Aqara E1 Zigbee Door/Window Sensor is discovered, online, and otherwise not working

Setup, Configuration and Use Installation
1
  • Platform information:
    • openHAB version: 3.2M4

I ordered this sensor from Banggood.com
AFAIK, it is Zigbee 3.0 compliant.

I intended to use this with my OH3 zigbee stick.

Discovery worked on the first try, OH Thing goes online. I link all the channels to items.

Thereafter it does not report anything, no events or status.

In my previous house I had a Xiaomi hub that I had setup with OH. I had several Mejia and Aqara Door Sensors and everything was working fine.

Anything I can check in Zigbee logs that might tell me something useful?

Any advise about firing up my Xiaomi hub and adding it to my new house OH3?

2

I just received this Aqara sensor from Amazon
Looks the same but is not the same
Discovers with just one Switch channel

Unfortunately same problems.
Discovers, goes online, but nothing else happens

3

Maybe I should just abandon using Aqara sensors and go with Shelly

4

He,
I run a ton of aqara sensors (motion, window/door, temp etc.) and all work just fine with OH.
My setup goes through zigbee2mqtt and then into the mqtt binding in OH though.

Do you have any log entries? Maybe if you look into the debug log?
Also, your configurations (thing, channels, items) would be good to see.

1 Like
5

The Aquara sensors are generally not zigbee compliant and work a little differently. Many hubs have issues with them, and they need to be kept awake for a few seconds (or more) when they are being discovered and configured. I think there are some references about this in the binding docs.

They do work though and many people here are using them, but they just can be a bit more touchy to get working initially.

1 Like
6

I heard that too, whereas I never had issues with aqara sensors (or any other Xiaomi sensors for that matter besides the below).
They always connected in a matter of ms to my z2mqtt USB stick.
I had though issues with the Xiaomi smoke detector which required another Xiaomi device (which is active, i.e. power plug) as “bridge” to connect the first time.
But again, slightly different setup.

7

ok… I tried re-adding the sensors
The sensor from Amazon is now working
The sensor from Banggood is online but not working

They look identical but they are not.

The Amazon sensor (No model) has only one Switch channel.

image
image1320Ă—562 28.8 KB

xml
00158D0007BDDB5E.xml (21.9 KB)

The Banggood sensor (Model E1) has 4 different channels

image
image1362Ă—611 36.4 KB

xml
54EF44100027DA39.xml (47.4 KB)

The Amazon sensor apparently does not report battery status

8

An update
I attached the Amazon sensor to a closet door.
The Thing eventually reported offline
I opened and closed the door and my rule fired
The Thing reported as online

Aqara sensors are goofy

9

Sounds more like something is not working out either with your setup or the binding, or they are faulty sensors.
I got multiple sensors running (MCCGQ01LM and MCCGQ11LM) and they show up just fine in z2mqtt as coordinator as well as then in OH:

image
image761Ă—609 22 KB

Your sensor sounds more like it is the Aqara T1 MCCGQ12LM which only gives contact/battery/voltage/link quality though.

Maybe that one is not yet supported fully by the OH zigbee binding?

10

The Amazon Aqara sensor model number is MCCGQ11LM
The Banggood Aqara sensor model number is MCCGQ14LM

@chris , any thoughts on why I only get a single Switch channel and @chrismast coordinator has a Status(Contact) channel as well as a Battery channel and others?

11

@chrismast unfortunately my zigbee stick the HUSBZB-1 Ember chip is “experimental” in the Zigbee2MQTT project

12

Not really. I don’t know these devices, and it seems that there are a few different ones. The binding will try to detect what the device supports - this normally works well for zigbee devices that follow the standards, but these cheap Chinese devices don’t.

We can create a manual thing definition that can fix some issues with non-standard devices, and this is done quite a lot for these devices, but not this one at the moment.

The Zigbee binding will never add channels to the coordinator. @chrismast is using mgtt so they presumably manage channels differently, but conceptually adding channels to the coordinator doesn’t make any sense.

Likewise some channels I see above like link quality are not added as channels by the binding - they are properties - different bindings will simply do different things.

Again though I simply don’t know what this device does and probably they are not following the standards when reporting the door sensor state so the binding can’t detect this channel (that’s my guess anyway).

13

Yes you are correct, I do use MQTT via zigbee2mqtt.
The above channels though are all auto-discovered in zigbee2mqtt, in MQTT (OH) I only connect to those then as with any other device. This works across the range of my zigbee devices (IKEA, Xiaomi, Tuya, self-designed ESP etc.).
You might be able to understand the config etc. by looking at the z2mqtt db files though as it allows to connect to any zigbee devices (even if not officially supported); it should have an entry for the xiaomi once already which might point to why its not working as well with the OH zigbee binding?

14

@chris I’m looking at augmenting the discovered zigbee Thing with a “closetDoor.things” file to expose the properties mentioned in Xiaomi MCCGQ11LM control via MQTT | Zigbee2MQTT
I am inspecting the zigbee xml file 00158D0007BDDB5E.xml (22.2 KB) and was wondering if there is any guidance you might be able to direct me too?
I see:

<endpoints>
  <ZigBeeEndpoint>
  ...
  <inputClusters>
    <ZclCluster>
    ...
      <attributes>...</attributes>
  <outputClusters>
  ...

Thank you for any guidance

15

To be honest, I’m not really sure. From the XML, this device doesn’t seem to support many standard functions. My guess is that everything is covered through their own implementation rather than the zigbee standard.

I know there are some (maybe all) Xiaomi devices that support a non-standard reporting frame, and probably that is what is required here, but at the moment that is not implemented in the zigbee binding.

16

I just hate paying 25 to 50 bucks for a stupid reed switch. I guess I just have to swallow hard and accept that unless I build my own sensors, I need to pay for standard sensors. Thanks for trying to educate me.

1 Like
17

Hi @smitopher
Did you manage to solve the issues you were facing with the adding and using the Aqara door/window sensors?
I have a GoControl CECOMINOD016164 HUSBZB-1 USB Zwave/Zigbee USB Hub and I can’t seem to properly connect the Aqara sensors.

18

No, I did not. My Aquara sensors are sitting on my desk unused. I ended up getting Sengled sensors. They cost more but have been trouble free.

1 Like
19

I just managed to add the two Aqara sensors to my openhab system using the GoControl CECOMINOD016164 HUSBZB-1 USB Zwave/Zigbee USB Hub.
It took a few times to properly recognize the devices, but now it works.
I wonder why it’s not working for you?

20

I have the same hub. Have you updated the hub zigbee firmware? I did. I have a few Xiaomi/Aqara devices, most of which don’t work, one of which is on my bedroom closet door, I can’t remember if it’s Aqara or Xiaomi branded. it only reports open/close events and none of the of the other Chanels are discovered. It usually appears in OH as offline, although it still manages to report open/close events.

I gave up trying to make them work and bought Sengled sensors, they are not much more expensive, work fully as expected, and I don’t have to hack anything.

As soon as OH supports Matter devices, I’ll look at replacing them with Matter/Thread sensors as I want to move in that direction with my smart home.

1 Like