// the find
AlexxIT/XiaomiGateway3
Home Assistant custom component for control Xiaomi Multimode Gateway (aka Gateway 3), Xiaomi Multimode Gateway 2, Aqara Hub E1 on default firmwares over LAN
A Home Assistant custom component that talks to Xiaomi's Multimode Gateway (v1, v2) and Aqara Hub E1 over LAN — no cloud required for device control after initial setup. It exposes Zigbee, BLE, and Mesh devices to HA and optionally lets you use ZHA or Zigbee2MQTT instead of Mi Home mode. The target user is someone already deep in the Xiaomi/Aqara ecosystem who wants local control without replacing hardware.
The firmware/token matrix in the README is genuinely useful — it tells you exactly what you need for each gateway model and firmware version rather than leaving you to discover it the hard way. The three Zigbee modes (Mi Home, ZHA, z2m) let you incrementally migrate without replacing devices. External converters give you a real extension point for unsupported devices without forking the component. The openmiio_agent daemon approach — re-enabling Telnet and itself on every reboot — is a smart workaround for a hardware vendor that doesn't want you doing this.
The EFR32 EZSP chip is documented as problematic with both ZHA and Zigbee2MQTT (the component itself says z2m is experimental and users report instability), which means the most useful escape hatch from Mi Home mode is unreliable on the primary supported hardware. Getting a 'key' on newer firmwares requires UART access or a specific button-click sequence that involves downgrading — the setup story for new users is genuinely painful and forks based on firmware version in ways that are hard to anticipate. There's no structured test coverage for the gateway protocol layers, only converter unit tests, so protocol regressions on firmware updates are caught by users. The cloud step being mandatory (or requiring you to already know the token out-of-band) undermines the 'local first' pitch.