Has anyone replaced Home Assistant with Aqara?
Can the M3 pair non Aqara and ZWave devices, or do I still need Home Assistant with the Aqara Integration?
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@detrie The Aqara M3 supports integrating Aqara Zigbee devices and Matter devices, but it does not directly support Z-Wave devices. Home Assistant (HA) devices can be connected to the Aqara M3 via the Matter Bridge feature in HA.
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The Aqara M3 doesn’t support Z-Wave, not sure if it’s able to pair non-Aqara Zigbee devices, but mostly unlikely in general. But it can work with Matter over Thread and Matter over Wi-Fi devices from other brands.
In my case (and I’m quite sure many people did), I replaced Aqara (app) with Home Assistant since Home Assistant gives you a lot more flexibility and possibilities. The Aqara app only serves me as a gateway to tweak some advanced settings of Aqara’s devices that aren’t adjustable via Home Assistant.
If your goal is to make all kinds of devices from all brands work together, Home Assistant is still needed. Connect your M3 hub to Home Assistant via Matter integration or HomeKit Device integration. Non-aqara Zigbee can be connected to Home Assistant via its brand’s Zigbee hub or you can grab some universal Zigbee dongles (like Sonoff or SMLight’s ones). I’m not sure about the Z-Wave stuff, but there seems to be some interesting movement from Home Assistant recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-pUkM6XIuA .
This is a very important topic, especially with the increasing adoption of Matter. I’ve found that a robust mesh Wi-Fi system with good mDNS support is crucial for a stable Matter network. Many consumer routers struggle with mDNS, leading to device discovery issues. I personally use a Unifi Dream Machine Pro with Unifi APs, and it has been rock solid for all my Matter and HomeKit devices. It allows for fine-grained control over network settings, including mDNS and IPv6, which are essential for Matter. What are your thoughts on dedicated IoT VLANs for Matter devices?