As a product manager at Aqara, I am reaching out to gather insights and feedback from our valued users. We are keen to understand your experiences and any challenges you may have faced while integrating Aqara products with third-party ecosystems like Apple Home, Amazon Alexa, and Google Home.
Your feedback is crucial for us to enhance our product compatibility and to potentially drive improvements in these third-party integrations. If you have any suggestions or have encountered specific issues, please share them with us. We are committed to working closely with these platforms to ensure a seamless smart home experience for all Aqara users.
It may be a generic comment, but I feel that the product description on the website is better than the manuals (good job Aqara Marketing).
The manuals are mostly basic setup instructions (think M3 hub user manual), but details on its features and uses is mostly missing.
Here is one example applicable to your question. When using the M3 hub in an environment with existing Thread network, it seems to include itself into the existing Thread network rather than establishing a new Thread network. The implications are not fully clear to me.
You will probably get me going on about a official aqara home assistant integration tbh, I think you would have a shock how many of home assistant users have aqara devices running through either HA zigbee or zigbee2mqtt or even homekit devices in home assistant. if there was a integration there would be more including myself that would add all devices to the hub to put in home assistant.
We have optimized the user manual experience. Now, we provide users with an electronic manual, allowing them to scan a QR code to access more detailed product usage guidelines (previously, due to packaging limitations, the printed manual could only include the most basic content).
Existing Thread network is from other ecosystem? Aqara has optimized its Thread network strategy, allowing users to connect to existing Thread networks from other ecosystems (such as Apple or Google) in their homes, enabling a more stable and reliable local connectivity experience.
thats just to add matter devices via hub or aqara devices via ha zigbee software, I was thinking more a full blow integration were every devices enties are exposed (especially when connected to the m3 via zigbee) single presses, long presses etc.
As I mentioned in another post, I’d love to see compatibility with Matter On/Off Light Switches exported as switches, not just sockets.
Another feature I would like to see is a way to add a custom Thread TLV directly to my Aqara M3 or M100. This would allow me to add the M3/M100 to the same Thread network as HomeAssistant or Samsung SmartThings, for example. This would be great for avoiding issues where the Aqara app doesn’t pick up credentials directly from the Apple Keychain, as someone on the Forum mentioned earlier.
And finally, I would like to see a feature to sync status between two devices, so I could use three-way virtual switches, sync a switch with a smart bulb, and more.
When I connect a hub via matter the names of the devices do not transfer, I had to go one by one (100+ devices total) and rename them and put them in a room
This isn’t an Aqara issue; it’s actually a limitation of the Matter protocol.
Matter doesn’t sync custom names or room info between controllers. Only the default device name and basic capabilities are shared.
Hopefully that gets improved in a future Matter update.
I got the Door and Window Sensor P2 on release two years ago, working great in SmartThings except that it never was updated for the promised features like the smart button (which is a Matter 1.0 feature so there was no technical reason to not include it) and it always displays 100% battery life after two years (not complaining but I guess the figure is not right).
The lack of updates and communication was the reason I didn’t get the Motion Sensor P2, I was waiting for the update for sensitivity and unoccupied delay. Looks like the firmware has been released now. However… I can’t be sure if I’ll be able to update it with SmartThings or if I’ll be able to configure those attributes.
Since you’re a Works with SmartThings partner maybe you can persuade them to enable Matter OTA for the device and support for the new features in the stock drivers. I know the workarounds and even create my own custom drivers but, as a user, I prefer if all the standard functionality works without extra tinkering.
Integration of Aqara Matter devices with Samsung SmartThings is terrible to be frank. I have the M3 hub, Camera Hub G3, Doorbell G410, T1 Bulbs, T2 Bulbs, Magic Switch S1E, Panel Switch S100, and several H1 switches and Z1Pro switches and trying to integrate them in SmartThings via my new Samsung TV.
Let me start with what worked great. When connecting my Aqara account with SmartThings, doorbell G410 automatically showed up in SmartThings. M3 Hub will need to be added via the Matter route and most Zigbee devices under M3 Hub will show up in SmartThings fine, including the H1/Z1pro switchs, and the T1 Bulbs, and the E1 Curtain Bots.
And now comes the list of what don’t work.
The Camera Hub G3 does not show up in SmartThings at all. Yes I can add the G3 hub via Matter but that will not support camera functions and will only act as a matter bridge to the zigbee devices under G3 Hub.
None of the panel switches will show up in SmartThings. And this will prevent lights and appliances connected to the panel switches relays to be usable in SmartThings as well.
Cannot add T2 Bulbs to SmartThings via M3 matter border router when T2 Bulbs in Matter connection mode. And when the T2 Bulbs in zigbee connected to M3 Hub, they fail to be visible to SmartThings via M3 matter bridge also.
The new W100 sensor failed to be added to Smartthings via M3 Hub via matter either.
Basically, when my matter devices connected to the M3 Hub, using the Aqara App and generating Matter codes for connection to SmartThings fails at various stages. Mostly at the Registering devices stage in SmartThings.
