Aqara today pushed an update to its popular Camera Hub G3. The new firmware (4.0.4) fixes a few bugs related specifically to image issues but also adds Matter support for the first time.
To be clear, however, this update only adds Matter support for the bridge portion of the G3, as cameras and video doorbells are not supported categories in Matter at this time. What it does allow is for child devices added to the G3 to be exposed to your preferred smart home platform, be that Apple Home, Google Home, Amazon Alexa, or Samsung SmartThings.
There are a few things to note with this Matter functionality; First off, If you add the G3 Hub to Apple Home via Matter whilst already having it connected via HomeKit, you could end up with duplicates of both the hub and the child devices connected to it. If you chose to remove it from HomeKit and re-add it via Matter, you would no longer get the Alarm option within Apple Home.
On the plus side for some, this update should allow those with a Chinese edition of the Aqara G3 to expose their child devices and the hub to hitherto inaccessible platforms, like Amazon Alexa and Google Home, both of which are not supported in China, or not available via Aqara’s China server. It might still not expose the camera to these platforms, however.
If you’re not familiar with the Aqara G3, this could be considered the company’s flagship camera, offering 2K video recording, pan/tilt/zoom functionality, SD card recording, HomeKit Secure Video compatibility, custom ringtones, face and gesture recognition, human and pet tracking, and more.
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