Should I be use this new Aqara FP300 motion sensor that supports Thread & Zigbee with my EISY and ZMatter USB device? I have not done much with Zwave/Zigbee/Thread and I’m trying to bench out from INSTEON a bit. Thoughts?

I have several Zigbee devices and they work fine with my Eisy. I received my FP300 today but I won’t be able test it until Tuesday or Wednesday at the earliest.

JP

Edited November 16Nov 16 by JP
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I tried adding the FP300 to my EISY through the Zigbee/Add a Zigbee Device menu command. It found a device but said something about waiting for an interview process to complete. The window went away and now I have a device in my Admin console called ZB 46576.1 Main but it does not respond to motion. If I press the Query button, I get a Request Failed popup.

I'm clearly out of my league here. I guess I need to read more on Thread/Matter/Zigbee. Any pointers would be apppreciated.

I've been following threads on the FP300 in HA and Hubitat fora. I have one on order.

In both those threads, they talk about using the Aqara app on your phone to convert from Thread (default as shipped) to Zigbee before adding. Did you do that?

-Tom

@xlurkr No I hadn't done that but have done so now. The FP300 updated its firmware and then got to a point where in the Aqara app it wanted to connect to a hub. I don't have one so I went to the EISY Admin Console and added the device again through the Zigbee/Add a Zigbee Device menu. It completed and I have these 3 devices shown in my Network. No idea why the first one shows disabled. 2nd and 3rd devices (Main and Weather) show the temperature and humidity in my office where the device is currently sitting. I see nothing that shows me how it show presence detection (motion detection?). I'm closer but not all the way there yet. Do I need an Aqara hub in my network? I wanted to use this as a motion sensor because of its compact size. Thoughts?

From what I have gleaned from the other fora, you do not need an Aqara hub. Also, in the other fora, there is a mention of a need for some modification to the existing drivers on the respective hubs (HA and Hubitat). The authors of these drivers are participating in the threads and making the changes.

Therefore, I would expect that the default behavior in IoX will not be ideal at the moment. If we all contribute to this thread as we experiment with our FP300s, and maybe additionally make requests in the general Zigbee support threads here, the team at UDI will likely support this device as well as it can be at some point in the near future, as they have demonstrated numerous times in the past.

-Tom

btw, here are links to the two threads (I hope these are correct!)

[BETA] Aqara Multi-Sensor FP300 (PS-S04D) - ⚙️ Custom Apps and Drivers / Custom Drivers - Hubitat

Aqara FP300 Early Zigbee Setup : r/homeassistant

-Tom

@xlurkr thanks!

So the support on EISY for the Aqara FP300 motion sensor is minimal. Does adding an Aqara Hub help me at all? The M200 supports Matter. Does that help me integrate these devices more so I could use a program in EISY to respond to motion detected by the FP300?

I doubt having the hub would help you much. A quick search turned up IFTTT and Home Assistant integrations for the hub, but no wide-open interface like the REST interface on the ISY. So you'd have to have a third layer, in addition to the Aqara hub and your ISY.

I plan to use my FT300 with my Hubitat hub (one of the links I posted above) which has a well-documented REST interface that should allow me to control any lights on my ISY based on the sensor output. But we'll see. I will post my progress here. If it fails, I might try the HA route, but frankly I'd probably be in over my head.

As far as direct support from UDI goes, it's probably too bleeding edge for them to worry about right now. But if these presence sensors work as well as many users are saying - truly allowing you to have a light on in the room whenever someone is there, leave it on even if their movement is minor, and turn it off immediately once they're gone - UDI will have to support at least one version of one of these at some point. Who knows? Maybe Insteon will make one...

-Tom

I got my FP300 a couple of weeks ago but I have unable to do much with it yet because of my time. UDI only detects it as a temperature sensor. So for immediate future it is not much use in a EISY environment.

However I do have a Smilewolf device which does work with the EISY (zigbee). The only problem I have with it is that it requires a USB power source. It works pretty good with only an occasionally negative response (1 out of 200). I also have to block the side of it with a book because it goes off sometimes when you walk by in the hallway.

I finally got around to linking this thing (in Zigbee mode) to my Hubitat hub. It's pretty great. It will reliably turn lights on within 1 second of detecting motion (or presence, if you prefer), and off within about 15 seconds of detecting none. And it senses even small amounts of motion all the time, without turning lights off just because you're not moving frantically, i.e., no arm waving or standing up out of your chair required. And it has an ambient light sensor that seems to respond in about 1 second, and temperature and humidity. This is all with the default device and driver settings, which appear to allow for a great deal of tweaking. I could really see relying on this thing to completely control lighting in many of my rooms.

I have it sitting on my desk pointing at me at the moment. In the coming days I will experiment with other locations, and some of the settings in the device and its driver. But so far so good! Count me in for begging UDI to provide support for at least one mmWave presence sensor - and this one seems to be a good candidate.

-Tom

@xlurkr what Hubitat hub do you use or is there only one? Do you have a link? Thanks.

So I went to Hubitat.com and looked at their products. Do I read it wrong or is a Hubitat hub basically an alternative solution to the EISY?

It is just that. I have one primarily because I wanted to start experimenting with Lutron lighting a few years ago, and it has by far the best support among general-purpose hubs for Lutron (until RA3, that is, because they refuse to support LEAP until they get permission and documentation from Lutron). I mention that because I'm not suggesting it as a solution to this specific problem. I happen to have one and already knew it can easily interact via REST with the ISY and is easy to program, so when I found through my searches that there was a skilled user working on full support for the FP300 (and all other Aqara presence sensors) I went that route.

Support for this device could be just as good on the ISY - the missing ingredient is someone who has the skills AND the interest (especially self-interest) and motivation to fully integrate it. I'm going to add my own request to the Zigbee support request thread right after finishing this.

If I may make a suggestion, for you I'd recommend either getting the Smilewolf sensor @JP commented on above, or another one anyone else has reported works with the ISY (if one exists) if your primary motivation is to experiment with a mmWave sensor. Or maybe return the FP300 to Matter/Thread mode and see if you can get it to work that way, somehow. From my searches it seems like it can reliably report presence that way, but it exposes fewer setting to tweak and has shorter (but still good) battery life. I like my Hubitat hub, but it seems like overkill and unnecessary additional complexity to support just this one item.

-Tom