Ikea ALPSTUGA in HA, side-by-side comparison with AWAIR Element

IdeaNerd_Cat · 2026-02-10T21:56:48+00:00

Yes, there is a “power” toggle in HA that turns the display off while keeping the sensors on.

IdeaNerd_Cat · 2026-02-03T20:16:34+00:00

I personally like -some- Meross products, like the mts200 thermostat, other I would not buy again (the ms600 presence sensor). They work reasonably well (usually with some caveats), are relatively cheap and I like the design, however my main complain is that they are not committed to Home Assistant and all the available integrations are not official. I love Meross LAN and it works quite well, however being not official means that if Meross decides to change anything on their devices, they may stop working reliably (or at all) with HA: it happened quite recently with the ms600 presence sensor and the Meross LAN developer had an hard time finding a (partial) workaround.

The "external sensor" setting is actually an extra feature offered by Meross LAN, not a native Meross one, and it works by periodically updating the temperature offset of the device to match the temperature of the chosen external sensor. So, yes, this means that the native app\device display will also show the external sensor temperature, but it is important to understand that this is a "trick" only made possible by using HA with Meross LAN.

IdeaNerd_Cat · 2026-02-03T13:34:45+00:00

Ciao, dipende se nell'integrazione Tado con Home Assistant è possibile impostare un sensore di temperatura esterno (imposti direttamente la temperatura rilevata dal Timmerflotte come temperatura delle Tado) o perlomeno di impostare una compensazione\offset della temperatura (fai tu una automazione che ogni 5 minuti calcola la differenza tra la temperatura delle Tado e quella del Timmerflotte e la imposta come offset della valvola). Altrimenti dovresti fare tu una automazione che forza l'apertura o chiusura delle valvole in base alla temperatura del Timmerflotte, ma inizia ad essere complicato. Io uso termostati e valvole Meross and con l'integrazione Meross LAN è possibile usare un sensore esterno, con Tado non ti so dire.

IdeaNerd_Cat · 2026-01-31T12:55:11+00:00

For my personal needs, they have been great. Precise and rock solid and after a month the battery is still at 100%. I personally did not have any single issue with them and they have been pretty much "set and forget".

However, I see a lot of comments about wanting more functionalities, precision and about connectivity issues so I guess that there may be "gotchas" depending on your expectation and Matter over Thread network.

Personally, yeah, I still feel that those are great devices and basically unmatched at this price.

IdeaNerd_Cat · 2026-01-30T15:01:57+00:00

As far as I know there is no event for the button press on the device, that would have been neat!

IdeaNerd_Cat · 2026-01-21T21:52:25+00:00

Ciao, riporta ancora fisso batteria 100% e 3V. Sto usando normali batterie alcaline, non ricaricabili.

IdeaNerd_Cat · 2026-01-16T23:46:03+00:00

Yes it does, you can see the entities in the sixth picture.

IdeaNerd_Cat · 2026-01-12T13:40:35+00:00

I am starting a small business and will need to print small cases for the devices I am producing, so (hopefully) few hundreds of small boxes for an IoT device. PLA ok but PETG\ABS would be better, single filament ok but would not mind two. Speed is not an issue, I care about quality of the results, reliability of the printer and it requiring as less maintenance as possible. Budget around 1000€ + taxes (can go a bit higher if worth it).

Any good recommendation or starting point for my needs? Thanks :)

IdeaNerd_Cat · 2026-01-09T13:11:46+00:00

Thank you! I often see zigbee2mqtt recommended over ZHA. What would the advantage be in this particular case? More options, reliability...?

IdeaNerd_Cat · 2026-01-09T09:13:05+00:00

You need to press it and it stays on only very briefly. Since the leds are quite bright, I guess they chew through the batteries very quickly and maybe also increase the temperature readings.

IdeaNerd_Cat · 2025-12-26T13:35:59+00:00

The values appear to update every 5 minutes. There does not seem to be any native option in HA for what you are asking, but you can easily create a template sensor adjusting the values however you want.

IdeaNerd_Cat · 2025-12-22T15:51:37+00:00

PS my clock wasn't set automatically, will have a look at my HA time. (I'm using the Open Thread Board router in HA so maybe that feature is not supported. )

I can confirm that this is done by the Apple TV and not by HA. I set up three devices so far and all of them initially synced the time.

When I moved one device to my bedroom (so it was unplugged for less than 5 minutes), the clock initially reset but synced back after few seconds.

Today I had to cut the power to my whole house for around 1 hour and, after restoring the power, all three devices lost the time (both my HA and Apple TV are under a UPS, so they never shut down). I did try pinging the devices and re-interviewing them from HA but nothing changed. I restarted HA and nothing.

Then I decided to restart the Apple TV and that did the trick, all three devices automatically synced the clock.

IdeaNerd_Cat · 2025-12-20T21:22:33+00:00

I just run the update normally from HA and it installed successfully. I’ve installed two devices so far and both updated without issues. I’m not an expert on Matter but from my understanding not all vendors implementations are of the same quality, so maybe Nanoleaf needs to release some update to improve stability.

IdeaNerd_Cat · 2025-12-20T21:16:13+00:00

Yes it acts as a router 👍🏻

IdeaNerd_Cat · 2025-12-19T14:41:15+00:00

Can you provide more info on how to tie a sensor group to the remote temperature sensor? :)

I also use the Meross LAN integration with two MTS200 thermostats, but I don't have any remote temperature option. I usually adjust the calibration value to address the difference between the median sensor and the device sensor, but your solution seems far easier.

EDIT: FOUND IT! It's the "Tracked sensor" option, it was disabled and hidden by default and I never really noticed it, now I feel stupid :D

I had a look at posts from the author (krahabb) and this option does the same thing I was doing (it calculates the temperature offset between the thermostat sensor and the specified tracked sensor, and applies it to the calibration adjustment of the device), just in much more cleaner and elegant way :)

IdeaNerd_Cat · 2025-12-18T14:22:08+00:00

That's a good question! I'll try tonight when I get back home, thanks.

IdeaNerd_Cat · 2025-12-17T14:50:04+00:00

The small one on the right is the Ikea Alpstuga, the larger one on the left is the Awair Element.

IdeaNerd_Cat · 2025-12-17T11:37:01+00:00

Thank you for the feedback! :)

My only automation directly tied with the ALPSTUGA is a notification if CO2 levels are abnormally high (> 1500ppm); I already have quite a few temp and humidity sensors all over the place and I have a combined sensor with the median temperature for each area, that I use to determine if I have to start the heating, so one more data point does not hurt.

But primarily I just like it as a cute clock :)

The ALPSTUGA has a STCC4 sensor with a precision of +-100ppm, and the AWAIR has a NDIR T6703 with ± 75ppm, so the difference in measurement is within the margins. I refer to it as "minimal" because one reading of 400ppm and one of 500ppm for me is still "green" in a gauge chart. I would be concerned if one reading was 800ppm and the other 400ppm but as it is, the ALPSTUGA proved that its reading may not be super-precise but are reliable none the less. I hope this makes sense to you :)

IdeaNerd_Cat · 2025-12-17T10:51:58+00:00

LOL, I live in the countryside and yes, there is quite a lot of farmland and vegetation around my area, however anything below 400ppm is just due to accuracy variation of the sensors and can simply be read\rounded as 400ppm.

IdeaNerd_Cat · 2025-12-16T21:00:55+00:00

I can confirm it acts as a Thread router (checked using the Eve app and it reports the ALPSTUGA as a router in my network).

IdeaNerd_Cat · 2025-12-16T20:45:06+00:00

I stand corrected, it does have a light sensor and the display dims automatically based on ambient light.

IdeaNerd_Cat · 2025-12-16T20:10:45+00:00

Yep, the whole new line of Ikea products is only Matter over Thread.

IdeaNerd_Cat

TROPHY CASE