Hello everyone!
I’m new to the Aqara family and I’m honestly amazed. First of all, thank you for providing devices with Matter support — that’s truly invaluable, especially for use with Home Assistant.
I do have a couple of questions though. Until recently I wasn’t really familiar with Aqara, so I started out with Sonoff products instead. Specifically, most of my main lights are connected through Sonoff Wi-Fi switches.
I recently bought the Aqara Panel Hub S1 Plus and it’s absolutely fantastic! Compared to the Sonoff NSPanel it’s on a whole different level — faster, more responsive, and with a much nicer display.
However, I ran into a small issue. Since I don’t plan to replace my Sonoff switches (they were quite an investment), I’d really like to have them integrated into the Aqara app — or even better, directly on the S1 Panel. Unfortunately, that’s not straightforward because the switches are Wi-Fi only and don’t support Matter.
I managed to solve this by adding them to Home Assistant, then exposing them through my Matter bridge so I could link them back into the Aqara ecosystem. It works, but it’s not the most ideal solution — there’s some noticeable delay.
So my question is: is this the only way to make such an integration work, or is there perhaps a simpler method I might have overlooked?
And one more thing: is there any plan to add a web browser or even a Home Assistant integration directly on the S1 Panel in the future?
Thanks a lot in advance! I’m really excited about exploring more of what Aqara has to offer for my smart home.