] :
*Love the fact that you can change the dimming duration on the T1 Light strip! (Haven’t seen this feature on any other lighting products yet)
Out of the products that Apple released in the September “Awe Dropping” event the one that I am most excited about is the new iPhone 17 Pro Max. This year the new A19Pro chip has made a significant performance improvement would allow me to open Aqara and Apple Home app faster as well as AI tasks such as Siri should also be faster. The new N1 chip that apple developed should give better connection to wifi and cellular but it doesn’t support the 320mhz channel so speed is capped at 2000mbps. Other than that I am super excited to win the AirPods Pro 3 so that my mom can use the hearing aid feature as she seems to have trouble hearing sometimes. I hope that the Airpods Pro 3 can help her regain her youthful ears.
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Right now I just have a doorbell and a camera, so it’s not really “smart” yet. But I’m planning to level up my home with more devices soon! I also want to try out automation for a better smart experience, it’ll definitely be a bit challenging for me, but also really fun. 
! I just started with 2 and hope to grow that (easiest entry point is lights). Always looking at specs as Canadian winters can go down to -30 Celsius at times. Anything outdoor (yes I want cameras) would need to be rated as such!