Xiaomi Smart Home

I've ordered the Hub, 2 X Door/ Window Sensors & 2 x Button for a total of €55. I'll be the guinea pig for the forum I guess

I'll report back on my experience

So I finally took deliver of the Xiaomi gear yesterday and promptly got started setting everything up.

One mistake i made was setting the Xiaomi app to US instead of Mainland China. It doesnt work unless the location is set to Mainland China.

Once I got the hub plugged in and paired I added one of the door/window sensors to the hub. These things are *tiny*. I've never seen a door sensor so small. Here is a picture vs my Aeotec Z-Wave door sensor (€50) for comparison:

Once I got that setup and working with the Xiaomi Hub I decided to start trying to link it into Home Assistant. I did so using this custom component .
It was a remarkably painless process and I was able to set up a simple light on/light off automation in no time.

I also got 2 of the buttons and set up one of them. You can assign actions to single, double & long press. Again setup was very simple and the Home Assistant integration is first class. I'm still trying to figure out the best use-case for these at the moment so I'm not actively using them.
Remarks:

• This gear is serious value for money. I paid €6 for a door & window sensor and €6 for a button!
• The range on the Xiaomi hub is very good. I have mine buried in my network cabinet in my attic and it works flawlessly anywhere downstairs. I suspect it may be amplified by the hue bulbs I have everywhere as they both use ZigBee & hue bulbs act as repeaters although I'm not sure if the hue bulbs only repeat the signal from their own bridge or if they'll repeat any ZigBee signal.
• The response time is super fast. Much faster then the Z-Wave door sensor I have. I have the door sensor on my closet so the light turns on when you open it and off when you close it and it's so quick I cannot see the light turn on at all.

• How are you finding the gateway when it's plugged in to the socket? Is it protruding a good but with the adaptor?

  Yes it does protrude quite a bit with the adapter on it & the hub itself is bulky enough. It's not an issue for me as I have it buried in a cabinet but may be an issue depending on where you are installing it

Overall I'm very happy with my purchase. It's great to finally stumble across something that's decent quality and cheap in the HA world!
Next on the list is an Aqara Wall Switch!

Any questions just shout!

bk wrote: »

Cool, a few questions:

- Is the window/door sensor a magnetic open/close only sensor or does it also have vibration sensor (someone breaking a window)?

- Is the wall switch wired into an existing wall switch (replacing it)?

If yes, then I wonder if it could be used with Hue lights? I'd be interested to see how you get on with this.

- The door/windows sensor is magnetic so doesn't detect vibration (as far as i'm aware)

-They come in two flavors, a wireless version which is battery powered and acts like a hue dimmer switch of sorts. The second one actually replaces the physical switch and provides local control of the light. The 2 paddle version is interesting as you can control on/off from one paddle & then set a scene using the other paddle. I'm going to get one of these to control a switch that controls a hue light. I'll still have the issue of the light coming on 100% brightness when power is restored.

Another option is to use the wireless version and hardwire the light to always be on. The switch (86mm x 86mm) looks like it will cover the opening created by a irish/uk switch (85mm x 85mm) unlike the hue dimmer.

EDIT: I found this guide for modifying the button to convert it to a wall switch. The idea being you hardwire the light to be always live and control the hue bulb via the local switch. I gave it a go and it seems to work great on a momentary switch i had lying around. Just need to solder it on and install, but i'll report back on how it goes

eamonnq wrote: »

Not just available on Gearbest ( I really don't like Gearbest!! ) :P

That's fair enough. I generally found gearbest to be cheapest and have never had any hassle with delivery etc.

I'm thinking of the window/door sensors because our house alarm has no window sensors so these would be a nice addition.

If the sensor connection is broken do you get a notification through the app?

You do need the hub for all these sensors to work.
Yes you can use the Mi Home app to send you a notification if any of the sensors are triggered.
It does also have an in-built alarm system that you can arm like a traditional alarm (away,home etc) however i don't use the mi home app as i have all the sensors connected into Home Assistant

Ok so a bit of an update:
I took delivery of a couple of the Aqara Wireless switches and also 1 of the wired. They both work over ZigBee.
My main use case for the Wireless ones was to replace the existing wall switch where the switch controls a hue bulb. I would hard-wire the light to always be on and replace it with this so you can locally control the light without cutting power.

These lights fit Irish/UK switch sizes perfectly.It's not obvious with the wireless version but you can drill out 2 holes in the backing plate and screw it into the backbox, and again these all line up perfectly with our back boxes, see the photos below of my install
Here you can see the location of the 2 holes i drilled


Mounted up on wall


Front plate attached


The wireless switches responsiveness is on-par with a Hue Dimmer.

The wired version i installed in my kitchen to control two spot bars. It can control 2 loads (dual paddle) and doesn't require a neutral.
However i wired it so one paddle toggles both spot bars and the other toggles the under cabinet hue strips(wirelessly)
The wired version offers serious value for money, this replaces a €50 z-wave dimmer switch as i get more functionality out of it.

However, it's not all sunshine & roses . I have noticed drop signals from the wireless switches - I would say 1 time in 20 you would press the button and the lights would not respond and from looking at the logs the signal never made it back to the hub.
It's not a major issue for us at the moment however it is something I want to iron out. I should note where I have installed these switches is a fair distance from the Xiaomi hub which lives in a network cabinet in my attic.
I'm going to install a wireless switch upstairs and will be interested to see if that suffers from the same issue.
I have noticed the same issue with my Hue Dimmer switches but not as frequent. Trying out different zigbee channels might help and is an avenue of investigation i can go down

bk wrote: »

How do you have these switches controlling the Hue lights? I assume they aren't talking straight to the Hue bridge?

No they are talking to Home Assistant which is then controlling the Hue lights

However, it's not all sunshine & roses . I have noticed drop signals from the wireless switches

Just an update on this. I moved my hub out of the attic and into an upstairs bedroom. This has completely resolved all issues I had with the switches

bittihuduga wrote: »

are you connected to singapore server or china server?

Not sure, when i set it up originally I selected Mainland China.
As I'm using Home Assistant all the traffic is local on my network. I just use theMi Home app to add new devices

bittihuduga wrote: »

is it possible to share sample code for yeelights?
I am struggling to connect homeassistant with yeelights

sure is my HASS config

light:
- platform: yeelight
devices:
192.168.1.125:
name: Vanity