Smartlife groups into matter
Setup: Aqara M200 hub, Zemismart M6 Matter bridge, 6 Lafit COB lights, Z1 Pro switches. Problem: SmartLife groups give perfect sync on the 6 COBs via native Zigbee group-cast, but the group doesn’t expose to Matter/Aqara — only individual bulbs do. When I trigger them via Aqara Z1 Pro switches, I get sequential lag and desync because the M6 sends individual unicast commands instead of a group-cast. Already tweaked Grandstream router settings and saw some improvement. Looking for: hardware solutions, firmware options on the M6, or clever workarounds to either expose SmartLife groups to Matter or get Aqara to send group-cast commands locally. Any ideas?”
Additional context: When I create a group in Aqara and trigger all 6 COB lights together, I get a visible popcorn effect — each bulb turns on at slightly different times because Aqara sends individual sequential commands to each bridged Matter endpoint instead of a single group-cast command. The Zemismart M6 receives these as 6 separate unicast Zigbee commands rather than one group-cast packet, which causes the staggered turn-on. SmartLife’s native group control doesn’t have this issue because it sends a true Zigbee group-cast directly from the M6. Is there any way to either:
- expose a SmartLife group as a single Matter endpoint so Aqara sees it as one device,
- force Aqara to send group-cast commands to the M6, or
- any other hardware/software solution that solves this without requiring full Home Assistant setup?