Just went through the process of moving my Aqara G4 camera over to Home Assistant, and man, it was smoother than I expected—but only after a couple of hiccups. Thought I’d drop some tips here in case anyone else is thinking of doing the same.
First off, quick backstory: I’m a smart home nerd running HA on a Pi 4 with everything from Zigbee lights to Matter gear. Been diving deeper into local setups recently, so moving the G4 off HomeKit/Secure Video and into HA was the next logical step.
Biggest tip? Don’t skip firmware updates. I thought I was good, but HA couldn’t discover the stream. Turns out the G4 needed the latest update to ensure RTSP access actually works properly. Once that was sorted, boom—motion and video started flowing perfectly.
Bonus trick: if you’re using Frigate or something similar, set the G4 to low bitrate in the Aqara app before ditching HomeKit. Makes a big difference on CPU usage in HA.
Oh and yeah—don’t forget to unbind it cleanly from Aqara app/HomeKit before adding to HA. If not, you might get stuck in “already paired” purgatory.
Anyone else here tried this? Got any cool automations tied to G4 in HA? I’m using it to trigger porch lights and a “who’s at the door” TTS notification over my Google hubs. Super fun.
Hit me with other ideas or setups if you’ve taken the G4 outside of the Aqara/Apple ecosystem!