Unfortunately, their current design for making the button useful requires the NUT to be paired to a phone to detect button-presses. But that connection uses quite a bit of battery life, can’t be used stand-alone, and defeats the whole point of presence with Happy Bubbles. So the only thing I could do is to write a new firmware for it to use the button the way I’d want to. This is possible, but takes a bit of work and it wouldn’t be super-easy for others to program, would require taking the NUT apart to get to the right pins to program it.
I’ll keep you guys updated of any progress I make here.
@happybubbles We should all be thanking you, without this product presence detection just isn’t there, well certainly not when it comes to Android OS.
If you want any information regarding the iBeacons I have purchased please feel free to contact me over email or through the forum as I am happy to test or even contribute in any development. The button on these iBeacons is used to initially pair the iBeacon to the Android/IOS App and the App is used to configure the iBeacon in Hex language. If you were to change the button functionality in any way, you would need a way of putting it back just in case the iBeacon dropped out of sync with the receiver or you wanted to change any of the hardware identifiers.
I have requested a copy of the SDK for these iBeacons, we have already exchanged some emails, so if i get the SDK I’ll send it over to you.
Just found this setup to use beacons around teh house and use your phone with tasker and other apps to report presence. Not sure if this will work or not maybe someone else could chime in.
So that’s something I would like your opinion on, if you don’t mind.
To make these act as a Happy Bubbles button, I basically need to rewrite their firmware, which is fine, I can do it. But I’m not sure I can replicate their exact behaviour in regards to the app.
What if I were to offer you a button that could switch modes, so it could be both a beacon and button at the same time, or save battery and be only in “butto-only mode”. You could switch modes but holding down the button for 2 seconds. Its LEDs would indicate which mode you’re in.
In beacon+button mode, it’ll behave like an Eddystone beacon with a guaranteed unique ID so you don’t need to worry about changing it to not overlap; and some sensible defaults. It will use only moderate battery life, advertise every 400ms at 0 dBm, etc.
And when you push its button, it’ll send out an MQTT message to some button-topic saying it was pushed X times (so you could do single, double, triple clicks and different actions for each if you want).
In just button mode, it’ll act the same was as described above as a button, but not advertise often as a beacon to save battery. It’ll also send out its battery life and which mode it’s in so you could see that on the Presence Server UI.
But, the trade-off is that it will come hardcoded with that Eddystone UID, beacon advertising rate, and power gain level. Is that a fair trade-off for the added customizable button functionality or a deal-breaker and you absolutely need to be able to customize the ID, advertising rate, etc? I just don’t have the resources to make it work with the existing apps, nor to go and write my own for Android and iOS.
I would love your feedback because I’m working on such a thing and want to make get feedback on what would make it a good product.
I think its pretty cool object for the home assistant community. Having a button with 1-2-3 click functionality can be used for various services.
Beside with presence software, the same button same number of click can be used for different function (i.e. one click in bedroom turns on bedroom light, one click in living turns on livingroom light).
Pretty cool!
Hope is not needed soldering
p.s. if you manage to ship to europe without outrageous VAT and duty expense, you can sell them yourself, already with new firmware in
Thank you for the feedback, Claudio. It’s encouraging. I will try to work on it!
It shouldn’t involve soldering, just firmware. I plan to first do it for those small white beacons I sell, and maybe NUT after that. But they will cost a bit more than just the NUT or plain beacon, since I have to spent time opening them up, reflashing them, etc.
As for the outrageous VAT and duty, I completely understand and wish it wasn’t the case. But the truth is, those are levied by your countries and their internal agencies. There isn’t anything I can do from here to reduce that or influence them.
I made a fresh install of HASSBIAN.
Trying to do a new install of happy bubbles, followed your instructions, and receive
Created symlink from /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/presence.service to /etc/systemd/system/presence.service.
===============================================
DONE!
the presence server should be installed now
visit http://hassbian:5555/ to get to the presence server web interface
so without werrors, but if I go to visit the link I receive ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED in browser …?
Also on the iOS app I make sure to rename my phone device to test this and avoid other device trackers to change its status, so it’s called jonatans_iphonetest.
Please tell me.
HA app use only bluetooth and ibeacon to track iphone? GPS is turn off?
I search solution to track only home/away, gps turned off to save battery.
I know this is slightly old but I found nmap far too unreliable and hence moved to a couple of iBeacons. Appears to work much much quicker and more reliable for me anyway. I pull up in the car, GPS still catching up, wifi not in range, ibeacon detects our phones automations start before we leave the car. Which is important for me, as if my wife is alone, the outside lights, hallway lights etc come on if is it after a certain time/darkness.
I bought a few those Nut 2 beacons and unfortunately the advertisement rate is very low. It’s about 2.5s, so it takes quite a long time to detect them properly. When I press the button on them then their are advertising much more frequently.
Do you know how to increase the advertisement rate? Maybe it’s not possible with them. In that case what other beacons would you recommend to get more instant presence detection?
Even my Misfit Shine is advertising with 1s rate, so it’s much more reliable. Nut’s sometimes even longer are not advertising any updates.
Buy some radbeacon USB units and then you can set them to advertise very quickly as not worried about battery drain. I have a couple in my house for the iOS app to see I’m home, as well as one in my car cigarette USB charger so the house knows when my car comes home.
Between those two plus a wifi tracker (using the iTunes wakeup method) on our iOS devices we have presence “nailed” now.
I pull onto driveway and garage light come on, door opens, etc, etc.
I need something that I can carry over home, so it must be running on battery. Three happy bubbles in different rooms and with beacons I can detect position in my home. I just some device that would adverise more frequently.
I want to just use my Pi (with built in bluetooth and HA installed on it) to track a beacon. I have got a little BLE beacon and want to track (presence) with my built-in Bluetooth of the Pi. This is possible without additional hardware…right?
