Okay, so here’s my deal—I love smart home gear, but I’m an Android guy all the way. No iPhone, no iPad, nada. I thought Aqara would be off-limits since everything screams “HomeKit this, HomeKit that,” but turns out, you can get pretty far without entering the Apple walled garden.
So after way too many hours on Reddit and playing around with my setup, I figured I’d share how I got pretty much all my Aqara stuff doing its thing without touching an Apple device.
First of all—Home Assistant. Lifesaver. Took a bit to wrap my head around it (I’m more of a tech hobbyist than a full-on genius), but once I got it running on a Pi and added the HomeKit Controller integration, BOOM. My Aqara sensors, switches, even my G4 video doorbell started showing up. No crazy workarounds, it just… worked.
The wild part? Even devices that were meant to be HomeKit-only got picked up. I didn’t need an iCloud account or any Apple app. Just had to make sure the firmware was up to date (used a friend’s iPhone once for that). After that—you’re good.
It’s not perfect. Some advanced config options are definitely harder without Apple gear. But if your goal is automations, notifications, maybe a sweet dashboard to flex your setup—totally doable.
Anyone else out here living the Apple-free Aqara life? Would love to hear your setups or if I missed any clever tricks. Let’s swap notes.