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The original was posted on /r/homeassistant by /u/derpiii on 2026-07-02 03:42:36+00:00.
You know buy once, cry once?
I did my research, and specifically went with the Aqara FP1E because with all their marketing and being 10x the price of a PIR, I thought they would be the highest quality motion device.
NOPE. OH GOD NOPE.
I have 3 of these sensors, and it has been the most flakiest, most frustrating part of my home assistant setup. It's so bad I kept on adding on more of them, then added dirt cheap, battery powered dumb PIR (Tapo's) to the mix.
And slowly over time, it's gotten to the point where only the dumb PIR's are the reliable part, and just outright removing the Aqara's has been the move.
So what's the issue? It's not the technology (mmWave is magic).
It's AQARA's BLACK BOX AI.
The sensor has an AI model that 'learns' what's motion or not. Well, problem is, It always converges on the wrong answer over time. It drifts to become nonresponsive.
And NO it is NOT a tuning (yes I've adjusted every parameter you can think of) or positioning issue - dear lord, the hundreds of hours I've spent on this.
No matter how you tune it, and how many times you reset it, it just goes wonky with ZERO insight into why. And this is something there's 0 diagnostics and you have no say into.
So if you want mmWave magic, just DIY so you:
- have full diagnostics into how and why things fail - it's just the nature of this hobby.
- Once you have a working setup, you can just lock that in instead of randomly being reset by firmware or some edge AI.