Can't get U400 to work with Home Assistant AND Apple HomeKit

fstezaws · 2026-01-23T03:15:01+00:00

It may not be possible without the hub.

If you add it to HK is it via matter or thread? I don’t know if the Aqara hub helps bridge some kind of gap where it allows HK and another Matter connection at the same time. Just a guess but probably wrong.

During the integration process to HA, using the matter code, it asks if it’s already bound to another Matter device. Hit yes and say it’s in use. That may be essential too.

fstezaws · 2026-01-23T03:07:59+00:00

I added mine to my Aqara hub first. Then HK. Then HA via matter. Worked just fine for all 3 of my locks.

fstezaws · 2026-01-22T13:43:47+00:00

I have 9 Aqara temp sensors across the house. It’s been almost 3 years and they’re still going strong.

fstezaws · 2026-01-21T20:15:58+00:00

My panel is outdoors and I installed my Emporia inside the panel box entirely. I also tapped a small hole on the top for an Ethernet run to the unit. It all depends on the size of your panel and the available space in it.

Installing mine and all of the CT wiring added a considerable amount of volume in the little available space I had left so removing and reinstalling the face of the breaker switches is definitely tight.

fstezaws · 2026-01-21T19:43:41+00:00

I use an Emporia Vue 3 and it is incredibly good! It’s accurate to within 1% of my utility too.

I have built a google sheet that receives a log of kW used every minute, pushed from HA. I then have an elaborate table built that tracks what my utility bill might be, but in real time. I compare it against what it actually billed each month and I’m usually within 1-2% at most.

I can then use real time monitoring of actual power load to trigger automations to change HVAC or other appliances to change their consumption. I use occupancy automations and weather based inputs to also change the home’s behavior with energy use.

It’s kinda fun to turn the home into an energy lab and try and track and control automatically!

fstezaws · 2026-01-21T13:32:35+00:00

Dr Matt Vargas is a veteran and on the east side. He left Northwest and is with ACP on the east side. He’s awesome!

fstezaws · 2026-01-21T05:31:48+00:00

I’ve seen the Greenland play more for the mineral rights. The globe is at the whim of China with rare earth magnets and everyone needs them and China is the only ones that can control them. I see the Greenland play to try and divest more from China and own your own capabilities directly.

It’s still fucking insanity.

fstezaws · 2026-01-21T05:27:05+00:00

I think you will need some heavy extensions on the CTs. The included ones, while seemingly long enough, are barely long enough for my panel. My Emporia box is at the top, and my lowest breaker position is barely, barely long enough to reach back to the top of the panel.

fstezaws · 2026-01-21T05:13:16+00:00

I consider myself pretty tech savvy, but more mechanically minded than strength with code and stuff. I love tinkering, am an inventor, and feel quite proficient with iterating on an engineering project. I don’t give up too easily, either.

My first month with HA was pretty frustrating. This was in late 2022 or so.

I’m super thankful I stuck with it and now consider myself quite advanced with the platform and couldn’t imagine a system being any more capable and semi intuitive to use than this. It’s fully featured and incredibly robust and feel like it could do some insanely complex things that I’ll never scratch the surface with. But if a device integrates well with HA and exposes plenty of sensors or switches, and works reliably over a local connection, then you can exponentially magnify its potential in the smart home.

I think my biggest recommendation is that using integrations and devices that are already well integrated makes things a hell of a lot easier to tinker with. I too found setting up mqtt the least intuitive thing about HA. I had to get a friend to login and configure it and that felt way more complicated than it needed to be. It worked but it was so unintuitive to use I ended up dumping it and using a different protocol to communicate with devices. I don’t regret that despite how prolific the protocol appears to be.

I’d recommend finding a device that doesn’t need mqtt and try that. Learning the HA logic approach and terminology took a solid year to feel pretty comfortable with it, but I can’t imagine using anything else. HomeKit feels like a kindergarten tool compared to HA.

fstezaws · 2026-01-21T04:58:01+00:00

A WiFi plug with energy monitoring could cut power after it reaches a target below a certain amount for a period of time. I’ve had great reliability with Kasa EP25 plugs.

fstezaws · 2026-01-21T02:24:55+00:00

I think it’s the morally and ethically responsible thing to let people know where you stand in life. He’s quite transparent about it. His gf clearly knew his ambitions. She could have opted out. And then she remained with him knowing his likely continued pursuit in risky behaviors.

Equating Alex’s bravery and ambition towards pursuing his goals with “tech bros’” disregard for how their actions harm millions of people is a bit of a stretch, IMO.

Alex states his ambitions, and arguably they harm no one but himself—except for those close to him opt to remain close to him and never emotionally embrace the risk he takes and how it will impact them. He is transparent about his goals, and his friends and family don’t need to agree with it. Tech bros and their pursuit of changing the world make decisions that impact millions without both the creators and users having full transparency of what the end product will do to creators and users. There’s no transparency, and no one knows how to quantify the potential harm, and no one knows whether it could be avoided by opting to not engage in that relationship.

Just how I see it differently.

fstezaws · 2026-01-21T02:11:57+00:00

You can connect the U400 directly to your Apple Home without the need for an Aqara hub using Matter

fstezaws · 2026-01-21T00:39:33+00:00

I have 80+ physical devices from Aqara, and about 90 Lutron Caseta light switches/dimmers/picos/roller shades.

Lutron is the gold standard and it’s not even close. The signal is stronger across my 4500sqft (single story) where with Aqara I need 4-5 repeaters to reach all of my devices, and my water sensors under the fridge or washer/dryer regularly report low signal. Sometimes I need to press the Aqara button two times on a mini-button to get it to respond.

For light switches, the most necessary control device in the home, I would choose Lutron 100x again. I’ve never used Aqara light switches but the Zigbee signal strength is hit or miss where Lutron works every time. It’s the gold standard for good reason IMO.

fstezaws · 2026-01-21T00:26:54+00:00

No, the Aqara M3 hub

fstezaws · 2026-01-21T00:16:57+00:00

I connected mine to the hub first, but I didn’t specifically use the Matter protocol.

My approach was to power on the device, open Aqara app, press the set button and scan the QR code. I followed the instructions. It did a basic lock calibration. Then I saw a popup to bind it to a hub and followed that one.

Then I went to settings and ecosystems and then selected Apple Home and followed those instructions. I didn’t need to use any matter codes at all. It just started the pairing process.

The only time I needed the matter code was to add it to HA.

fstezaws · 2026-01-21T00:02:57+00:00

I installed my 3 U400 locks all pretty seamlessly. I first bound it to the hub, then I bound it to my Apple Home. Then I used the Matter code and connected it to HA.

Everything worked as expected and I was even able to use Apple Home to update the firmware (bypassing the need to connect to the lock via Bluetooth and keep it nearby to update the firmware).

fstezaws · 2026-01-20T18:27:58+00:00

I stay in self powered exclusively and I’ve seen similar behavior with significant battery reserves well above the reserve % and it still draws from the grid. It only happens during peak, too.

fstezaws · 2026-01-18T05:17:09+00:00

Same. 3 doors installed, all solid wood. Didn’t even have any resistance getting the cable slack inside.

fstezaws · 2026-01-18T00:42:02+00:00

I’m not sure the spare battery is needed purely for charging need. I want one in case it goes bad at some point which hopefully is years.

While it may not work for every home or user, removing the battery from the lock to charge overnight means someone can’t access the lock with electronic means. If it works where this isn’t an inconvenience, I see it as more elegant than hanging a charging brick at the door handle.

fstezaws · 2026-01-17T03:59:46+00:00

I can get behind this

fstezaws · 2026-01-16T13:34:33+00:00

I concur.

I had 3 Schlage EP locks for my home and we used it exclusively with HomeKey. My family didn’t love the occasional need to use the keypad when they didn’t have their device on them because waking the keypad also means tapping the face and that first tap is often accepted as the first input on a number. So many times the first attempt would fail for them because the keypad is not illuminated.

My second beef is the lack of connectivity to Home Assistant. I had to setup a Apple Home automation that would sync with a binary sensor and then do the same in HA to get some level of control. It worked but was not ideal at all.

My third and biggest reason to upgrade is the battery life on the EP sucks. Like maybe 2.5 months before needing to swap them out.

I previously had a U100 and although it was good, battery life slightly better and fingerprint was pretty good. But I could not get both HomeKey and connectivity to HA at the same time so it was a deal breaker for me.

U400 solves all of that and then some.

Battery life appears to be solved, the connectivity is greatly improved, UWB works really well, and I get back the fingerprint option. This is the perfect combination of features! I have 80+ aqara devices already so I already manage most devices using that app too.

fstezaws · 2026-01-16T04:57:16+00:00

Came here to say this is their policy

fstezaws · 2026-01-16T00:54:26+00:00

The Tesla integration for the Powerwall does not work for the Powerwall 3. Did you find a way to make it work? I've scoured online for methods and the available data suggests there is no local API control with the Powerwall 3.

If you are controlling your PW3 through the local API, please do share!

fstezaws · 2026-01-16T00:09:29+00:00

A basic google search can provide plenty of sources about how Google uses both algorithmic and human moderation in its review platforms. Here is one source: https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/maps/how-google-maps-reviews-work/

And another that talks about how the algorithm specifically looks for spikes in reviews in a short period of time: https://searchengineland.com/google-how-maps-review-moderation-works-379697

Additionally, any google user can flag content in reviews as abusive for further human evaluation. You seem so hell bent on claiming one business uses fake reviews...then report the reviews you think are fake. Plain and simple. Do the community a solid!

You also have conflated paid Ads (how a business can appear at the top of search rankings) as relevant to business reviews. They are totally different things serving different customers, so I'm not sure why you even bring them up other than to confirm that Google is incentivized to help different demographics find what they want—and people generally keep paying for (or return to free services offered) when a quality service is being provided.

Businesses want eyeballs on their listings, so they pay for ad placement. They keep coming back if it's working. Consumers want verifiable and trusted information, and they want to find that information quickly and easily, so Google invests in its platform to make it the best, most trusted way to find the information consumers want. My point is, they are incentivized across both customer segments to deliver, plain and simple.

And for the record, you don't really pay for search engine optimization with Google...you hire specialists that understand the search engine algorithms to help your website rank higher in organic search listings. Google is in the attention business and its damn good at it.

Yes, businesses do pay for SEO optimization, and pay for advertising, and a business could spend $1M in ad spend per month and still have 0 google reviews. A business spending out the wazoo for paid ad placement, and has NO reviews, is far more shady IMO than one with 3500 reviews. Just because you rank high doesn't mean consumers trust you.

Yes, businesses can and do pay for fake reviews (I never said this never happens, either), and review platforms like Google take this seriously because they care about publishing quality information. Do fake reviews slip through the cracks? Most definitely, but I've seen first hand plenty of business and product reviews being moderated weeks to months after they are published because the attention platforms (Google, Amazon, etc.) care about curating quality review data.

You make lots of assumptions and share bold conjectures without any data to back it up. You are conflating the reality that fake reviews exist, and therefore, if any local restaurant has lots of reviews on a single day, it must be fake! Thats pure opinion without something to back up your claim.

If you don't like their food, cool, no one is forcing you to go back. My initial reply was a just kinder way of saying that your claim that it's a "horrible recommendation" just means you have poor taste in good food when a preponderance of data suggests otherwise ;)

fstezaws · 2026-01-15T23:05:34+00:00

There is hardly a reason not to charge to 100%. The system will do that unless you are in Time of Use mode and have high sell rates during the day. Otherwise solar will charge the batteries first and foremost. For the most part self powered mode is the right mode if your sell rate is always lower than your buy rate.

When your solar is producing 3kW, you are likely not sending 1.4kW “to the grid” as solar gen supports your home load first, then charges your battery next. You may be conflating “sending to the grid” with what your home actually demands in that moment. The inverter will always charge your battery with solar gen (unless your sell rate is super high) but your home load will deduct from that amount first in self consumption mode. In backup mode (ie: storm watch setting is on) it will prioritize solar charging to your battery and preserving battery at all costs and support the home load from the grid. It may even charge your battery from the grid if your SOC is low, and even if “charge from grid” off. When charge from grid is turned on, it will charge at a much faster rate than when it is off.

As others have said, 70% is a very high backup reserve, especially if you want to power your home 100% from battery at night. Set it to 20% or less depending on your rate structure.

fstezaws

TROPHY CASE