I reverse-engineered the BLE protocol of the Berbel BFB 6bT remote control and built an ESP32-based emulator that bridges the hood to Home Assistant via MQTT.
Why?
Berbel kitchen hoods (Skyline Frame, Edge, Glassline, etc.) use a proprietary BLE remote with no official smart home integration beyond an iOS-only app. This project gives you full control through Home Assistant.
What it does
The ESP32 emulates the original remote control over BLE and exposes the hood as MQTT entities with auto-discovery:
- Lights - Upper light and cooktop light (toggle with state tracking)
- Fan - Select entity with 5 speeds (Off, Stufe 1-3, Power)
- Position - Raise/lower the hood
- Afterrun - Toggle the afterrun timer
- Power Off - Button entity
- Status - Real-time state from the hood (9-byte bitmask decoded)
- BLE Connection - Diagnostic binary sensor
All entities reflect the actual hood state, not optimistic updates. The hood sends status packets that are decoded in real-time.
Key discoveries during reverse engineering
- The hood filters by MAC OUI and only accepts Texas Instruments MACs (
88:01:F9or30:AF:7E). ESP32 MAC must be
spoofed. - Legacy BLE pairing with LTK only (no IRK). Adding IRK breaks pairing.
- GATT services must be in a specific order (DevInfo, Battery, HID, Custom).
- HID service is required even though commands go through the custom Berbel service.
- Button commands are 2-byte notifications:
[code, 0x00]press,[0x00, 0x00]release.
Hardware
Just an ESP32 dev board. Uses NimBLE stack for ~100KB heap savings, leaving enough room for WiFi + MQTT on the shared radio.
Compatible hoods
Should work with all Berbel hoods with berbel Connect 2.0 (manufactured November 2020+):
Island, wall-mounted, headroom, and built-in hoods including Skyline Frame/
Edge/Curve/Sound/Light/Round, Ergoline, Glassline, Blockline, Smartline, Formline, Firstline.
Links
- GitHub: GitHub - tfohlmeister/berbel-remote: ESP32-based BLE emulator for the Berbel BFB 6bT remote control with Home Assistant MQTT integration
- Full protocol documentation: included in the repo (REVERSE_ENGINEERING.md)
MIT licensed. Contributions welcome, especially from people with other Berbel hood models!