First announced via Twitter a week back, Aqara has officially brought their smart home hub and suite of accessories to the online retail giant Amazon in the United States.

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with a smattering of limited releases over the past few months, the Chinese-based tech firm Aqara has seemingly finally worked out the logistics of bringing their popular smart home hub and accessories to the U.S. through the online retail giant Amazon. Along with a starter kit, Aqara will also be offering some of their Zigbee-enabled smart home accessories individually just in time for those last-minute Christmas gifts or a New Year’s gift.

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What is Aqara and why should I car?

For those unfamiliar with Aqara, they are a smart home device manufacturing partner of the Chinese technology behemoth Xiaomi. Though they manufacture a large number of different smart home devices, they brought HomeKit compatibility to the Chinese version of their smart home hub in late 2018 and have been working to develop international versions of the hub for the U.K., Europe and now, the North American market.

The Aqara HomeKit lineup stands out for a few different reasons, first of which is cost. While their hub is moderately priced, the hub itself is not only a wireless Zigbee gateway for the Aqara accessories, it is also exposed as a security system and light in HomeKit., the Aqara accessories, or “child devices”, are among the least expensive in the HomeKit ecosystem.

The second reason why so many are clamoring over this smart home ecosystem is the variety of accessories that can be connected to the hub. Aqara themselves make a whole host of different switches, buttons, sensors, and other smart home gear, but other manufacturers’ products can also be connected to the hub providing users with even more options and, in fact, several accessory types which either aren’t widely available or are too expensive for most people to consider throwing their money at.

The last reason why so many of us are excited about the Aqara hub is its connectivity. First, most smart home hubs in the HomeKit ecosystem require you to use one of your precious few ethernet ports on your router to connect to your network; such is not the case with the Aqara hub. It connects to your network over WIFi freeing up ethernet real estate and reducing the need to strategically hide cabling. Once connected to your network, the Aqara hub then uses Zigbee to connect to the accessories on the hub which makes them extremely reliable and quick to respond. This is a huge improvement over existing HomeKit solutions for sensors as the platform requires Bluetooth since WiFi tends to consume significantly more power.

The Aqara Hub

Yes, the Aqara Hub is a gateway which connects all of the Aqara accessories together and allows them to communicate with one another, but the hub itself is exposed as two HomeKit accessories, a security alarm system and a light, in addition to its ability to bring child devices together. Using the affiliated apps, you can use the built-in speaker as an audio indicator, though currently it doesn’t support Airplay 2 which would be amazing.

Door & Window Sensor

Though contact sensors are nothing new to HomeKit, they are a handy tool for building out a diY smart security system. For when i’m home, I use them to control smart lighting in different areas and they can be useful in a number of cases where one object is stationary and the other is dynamic.

Leak Sensor

Water leak sensors can potentially help you avert real disaster not only in terms of damage to your home, but loss of property which might be susceptible to water damage like cherished photos and with Aqara’s offering being so reasonably priced, we can afford to cover all areas of concern. NOTE: At launch, the water leak sensor is not available on Amazon..

Motion Sensor

Motion sensors are a great way to control lighting throughout a home and help to get that feeling of a smart home eliminating the need to touch those pesky switches. They can also provide you with peace of mind when away from home notifying you when unwanted movement is detected.

Smart Plug

What smart home is complete without at least 7 smart plugs allowinng us to add a bit of magic to ordinary fans, air purifiers, foot massagers, tea kettles, and popcorn machines. The list goes on, but an exceptional feature for the price of Aqara’s module is power monitoring

Temperature & Humidity Sensor

Temperature and humidity sensors go beyond just having Siri read out how sweltering or freezing it is. They can be used in combination with location, smart plugs, thermostats, and other smart home devices to shoot for a comfortable environment inside your home without you having to lift a finger.

Vibration Sensor

A very unique product type in our HomeKit ecosystem is the Aqara Vibration sensor. So unique in fact that it doesn’t actually have a product category under the HomeKit framework, but rather appears as a motion sensor which is trigger by vibration, tilt or drop allowing us significant flexibility in the smart home.

Wireless Mini Switch

I am of the opinion that if it can be automated in the smart home, it probably should be. Unfortunately, we cannot predict what we’ll want or when we’ll want it and so enter the smart button allowing us to control accessories and scenes throughout our home with a single, double, or long touch.

Smart Starter Kit

If you are new to Aqara’s smart home solution, you can get your feet wet with their Smart Starter Kit which includes a Hub, motion sensor, door & window sensor, smart plug, and a wireless mini switch all conveniently packaged and ready to be placed under the Christmas tree.

One thing all of us HomeKitters know all too well is the steep costs associated with our chosen home automation platform and it looks like Aqara is poised to shake things up. It’s also worth noting here that the Aqara accessories on offer on Amazon U.S. is not their entire lineup of accessories which are exposed to HomeKit through their bridge namely some switches. Aqara also produces a number of other smart home devices like a curtain controller and smart locks which have been shown to work with the HomeKit through their hub, but these are a little harder to track down. Finally, the Aqara hub also plays well with some Mijia / Mi (Xiaomi) smart home devices exposing them to HomeKit including a smoke detector and natural gas detector. They are also regularly updating their software, firmware, and hardware so it is definitely an intriguing system and we will be exploring what all we can do with it as soon as we can get our grubby paws on the Hub and some sensors.

Confused about all this Aqara / Mijia / Xiaomi business? Simon from HomeKit News has broken it all down in a pretty clear and concise way.

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