Aqara Cube, Requires AQARA HUB, Zigbee Connection, Magic Cube Controller, 6 Customizable Gestures to Control Your Smart Home Devices, 2 Year Battery Life, Works with IFTTT

It's a cool concept and I really wanted to make it work well, but it's just not reliable. It detects shaking fine, but it's pretty iffy with detecting twisting, dropping, or flipping to different sides.It works with Home Assistant in the sense that it is detected as a device, and some automations have been written for it, but because of the flaky sensors, it's not as useful as it could be.For example, I imagined having it so that I could dim 6 light individually based on which side was up by turning it clockwise for brighter and counter-clockwise for dimmer. It's possible to setup to do that with Home Assistant, but it detects being flipped to a different side about half the time, so I was controlling the wrong light a lot, and it had to be twisted pretty fast to detect being twisted, so controlling brightness was pretty choppy.Great idea, just not executed well.

EDIT JULY 2021: Now, with Home Assistant automations, this is a snap to set up. Simply search for "Aqara Cube Blueprint" and voila! It provides for 51 unique actions! Amazing!Where do I begin? OK, there's some minor frustrations with this device. The first is that Amazon hasn't figured out instantaneous delivery yet. I mean, come on... how hard can it be. Also, to get serious for a minute, pairing was a pain. I had to try multiple times. The time I got it to work, I didn't feel like I did anything differently but it just worked. Maybe I was overthinking it before. OK, onto the GOOD (like seriously MIND BLOWING GOOD) stuff:1. Don't believe them when they say you need the Aqara Hub for this to work. They are lying. You just need a Zigbee dongle attached to your Raspberry Pi that's already running Home Assistant. The Nortek one works natively without any need to install other add-ons. I repeat: YOU DO NOT NEED THE AQARA HUB. Why send your activity through the cloud? Keep it local like playas do.2. You will need to know what you are doing, and flex some JSON skills to get automations working. What I did first was go into "Events" under "Developer Tools" and subscribe to "zha_event". Click "Start Listening" and then mess with the cube. Shake it, slide it, flip it, tap it. Go crazy! Watch in amazement as Home Assistant knows what you just did, including WHAT SIDE OF THE DEVICE IS UP. When you do the double tap it tells you which way the logo is aligned. What is this dark magic?3. Get familiar with the output. Once, done, create a simple automation to notify you that you did something with the cube. I used the flip event, and picked the one where I flip it so the logo is facing me. For the trigger of your new automation, select "Event" and fill in "zha_event". In the data section of the trigger, copy the "data" section of the output from the listener into the "trigger" area (remember to bring over the "{" and "}" symbols - there will be two of each). Also, DELETE the "unique ID" line. You might have to left-align stuff and remember to indent the lines under "args". Then save the automation, exit it and go back in. You should now see that data but in YAML. If it's blank, you messed up and you'll get the notification for anything you trigger with the cube.But if you're right, Home Assistant will know EXACTLY what you did with the cube!!! From here, you are off to the races. This can be used to trigger virtually ANYTHING that Home Assistant can do.Mind. Blown.

I bought this because it looked interesting. I watched a lot of you tube videos and ended up getting a Hubitat Elevation to use with the cube. (I don't have a lot of stuff setup in homekit). After some research I was able to setup the cube and get it to operate my lights. I use the flip 90 to turn on one set of lights and flip 180 to turn on another. I can use the rotate right/left to dim and brighten the lights. (I have to pick a set brightness) and shake to turn them all off. It's so much fun that I bought another one to setup in the living room. Also, now that I have hubitat as well, I am getting a lot more creative with my home automations!

We are using this as a control device for HomeKit smart devices. We are using the Eve app in between Aqara and HomeKit which I watched how to do from the ModernDayTech YouTube channel. It’s a fun little device, but could be more reliable and less glitchy. The tap twice gesture doesn’t work consistently and the rotate doesn’t work AT ALL. I set up an automation in the Aqara app to turn on the hub nightlight, set it to a color scene, set a delay, set to a color scene I use as a reset, another delay and then turn the night light off. All the other gestures work fine with this type of automation except the rotate. So the problem is in the Aqara app or firmware. When the cube is rotated, it only makes it through part of the automation sequence. The hub seems to be doing better since the latest firmware update. I had to buy a plug to get a little more range. The motion sensor is great. I can’t wait until they release the new hub and the cameras. I don’t know what they were thinking with yellow and orange cameras, but looking forward to the navy and white. I wish someone would make gray or black. You kind of want the cameras to blend in. Orange and yellow might as well scream “hey, you’re on our camera!”. Overall, these are decent, affordable HomeKit options.

The first one I received had no battery and appeared to be a return. The replacement I received was packaged better and had battery.It took a couple attempts to pair with Aqara hub. All their other devices paired flawlessly. Don’t understand why this one seemed like an issue.The gestures are a little hit or miss with Aqara hub. I wish they had which face of the cube was up as an action. Their actions are like rotate 90, 180. Double tap (couldn’t get to work) and shake. I was pretty consistent with the rotate 90, but parents had a little bit of trouble. If you stop just for a moment with your rotation it won’t consider a 90 degree change as 90 degree action. The easiest one for everyone was the shake. Which is a few seconds of back and forth jiggling of the cube.

I bought this to use with Home Assistant via zigbee2mqtt and it was immediately recognized by zigbee2mtt and exposes a lot of events to HA for you to trigger automations with.

Excellent product

The product itself is interesting and potentially impressive, but this model works only with other Aqara devices. HomeKit devices are inaccessible. There are some work-around, but don’t expect globally interactive use. Do more homework than I did, and wait for Thread compatibility.

The media could not be loaded.  (including a quick video of my prototype I've been using for the last month or so)I like this cube, got picked up quickly in home assistant using a sonoff zigbee usb stick and with the help of some of the custom blueprints that are available I was able to get a basic automation going in about 10 mins.It supports turn/tilt/flip/shake/knock/slide gestures with some being more responsive than others, but overall they are all pretty good once you get used to performing them. Ultimately I decided on not using slide/shake/knock for now and opted to instate a 'start' side to anchor all gestures as opposed to have a free for all gesture-fest from any which side.In terms of response, all gestures respond within a second or two, but just like with any other devicr your milage might vary depending on how congested your zigbee network is.I'm not a huge fan of the type of battery used as it is somewhat rare.Pros-blows minds (when setup correctly and working)-ceasy setup with Home Assistant + Sonoff zigbee usb stick + available blueprints-tons of gesture and side combinations available- good size and sturdy buildMeh-you need to get used to the gestures for them to work correctly. It definitely can be a bit more forgiving/accurateCons- battery type is odd- wake up takes a second or two meaning you can't just start with a gesture, you have to pick up/move the cube to wake it and then perform the gesture you wantOverall I like it. I'll buy more as soon as I flesh out my automation approach.

This is a really cool device that offers so much versatility. However its responsiveness is now always great and you need to repeat actions a few times before it registers. Once used to it, it gets easiers though

I tried blueprints first but it just shows up correctly in Zigbee2MQTT and Home Assistant. Detection works ok once the cube wakes up (couple of seconds). I turn it clockwise and counter clockwise to vary intensity, shake to quickly turn on or off and flip 180 to toggle other lights in living room.The second one is used to control an outside fan, heater lamp and patio lights. Wife loves it too, simple to use!

I thought this was like other aqara products where it would show up in homekit but you can just use it with their app and there’s no way that I’ve figured out to even add Philips hue lights to the automations.I guess it’s good for someone who has a ton of aqara devices and that’s all they want to control

Works great with home assistant blueprints. Flawless control of lighting and all actions work great. Can bog down Zwave network if controlling multiple devices though.