has anyone had any luck paring an Aqara hub to their Home Assistant network? HA keeps asking me to install more third party hardware despite the AH being physically connected to it. Is there a protocol or feature i need to enable on my end?
No help at all but will wait for an answer as well 
Do you have HomeKit? A workaround to get items into HK & HA is the HK->HA integration - HomeKit Device - Home Assistant
I got it to work for Zigbee so YMMV for Matter / Thread
I don’t have an Aqara hub myself, but I’d expect it needs to be connected to the same network as your Home Assistant—via your router, switch, or Wi-Fi. If it’s physically plugged directly into your HA device, that likely won’t work. Both need to get an IP from your DHCP server to communicate properly.