Hey , just thought I’d share a bit of my journey moving from a complete smart home rookie to someone who’s now running multiple Aqara G4 cams fully integrated with Home Assistant.
I started off totally clueless. Got the G4 'cause it looked sleek and promised local storage, but I had no idea how to even get it talking to HA. At first, it was just sitting on my wall doing its own thing through the Aqara app. Meh.
Then I stumbled into this rabbit hole of Home Assistant and, man, game-changer. Took some tinkering (and some screaming at YAML), but once I got RTSP streams sorted and threw Frigate into the mix—chef’s kiss. Now I’ve got person detection, zones, automation triggers… the works. My porch light turns on when someone’s at the door, I get alerts only if it’s a person (not waving trees), and best part? No subscriptions.
If you’re staring at your G4 wondering what else it can do—integrate that baby with HA. It’s work, but it’s so worth it. Shout if you want help figuring it out, happy to walk you through what I learned the hard way!