I finally have a few moments alone and some electricity to write a short review! And here it is, the Aqara Presence Multi Sensor FP300. This is Aqara’s latest feature thread and Zigbee compatibility, at which point it refers to a hub required and built on Thread, which requires a Border Router, none of which sounded particularly exciting considering I’m still busy setting up the house and have several movement/presence sensors that don’t need any of that.
However as I was about to get annoyed, I went into the Aqara Home app, tried to add the sensor, and it gave me a choice of whether I wanted to use Zigbee or Thread. I told it to use Zigbee. It installed an update within seconds and so I then went off to Home Assistant. In my HA Zigbee sub-system I simply went to “Permit Join” and there it was – I renamed the device to aqara-fp300 (as I only have one for now) and made sure I updated Home Assistant ID – end of.
Off to HA devices now to take a look – bear with me… Ok, take a look for yourself… As well as presence sensing, this device does luminance, temperature and humidity. I could not make much sense of the abbreviated sensor summary list but the individual items are obvious enough. As for my current setup, I have couple of WiFi access points running in the building, a Zigbee coordinator, a USB Zigbee router and a bunch of Zigbee lights – that’s about it.
I can confirm that luminance and occupancy sensors are working but right now all I get out of the “target distance” is 0m !!
Update March 27, 2026 – the Aqara has been sitting on my desk doing nothing since 10th as I’ve been busy with house decorating etc., so I checked in HA just now, battery 100%, sensing and light detection working just fine…. so far, so good.
Just a quick end note:
I have just received two cheap human motion sensors from AliExpress. Model ZG-204ZV. Unfortunately they are marketed as human sensors, like for example the Aqara sensor here, and in the entities in Home Assistant that appear, the main one one says “presence”. The whole thing is completely misleading except for the box, which correctly says “human motion detector”, but that’s not what I thought I was buying from the AliExpress advert for “Human Detector”. They are simple motion sensors.
If I put my hand right next to the sensor and keep it perfectly still for under a minute, the sensor reports false so really no better than the old-fashioned motion sensors at all. I have great hopes for the Aqara unit and soon I hope to get a hold of one of the Shelly Presence Generation 4 sensors, which again will pick up presence, not motion, and Shelly makes a big deal about that.
I completely agree with the Shelly ad which says “Lights off while you’re still in the room? Not anymore. Shelly Presence Gen4 utilizes advanced technology to detect actual presence, not just motion. Waving at sensors and wasting energy are things of the past.”
You’ll see that these companies (Shelly, Aqara, Apollo and others) are not alone in producing true presence sensors – I’ve reviewed several (usually based on the same radar chips) and they truly are the way forward. I use them all the time – I thought for a second the AliExpress units might be a cheaper and certainly more compact way in at 5 Euros or so a time – but no… absolutely not. Ok for drawers with a light in them (though these usually have sensors built in anyway).
I’m going to try that AliExpress device for the sake of it. Did you test it on Zigbee2MQTT? I assume you did. AliExpress are always an unknown quantity – sometimes stuff is utter crap, other times you wonder how they do the price.. a bit like Temu really – I use both far too often.
Hi Pete,
Try https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005010114187645.html – Type 3 for Z2M – I tested it and works like a charm.
Ion
Yes but it’s not a presence sensor, it’s a HUMAN MOTION SENSOR. The Ali Ad claims HUMAN SENSOR and the entity in Q2M says PRESENCE but the actual box says correctly HUMAN MOTION detection.
As (for example) the Shelly ad doing the rounds right now correctly says “Lights off while you’re still in the room? Not anymore. Shelly Presence Gen4 utilizes advanced technology to detect actual presence, not just motion. Waving at sensors and wasting energy are things of the past”
I took one of these AliExpress ZG-204ZV sensors (I bought 2 and have just requested a refund) and it seemed to work with Z2M perfectly, no hassle – but then I looked at the box which in capital letters says “HUMAN MOTION SENSOR” – so the Ali ad is misleading as is the name of the sensor in Z2M which says “presence” – I’ll expand on this in the blog.