Hey everyone,
So I finally made the jump from Apple HomeKit to Home Assistant with my Aqara G4 cam after months of debating — and wow, what a ride. I’m still kinda new to HA (been dabbling for about 3 months), but I figured I’d share how I got it working after a couple late-night battles and way too many cups of coffee.
First off, yes, the G4 cam can work with HA… just not out-of-the-box easy. I originally had it fully set up in HomeKit, and it worked fine there, but I wanted more control and flexibility (read: nerd mode unlocked).
What worked for me:
- I fully removed the G4 from HomeKit first (not just unlink, like full reset).
- Set the cam into pairing mode, then added it via the Aqara app first (you’ll still need that for firmware updates, btw).
- From there, I enabled the RTSP stream and pulled it into HA using the generic camera integration.
- Notifications and motion detection took a bit more tweaking through automations, but once set, it’s WAY more customizable than HomeKit.
Bonus: I also got face detection working with Frigate + Firebase. Took a while, but totally worth it for alerts that actually matter.
Still working out some quirks (lag on live view, occasional motion trigger misses), but it’s running stable and I finally feel like I OWN the data and the setup.
If anyone’s stuck migrating and not sure where to start, happy to help. Also curious — how are y’all balancing Aqara between Apple and HA? Anyone keeping both ecosystems alive at once?
Cheers.