Help needed with HUB buying
I am a big home automation fan, but fairly new and I do not have anyone in my direct contacts who is familiar with this, please help!
I have a Aqara E1 curtain driver and a E1 hub, as I got it gifted. But hubs are new for me, what hub would you recommend for presence sensors and why?
Also I have lamps from different brands, lsc, hue, Calex, ikea, all running on WiFi and I control it with Home Assistant. Might be good to know.
Thanks for any recommendations!
I run two here. An M3 in the living room and kitchen, handling an FP2, an FP300 and an Aqara plug, and an M200 in the study with an FP300 and a T1 module. Both have been reliable.
The M3 is the one I would recommend if you want a single central hub. It is wired, has ethernet, and covers Zigbee, Thread and Matter, so it takes anything you are likely to add later. The M200 is the cheaper way in and does the job just as well for a smaller group of devices, which is exactly why I put it in the study rather than running everything back to the M3.
Worth knowing before you buy: the FP2 is Wi-Fi and needs no hub at all, so if that is the sensor you are after, you can start without one. The FP300 is the one that needs Thread or Zigbee, and that is where the E1 stops being useful.
With Home Assistant in the picture, either hub exports fine over Matter. My own experience is that the presence automations run better when they live on the hub itself and only the result goes out to the rest of the system, since that keeps them local and fast.