Hello Everyone Interested in Aqara FP2 Fall Sensor setups. And thank you to US-EddieDaYankee for his very important post in various forums on this subject. In my case, actually on behalf of my wife, I am creating a Fall Detection Process for my Mother-in-law (MIL) who lives in an apartment 25 minutes from us. She is 100 years old, has a home health aid who spends 8 hours during lunch through dinner a day but she is alone later evenings and at night; Our biggest concern for her well being is that she may fall at night, especially considering she is over 100 years old. The statistics are that someone her age and state of limited mental capacities and frailty, if they have a fall, are most likely to have a one in their own bathroom at night. My wife’s concern is not that a fall would be so great a crisis, but lying crumpled or stuck on a floor for more than two hours is a crisis that will probably put them in a nursing home, if they survive, for the rest of their lives. And it would be a miserable way to die. So for the last four weeks I have been spending most of my retired time in discovering and creating the following system. I asked Perplexity.ai, who has helped along with Google and Gemini with lots of apologies from all but without the help I never would have come this far. I hope someone finds the following usefull, it is a different path from the one US-EddieDaYankee took, but as the easiest for an old man, it the path I ended up taking for now as it works also. I hope my first post on this forum works the first time. Jim Humphreys
Aqara FP2 Fall Detection and FP2 Timed Presence Detection Summary provided by Perplexity.ai:
Below is a forum-ready summary of my current working approach. I am using two separate Aqara FP2 sensors in the same room: one dedicated to timed presence and a second dedicated to fall detection. This separation is the key to making both functions work reliably at the same time.
Current working setup
I have now set up two FP2 sensors in the same room, each with a different job:
-
FP2 #1 — Timed Presence Sensor: This sensor is configured for normal presence/zone detection. It determines whether someone remains in the room or in a defined area for the time period I selected, then triggers my usual presence-based automations.
-
FP2 #2 — Fall Sensor: This sensor is ceiling-mounted and dedicated to Aqara’s Falling Detection mode. When it detects a fall, Aqara sends a fall-alert push notification to my Samsung Galaxy tablet.
This works because the two FP2 units are independent physical sensors. The timed-presence FP2 remains in its normal detection/zone configuration, while the second FP2 is reserved for fall detection. Aqara documents that fall detection historically required a dedicated ceiling-mounted Falling Detection mode, where normal multi-person tracking, zone positioning, and other presence features are unavailable or limited. Using a second FP2 avoids having to choose between dependable timed presence and fall detection in the same room. aqara
The fall-detection FP2 should be treated as an alerting aid, not a medical or emergency-response device. Aqara specifically notes that fall detection can miss certain slow falls and can generate false alerts from rapid non-fall movements. cdn.aqara
Alert path
My working alert chain is:
FP2 Fall Sensor
↓
Aqara Home push notification
↓
Samsung Galaxy tablet
↓
MacroDroid notification trigger
↓
Home Assistant Green webhook
↓
Home Assistant automation
↓
Alexa Media Player
↓
Selected Alexa speakers: volume set + spoken announcement
When the dedicated FP2 detects a fall, the Aqara Home app posts its normal Android push notification to the Samsung Galaxy tablet. MacroDroid watches for that notification and filters for the Aqara application and the appropriate fall-detection notification text.
Once MacroDroid recognizes the fall alert, it sends an HTTP request to a webhook hosted by Home Assistant Green. That webhook triggers a Home Assistant automation. The automation then:
- Sets the volume of my chosen Alexa speakers to the level I want for an overnight emergency.
- Sends my pre-written spoken fall-detection announcement through the Alexa Media Player integration.
- Can target only the Alexa devices that are most likely to wake someone during the middle of the night, rather than announcing throughout the entire house.
Alexa Media Player supports controlling Alexa media-player entities and can be used to set volume before making an announcement. Its announce function plays Alexa’s notification chime and then speaks the specified message; volume can be set by Home Assistant immediately before the announcement. home-assistant
Why two FP2s are needed
A single FP2 has important mode limitations. In the original dedicated Fall Detection mode, the sensor gives priority to detecting a fall, and normal zone positioning and broader presence functions are unavailable. Aqara has introduced newer firmware options that may combine fall detection with limited single-person positioning, but that is not equivalent to running a full timed-presence/zone sensor and a dedicated fall sensor simultaneously. forum.aqara
Using two sensors gives me a cleaner and more dependable design:
| Sensor | Primary role | Placement/mode | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| FP2 #1 | Timed presence and room/zone occupancy | Normal presence/zone configuration | Continues my regular presence automations |
| FP2 #2 | Fall detection | Ceiling-mounted Falling Detection mode | Sends an Aqara fall push alert to the tablet |
In short, the first FP2 handles “is someone still present here?” and the second handles “did Aqara detect a possible fall?” They are not being asked to perform incompatible jobs within one sensor mode.
Home Assistant limitation
The difficult part of this project was that Home Assistant was not able to use the Aqara fall event as a clean, usable fall-detection binary entity or event in my setup.
The Aqara push notification arrives successfully in the Aqara Home app, but the fall result is not exposed to Home Assistant in a form that I could reliably use as a direct on/off fall sensor. In practical terms:
- Aqara detects the possible fall.
- Aqara sends a notification to the tablet.
- Home Assistant does not receive a dependable native fall-detection binary state from that notification path.
- Therefore, I had to make the Android notification itself the event source.
This is why MacroDroid is essential in my setup. It bridges the gap between Aqara’s mobile push notification and Home Assistant’s automation engine. Rather than trying to extract a fall binary from the Aqara integration, MacroDroid recognizes the actual Aqara fall alert that appears on the tablet and relays a webhook event to Home Assistant.
That means the Home Assistant automation is triggered by confirmation that the Aqara fall alert was received on Android—not by an assumed or unavailable native Aqara fall entity.
Why Android works
Android permits an app such as MacroDroid to be granted special Notification Access. With that permission, MacroDroid can monitor incoming notifications from other apps, including Aqara Home, and trigger a macro when the notification matches selected criteria such as:
- The originating app: Aqara Home.
- The notification title or body.
- The specific wording associated with the fall-detection alert.
MacroDroid’s Notification Trigger is specifically designed to trigger when a new notification arrives and can filter by both application and notification text. It requires Android’s Notification Access permission. wiki.macrodroid
On my Samsung Galaxy tablet, I enabled MacroDroid’s required special access. Depending on the MacroDroid functions being used, this can include:
- Notification access: The important permission for reading the Aqara notification and matching its text.
- Accessibility access for MacroDroid, if the macro uses any UI-interaction or other functions that require it.
The critical point is that Notification Access—not ordinary app notification permission—is what lets MacroDroid see and parse the incoming Aqara alert. Android exposes this through a special system settings area, commonly under something similar to Settings → Notifications → Device and app notification access. wiki.macrodroid
Because this permission can expose sensitive notification content, it should be granted only to an app that is trusted and genuinely needed for this purpose.
Why iPhone and iPad do not work
This notification-parsing method is not practical on an iPhone or iPad.
iOS/iPadOS allows Aqara Home to display its own push notifications to the user, but Apple does not provide third-party automation apps with a general system-level mechanism to read, parse, and act on the notification contents of other apps. A third-party iOS automation app cannot simply watch Aqara’s notification stream the way MacroDroid can on Android.
In other words:
- An iPhone or iPad can receive and display the Aqara fall notification.
- But an iOS/iPadOS automation app generally cannot inspect Aqara’s notification text and use it as a trigger for a webhook.
- Apple’s notification and privacy model does not provide the Android-style cross-app Notification Access capability needed for this solution.
Apple’s notification controls are designed around allowing or blocking an individual app’s own notifications, rather than permitting another third-party app to read all notifications posted by other apps. support.apple
For that reason, the Samsung Galaxy tablet is not just a convenient display device in this installation—it is the Android bridge that makes the Aqara notification → MacroDroid → Home Assistant webhook → Alexa announcement chain possible.
Result
At this point, I have a working overnight fall-alert path that does not depend on Home Assistant directly extracting a fall binary from Aqara:
Dedicated ceiling-mounted FP2 detects possible fall
→ Aqara Home sends Android push notification
→ Samsung Galaxy tablet receives it
→ MacroDroid reads the notification
→ MacroDroid calls Home Assistant Green webhook
→ Home Assistant automation sets Alexa volume
→ Alexa Media Player announces the pre-written alert on my selected speakers
This preserves my normal timed-presence automation on the separate FP2 while creating an audible, whole-house—or selected-speaker—overnight alert path for Aqara fall notifications.