Hi Everyone,
I need an Xiaomi expert. I want to deck my house out with some smart sensors etc.
Xiaomi seems to be the best value for money.
However I can't work out all the different branding and products
Zigbee, Mija, Aqara and Mi?
Also difference with AU vs Chinese stock?
I want Windsor Security Sensors, Temp Sensors and about 6x Smart Plugs with power monitoring. Suggestions?
I know I am smashing out the questions but will greatly appreciate the help.
Cheers
All those brands you mentioned are sub-brands of xioami. For the most part, not important.
However zigbee is an important term. Things that connect via zigbee won't effortlessly connect to your WiFi, you'll need to connect it to a compatible zigbee device that is connected to your WiFi. There are advantages to it, but it is another layer.
So things that connect via zigbee require a zigbee hub to work for you.
Also note that some wireless devices from these companies only connect to WiFi via a Bluetooth bridge.
Research zigbee before buying everything you need. For the most part, everything non zigbee is very simple connecting, though you'll need to consider the limitations of your WiFi devices
In my setup I currently have a selection of 4 temp sensors, 4 motion sensors, 2 door/window sensors, 6 power plugs and a few other things - not counting the Yeelgihts. They all are Zigbee (other than the lights) and connect to a Xiaomi Gateway. You will need a gateway if getting Zigbee. An advantage of having the gateway is that it's only 1 item on your wifi network. Note that each gateway can have 30 devices connected to it (I'm up to 24), so if you are planning on having more than this you will need more than one gateway.
I started out with getting one of the 5 in 1 pack where you get the gateway, a couple of different sensors and a power plug. Last I checked, the Zigbee power plug reports power usage whereas the wifi one does not.
In the sensors, there are some subtle differences between Xiaomi and Aqara. I know the Aqara motion sensor also has a lux sensor whereas the Xiaomi ones didn't. Though that may also be an older vs newer model thing. The Aqara temp sensors also reported on something additional that escapes me at the moment (maybe air pressure?).
Down the track you could also start using something such as Domoticz or Home Assistant to give you a bit more granularity in monitoring your devices and controlling them. I personally settled on Domoticz as I found their structure of setting up events easier to understand than JSON which Home Assistant uses. Fro example I have an event setup that notifies me when the washing machine has completed or gets out of balance and a similar thing with the dryer which are using the power plugs.
whatisk you might actually be able to answer a question with the temp sensors can you have them with google home to regulate temp say keep the room at 23 degrees etc.? I have a broadlink ir blaster that will set the air con but there's no way to actually have it go up or down in speed etc. based on the room temp. A sensor that supports ifft would be sweet to i.e. if room gets to 40 turn air con on.
As far as I am aware, none of the Xiaomi Zigbee stuff connects into GH - other than the Xiaomi vacuum. Only the wifi stuff.
I'm sure you could do it through Domoticz or Home Assistant but that obviously involves having a VM or RPi running. Then you would have it checking the temp and if in a range turn on the air con using the scene setup on the Broadlink. I would assume it would be easiest to have the air con turn on in 'auto' for fan though to maintain the temperature rather than have mulitple scenes in Broadlink triggering depending on temperature. You could set Domoticz (and HA) to send a notification and provide updates on the temp of the room in question.
I did find this after a quick search: https://www.reddit.com/r/ifttt/comments/abr0fv/a_easy_way_to…
Looks to use notifications sent to your phone by the MiHome app to the trigger an IFTTT activity.
Aqara is the newer Xiaomi brand, where the zigbee devices I believe are the newer 3.0 version. Mija is the slightly older version.
Zigbee itself is wireless mesh protocol, which means that devices can send messages via each other but still require a hub (controller) in order to connect them up into useful rules for home automation.
If you like to tinker with Raspberry Pi then the Home Assistant (hass.io) custom approach is popular, but if you want solutions that are more 'out of the box' per se then there a few options.
Samsung Smartthings has just launched as a mesh wifi router with RACV.
Vera Edge
Hubitat (This is what i'm planning on using) is a newer hub that is gaining in popularity due to it being a middle ground between 'out of the box' and custom local control.
Edit: Should add that many of the controllers (hubs) connect to both Google Home and Amazon Alexa for voice control so that you can turn things on and off.
Cheers,
M.
It's unclear as to what automations you want to run, so a recommendation can not be given. However you may find using the sensors via the xiaomi gateway and app somewhat limited in functionality. I personally use home assistant with zigbee2mqtt and bypass the xiaomi gateway.
The items are exactly the same, but the AU stock is already in Australia, and the Chinese stock is still in China, so you'll get the AU stock quicker.
However, they may not be telling the truth.