Hey , Share a little project that’s turned into a full-blown obsession.
So I started out with a couple Aqara sensors (motion and temp) and a basic M2 hub. Things were fine controlling via HomeKit, but I wanted more visibility and flexibility. Enter: Home Assistant.
Fast forward a few late nights and many cups of coffee later, I’ve now got a custom HA dashboard showing temperature trends, motion history, and even some cheeky automations like flashing lights when the front door opens after 2am (thanks for the mini heart attacks, Aqara).
Things I love:
- Local control (no waiting on cloud lag)
- Mixing and matching devices from different brands
- That sweet, sweet real-time dashboard with graphs you actually care about
Not everything was plug-and-play though. Zigbee2MQTT needed a bit of tinkering, and I may or may not have renamed the same temp sensor like…6 times.
Anyone else deep into the Aqara + HA rabbit hole? Would love to see your setups or hear what widgets/automations you’ve made. Thinking of tossing a wall-mounted tablet into the mix next. Dangerous idea?
Let’s trade ideas!
Your passion for local control, real-time dashboards, and creative automations (like those spicy 2am door alerts) is seriously inspiring. The mix of Aqara’s reliability with HA’s flexibility is a match made in smart home heaven—especially with Zigbee2MQTT unlocking even more potential (though we feel you on the sensor-rename struggles 
).