After a less than exciting start, in which I took the new P100 out of the box and removed the protective strip that saved the battery during shipping, I started looking at the instructions for this new device that “requires Aqara Hub” or “built on Thread requires a router.”
At this point I started thinking, “No, I’m just going to miss this one.” Anyway, I persevered and read through a huge sheet of bluetooth instructions in different languages that have nothing to do with anything, and it was a very small sheet that gave me a choice of “matter” or “magic pair”. I decided to hook the device into the Aqara app using the magic pair code, at which point I was given a choice of Thread or Zigbee.
That’s better, I thought – the device went on the web to get some new firmware and, moments later, was updated and running on Zigbee, at which point I could put away the Aqara app and pair it with my local Zigbee2MQTT. I run Home Assistant with Zigbee2MQTT added, and before that I ran Node-Red for Zigbee2MQTT. I really have little patience for proprietary apps and don’t know much about Thread.
Anyway, I pressed the JOIN button on Zigbee2MQTT, and after a few moments the device was added to Zigbee2MQTT. I did the usual rename and ticked to add the new name to the Home Assistant, and I was in Zigbee2MQTT with what I called the Aqara-P100.
Below is the full content of the EXPOSES tab in the Zigbee2MQTT…
that’s why I enabled everything. I then dropped the unit a few inches on my desk and in ACTION I saw MOVEMENT. I then tapped the unit once and saw VIBRATION. I then quickly tapped it backwards 3 times and saw TRIPLE_TAP. I then tilted the device up 90 degrees and saw MOTION. That is not entirely clear to me.
I carefully turned the unit back to its original position and saw TRIPLE_TAP – I don’t follow that one at all!
In OBJECT mode, unit reorientation resulted in MOVEMENT. Ah, and ORIENTATION responded accordingly with FACE_UP, FACE_DOWN and VERTICAL.