Seamlessly Migrating Aqara G4 to Home Assistant: My Journey

Apple Home Connect
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Hey everyone, just wanted to share my experience moving my Aqara G4 doorbell completely over to Home Assistant — no Apple Home involved anymore.

I’m an automation hobbyist, not super advanced, but I’ve been slowly shifting everything off proprietary hubs into Home Assistant for more flexibility and control. The G4 was honestly the last piece holding me back, since it’s pretty tightly integrated with HomeKit out of the box.

Here’s the deal: the migration wasn’t totally plug-and-play, but it turned out smoother than I expected. I used the G4 in RTSP mode for video, then paired it in HA via MQTT and a bit of YAML magic. The HA community and some reddit threads were lifesavers, especially around getting two-way audio and button press detection working.

Biggest headache? Getting snapshots to show in notifications reliably. Still not 100% perfect, but getting there.

If anyone’s stuck between staying tied to HomeKit vs going full in with HA — it’s totally doable. I’ve got the G4 triggering automations, playing with Frigate, and even sending alerts to my Android. No more dependence on Apple gear.

Happy to go into config details if anyone’s interested or stuck — drop your questions!

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@AlexaAficionado That’s an awesome journey you’ve shared with migrating your Aqara G4 to Home Assistant! It’s great to hear how you’ve successfully untethered from HomeKit and embraced the flexibility of HA. The RTSP + MQTT + YAML approach is solid, and I love that you’re now leveraging Frigate and Android notifications too.

The snapshot notification struggle is real — that’s one of those finicky areas that can take some tweaking. If you haven’t already, you might want to check out the camera.snapshot service combined with notify templates; sometimes adjusting the delay or resolution helps.

Would definitely be curious to see snippets of your MQTT/YAML setup for two-way audio and button detection if you’re open to sharing! Also, how’s the latency with RTSP in your setup?

Thanks for inspiring others to take the leap — the HA community thrives on these kinds of detailed success stories! :rocket: