Is it possible to build a smart home on any one ecosystem, for example, the ecosystem from Xiaomi, this is of course an interesting topic, in fact, when I started building a smart home, there was also such an idea, to take a ready-made kit from the Xiaomi system, it was a gateway from Xiaomi that works over Wi-Fi and, accordingly, you can get different Zigbee sensors to it, there were several motion sensors and door opening sensors included, there was a wireless button that also works on Zigbee, and right away I additionally took several temperature and humidity sensors.

Of course, all this can be connected to each other, and in principle it connects well, and even now I use these sensors outside the Xiaomi system, but in principle they can be installed there, for this you need to install an application from Xiaomi, Mi Home, on your phone, and first add a gateway in this application, and then add all the additional sensors that were included, the temperature and humidity sensors themselves are certainly not bad, in principle they are quite compact, they are powered by a CR2032 battery, and as practice has shown, they can work for a very long time, about a year and a half, they measure and send readings to the smart home system about once an hour, either when the humidity changes by half a degree, or if the humidity has changed by five percent, this is certainly enough for most use cases, and allows you to save battery to some extent, and they are also very compact motion sensors, there are Of course, a similar sensor is from Aqara, they are compatible in principle, that is, it is not necessary to buy sensors only from Xiaomi, but if, in principle, you only take a specific brand from Xiaomi, then of course these sensors also work well, they detect movement well, they are quite sensitive and you can also adjust their reaction time, that is, if they work, then for about a minute they show that movement is detected, and then they are checked again if there was no movement, then they automatically turn off, and this can also be used in scenarios, door or window opening sensors are generally considered the most The sensors from Xiaomi are the best on the market, they are very compact, they use a very small battery, but at the same time, such sensors have already worked for me for probably more than two years, and while the charge shows that it is still almost one hundred percent, even though these sensors are on the most frequently opened doors, these are the toilet and bathroom, and of course these are very good sensors, and they work quickly enough, the logic itself is very simple, that is, either opening or closing, and then on based on this, you can already make different rules in scenarios, for example, turning on or off the light, there is also a Xiaomi wireless button, it is also very interesting in itself, of course its battery ran out pretty quickly, but it depends on how often you use it, because it is not in use yet, it basically does not send any information, and the battery is very economical because of this, but it has a lot of pressing options, that is, you can press once, twice, three times, and so up to 6 times you can press, these will be different events in the smart home system. you can press and hold, and this will also be a separate event, and when released, information is also transmitted about how long the button was pressed, and this can also be processed in some way.

There are many other devices and sensors that are basically compatible with the Xiaomi ecosystem, that is, it is practically a brand of Aqara, not all sensors, but many, they are also available, they can also be linked to the ecosystem from Xiaomi, for example, presence sensors, the same buttons or an opening sensor or temperature and humidity sensors, or motion sensors, they are also all available and also connected and can be used, all these devices are shared.

For example, Xiaomi has different devices to control lighting, well, of course, these are light bulbs, sockets, of course there are not very many different options, but they are available in principle, there are different relays that can also be connected, but there are also very few of them, but in principle there are a lot of manufacturers that also support the Xiaomi ecosystem and you can also add their devices to the application, these are light bulbs, for example, Yeelight, or there are IKEA, Philips, in principle, quite a lot of devices can also be found that will be compatible.

There are also wired and wireless switches that can also be connected, Xiaomi only recently had a wired switch with a round socket, and before that, of course, all the switches were for square sockets, they were very difficult to install, that is, it was necessary either to provide for this during the repair phase, or already during the finished repair, if If you have purchased such a switch, you will need to break a bigger hole in the wall and then put a square socket and install this switch in it.

And probably one of the biggest disadvantages of the ecosystem from Xiaomi and, in principle, the Aqara sub-brand is that the manufacturer came up with it, and Xiaomi is the manufacturer of these devices, that is, for example, if you take Tuya, then they only provide all these protocols and the ecosystem, and the devices themselves do not produce, it is produced by other companies already on There are products on the market that simply ensure compatibility, but Xiaomi has its own production of all its devices, and of course, first of all, they cannot make as many devices as all the others combined can do, moreover, Xiaomi has divided the whole world into different markets, and if there is a device for the ecosystem, for example, for the Chinese market, then of course there are many more, but they will be incompatible with devices from other markets, and it will be necessary, for example, to purchase everything for one country and already link all devices to this country, but if if you choose Chinese in the appendix, then all the inscriptions will be in Chinese, you will speak Chinese and you will need to figure it out, because it will be quite difficult to set it all up, but of course there are many more devices, and the only drawback, of course, is that the Chinese ones have their own sockets and, for example, their own plugs at the sockets, that is, of course, you will need to take this into account, it will not be very reliable to plug into the socket during installation, and it will not hold tight, that is, you will need to use all sorts of adapters.

In the application itself, it will already be possible to develop different scenarios, in principle, you can organize and write quite a lot of scripts there quite well, they support options for enabling/disabling scripts from other scenarios, then if the script is running and, for example, you need some others not to run at this moment, then you can disable them there too. it's convenient in principle, I tried writing different scenarios, but the only drawback, of course, is probably the biggest, that it's all simple in the application, that is, it is impossible to make any backup of these scripts normally, or vice versa, to borrow somewhere and simply copy this script. After all, it will need to be manually developed from scratch, each script will be prescribed.

Automation in a smart home should be useful and create additional comfort, but sometimes everything goes wrong… The reasons for this, and how to configure everything, see on my channel.